Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Philippines upgrades its disaster mitigating technology

Eco-Business: The Department of Science and Technology’s (DOST) Project NOAH (Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards) is adopting the disaster mitigating technology called InaSAFE from Indonesia. InaSAFE is an acronym for Indonesia Scenario Assessment for Emergency. It is an open source technology, which means it is free, readily accessed from the internet and may be modified by users. With this technology, data coming from weather scientists, local government units and the communities are gathered and consolidated to provide accurate information on future disaster events.

NOAH adopted Indonesis’s InaSAFE as it has a lot in common with the Philippines, especially in topography and natural hazards. This was disclosed during the multi-stakeholder assembly titled “Enhancing Community Resilience Through the Use of New Technology” conducted by Project NOAH recently held at the Oracle Hotel in Quezon City.

Abigail Baca, disaster and risk management officer of the World Bank East Asia and Pacific Region said that InaSAFE proved effective during the recent floods in Jakarta, Indonesia and it can be applied in the Philippines.

Dr. Alfredo Francisco Mahar Lagmay of Project NOAH disclosed that InaSAFE will be integrated into Project NOAH to supplement existing technologies used to mitigate, if not totally prevent, massive destruction caused by strong typhoons similar to Sendong in 2011 and Pablo in December 2012...

An elevated train station in Quezon City, site to the meeting in this article. Shot by Ramon FVelasquez, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

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