HMES Event Management: Invitation to the HMES Conference

Monday, December 23, 2013

Invitation to the HMES Conference

We invite state officials and all interested workers in the disaster risk reduction and disaster response sector to the Hazards Mapping and Environment Summit 2014, a project began in November 2009 and will be pursued to its fruition in 2014.

Initial briefings about the conference are shown below:

2010 HMES References

Briefing Paper. 2010..
The Global Geohazards System
Forecasting with more confidence. 2013..
Reiterating 2010 call for shift in paradigm. 2013.
Hyogo Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction

Communiques:

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon
UNISDR Secretary Margareta Wahlstrom
Senator Orlando S. Mercado
Undersecretary Eduardo del Rosario
Sec. Voltaire T. Gazmin
Sec. Mario G. Montejo
Mayor Joseph E. Estrada
Chairman Francis N. Tolentino
Commissioner Siegfred B. Mison
Commissioner John Philip Sevilla
Deputy Commissioner Ariel P. Nepomuceno

Web Sites

Google +: Hazards Mapping and Environment Summit
Google +: One Festival
Facebook.com: Hazards Mapping and Environment Summit
Facebook.com: One Festival
Communique to United Nations

Contact Us

Write to:
postmaster@cyberparkgroup.com
saferecover@msn.com
onefestival@centrehumanes.org

From hundreds of thousands of casualties the death toll around the world is rising and the cost of disasters is staggeringly increasing. Children of the future generations will awake to a world that not only bear scars of disaster but has tremendously been devastated down to its core by unmitigated catastrophes.

Even as we are reeling from the recent super typhoon Haiyan aka Yolanda, we ask the same question how many more will we be expecting without any form of readiness at all neither equipped with capability to even slightly advance our forecasts of these calamities?

In this country, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Philvolcs) and Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) are both awaiting support for modernization.

In many other countries, both light and intense debates exist on whether to purchase new equipment, finance new undertakings for improved earthquake sensing, hyrdrology studies, astronomical research among many others. All of these are vital to forecasting future calamity.

Furthermore, past warnings of big disasters, if they are not part of the mainstream, are nearly always treated as garbage. Notwithstanding this, the disaster agencies around the world has always been wanting in terms of delivering advanced advisory or else possess very little confidence in both themselves and their data.

The modicum of understanding and appreciation of the value of crisis and hazards mapping, flashpoints monitoring, is succinctly manifested in the responses of people in the public sector as shown in one classic case:

When Mr. Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino 3rd became President, the organizing group wrote to Ms. Corazon Juliano Soliman of the Department of Social Welfare and Development and Gen. Voltaire Tuvera Gazmin. Ms. Soliman did not respond. It was noticed however that several days later, Gen. Gazmin, the Secretary of the Department of National Defense gave an interview to national media.

In that interview, when Gazmin was asked about what the people should do when a disaster strikes, he replied: "Run for your lives."

Needless to say, the response government is exceedingly wanting in substance. Before super typhoon Haiyan aka Yolanda struck in Tacloban City and many other parts of the country, the government was merely sending text messages to local government officials that there will be 21-foot high storm surge without regard to whether the recipient local officials will undertake any appropriate action or not upon receipt of these text messages.

Apparently, the recipient local government officials did not take any decent actions that even they themselves either died or were severely impacted upon by the powerful storm surge, not to mention their homes were washed away.

It will take much resources and a long time for proper actions to be undertaken to prepare populations for disasters so that the recent catastrophes the world has seen will continue to repeat themselves over and over again with much loss to precious life and valuables, public and private vital installations or infrastructures and most of all, collective peace of mind and sanity.

Bohol-Cebu killer earthquake

Haiyan / Yolanda Super Typhoon

Billions are given to the government after every disaster but more than these amounts of aid are lost to personal enrichment of officials in the public sector and intimate partners or relatives in the business sector.

On the other hand, the government with impunity, neglects to take care of the needs of the community that are tasked to predict, forecast disasters. There are limited occasions where members of this community are afforded to co-operate, share notes, experience and the hunger for such interfaces creates a gaping vacuum in the community.

Perhaps only because of the lack of support, the almost nil co-operation between and among each other, a large number of our scientists and technical specialists are sometimes trapped in petty word wars and battles among themselves. These wars have gone down to the basest levels. On the other hand, forecasting accuracy and factual assessment of trends, engaging in depth studies and research on the major issues involving both natural and even human-caused calamities have been relegated into the dim background. The world needs these people to undertake the serious business of life saving and protecting the precious valuables and institutions of humanity.

Providing them the support for their daily existence is not the least that society can do.

No comments:

Letter from the UN

Dear HMES Organizers,

With reference to your email dated 22 November, please note that the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, along with other agencies, funds, and programmes of the United Nations are supporting the people and government of the Philippines. The UN is helping communities and local governments recover from the disaster, build back safer and avoid relapses while strengthening resilience.

United Nations efforts are designed to support the Government of the Philippines response to the immediate humanitarian needs of the people affected by Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda), and complements the Government’s Yolanda Rehabilitation and Recovery Plan.

In this regards, the UN welcomes country-led efforts to improve hazard mapping and preparedness, and has been engaged in multi-year support in these areas. UN agencies in country and in the region are working with national geospatial and statistical agencies on improving GIS and risk mapping at the community level.

Your efforts to contribute to improve disaster preparedness are welcome. Committed citizens are needed to raise awareness and to join this effort. I therefore encourage you to engage in ongoing national and regional initiatives on disaster risk reduction.

Sincerely,

The Director

Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

United Nations

Geneva

Global Geohazard System

Environmental Risks, Forecasting

View in pdf form or download file from here

Supersites (eathquake sites) of the world scientific community has a interactive map showing the areas where big earthquakes are predicted to happen. Click the image to visit Supersites:

The forecast of members of the scientific community that massive casualties will be experienced in the next big disaster that will hit the Philippines is accurate.

One of the greatest concerns is that the target of the next big one is the Philippines national capital region: Metropolitan Manila.

With a nighttime population of more than 12 million, in daytime Metro Manila has a population volume of nearly 20 million or higher during peak seasons.

Metro Manila is also home to many international agency headquarters such as the Asian Development Bank and all the home offices of foreign embassies are located in the capital region.

Too many factors can account for the exactitude and correctness of the prediction of massive casualties – not the least amongst them, the lack of state-of-the-art data and information ferreting equipment. Scientific expertise and knowhow in the use of new technology for tidal wave, weather, seismic event, volcanic eruption forecasting is not necessarily lacking in the Philippines.

However, it must be conceded that the Philippines does not have enough or adequate experience in handling satellite launch, management and earth observation operations.

To compound the problem ten-folds it is learned through the media, that intervention by interest groups in purveying vital data to the public about earthquake faults, the shameless impunity with which big companies are shunting regulations against building big structures on top of sites highly vulnerable to earthquake faults, also compound the danger of the Philippines suffering a large multitude of people getting killed during a big disaster incident involving the shaking of the Marikina West Valley Fault System. More > >

Forecasting impending disaster with confidence

The Philippines:
Forecasting with confidence

Self-doubting prophecy

For nearly five years ago today, it was suggested to the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) to enhance its satellite capability instead of simply getting hand-me-down issuances from UN OOSA (United Nations Outer Space Affairs and the NOAA (United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the other geospatial information and intelligence agencies all over the world.

At a certain point in time around the period of the occurrence of the devastation by tropical storm Ketsana (Ondoy) in the Philippines, the PAGASA was clamoring for the purchase and installation of its Doppler radar system, an outmoded and unreliable system for weather forecasting.

In 2010, all throughout the government circuit, the company of Mr. Philip King called AAA, went on a lecture-presentation effort to sell the sensing and image capture technology developed by a Malaysian scientist and technology specialist who was also engaged in a similar high technology, extensive venture for the government of Canada, among other countries.

Had the Department of Science and Technology considered using a network of sensing stations with clear-photo capture capability on a 1-camera-per-station (or possibly a cluster of cameras), weather forecasting in the country, aided with charity hand-outs from NOAA, UNOOSA, the European Union, among other satellite capable agencies, will definitely be more precise at the same time vivid and viewable in real time.

It was foreseen in this site that absolutely nothing will be allowed by Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy) to block its path. As early as the morning of the raging of this typhoon that PAGASA decided to merely attribute the powerful rains and killer floods to monsoons, it was already the consensus among the advocates that started this site that many people will die by Ketsana (Ondoy). More > >

Disaster Relief and Recovery Issues: Working with public sector

Fighting Climate Change distracts Governments

After the 2005 Hyogo Conference, scientists urged the United Nations to consider that the various conflicting issues surrounding Climate Change is "distracting governments" from providing solutions to threats of disasters worldwide.

"The current UN focus on "fighting climate change," as illustrated in the Nov. 27 UN Development Programme's Human Development Report, is distracting governments from adapting to the threat of inevitable natural climate changes, whatever forms they may take. National and international planning for such changes is needed, with a focus on helping our most vulnerable citizens adapt to conditions that lie ahead. Attempts to prevent global climate change from occurring are ultimately futile, and constitute a tragic misallocation of resources that would be better spent on humanity's real and pressing problems."

A letter written to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon ventilated sentiments of scientists and technology experts on the issue of focusing deeper into finding means to adapt to the threat of climate change.

HMES

HMES charity event

O N E

One is a rock music festival originally planned for April 2010 but was shelved due to the postponement of the Hazards Mapping and Environment Summit (HMES) 2010 - a sister project.

The HMES project is now revived and rescheduled to December 4-12, 2014, before the March conference in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture of the United Nations called the UN Third World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction.

On the fifth day of the hazards mapping and environment conference, One will be staged at Rizal Park, Manila beginning at past 5:00 pm Saturday, December 13, 2014 until the next day Sunday December 14, 2014.

One of the unique features of One is the use of biometric tickets, the technology for which will be negotiated up to final contract with a provider from the United Kingdom.

One is a concern of Center for Human and Society (Centre di Humanes et Societas, Inc.) a non-profit organization registered in the Philippines. The organizer's advocacy is pushing for and actively participating in the creation of resettlement sites far away from the ground zero where thousands of Tacloban City residents died as well as building Memorials for those that died in the places where the remains of those that passed away during the Category 5 Tropical Cyclone Haiyan codenamed Yolanda. These memorials will be where the relatives of those that died can express grief for their family, loved ones and bosom friends. Read more from here

HMES Event Management

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Monday, December 23, 2013

Invitation to the HMES Conference

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