HMES 2013 Agenda: November 2009

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Contingency Planning Summit

Severe space storm coming

As if Hurricane Katrina in the US, iceberg meltdown in the North Pole, the Typhoons Frank, Ondoy, Pepeng, Lupit in the Philippines and the tsunamis of Southeast Asia were not enough, the world has to prepare from between 2010 - 2013 for severe space storms caused by what NASA predicted as solar maximum occurrence similar to the solar storm British astronomer Richard Carrington observed in 1859.NASA reports that:

The 1859 storm - known as the "Carrington Event" after astronomer Richard Carrington who witnessed the instigating solar flare -- electrified transmission cables, set fires in telegraph offices and produced Northern Lights so bright that people could read newspapers so bright that people could read newspapers by their red and green glow. A recent report by the National Academy of Sciences found that if a similar storm occurred today, it could case $1 to 2 trillion in damages to society's high-tech infrastructure and require four to ten years for complete recovery. For comparison, Hurricane Katrina caused "only $80 to 125 billion in damage. See the NASA forecast here

The need to plot strategies, programs, plans and target activities for when this event will happen is the reason for the 2010 Geo Hazard Mapping and Environment Summit. Despite the HMES 2010 advocacy to strengthen the gathering of information from outer space, using high technology implements, there is absolutely no contradiction to proposing measures to undertake mapping while knowing fully well about the forthcoming severe space event.

HMES 2010 is merely a pro-active measure to produce a wholly functional cooperation on creating the road map today for what is to take place between 2010 or 2011 up to 2013.While it is true that GIS could be reliant upon information from outer space, the heart of the HMES 2010 conference is to plot out a mechanism whereby a highly usable hazard map would be drawn today, before the space storms happen and other more dangerous disasters take place and put in place special contingency plans for unveiling and assembling properly stored devices unharmed from the effects of the magnetic storm. For all purposes and intents, the replacement equipment and infrastructure might be downgrades of the original structure destroyed by the solar calamity, making do with earth based remote sensing and even line of sight data and digital video transmission, at least the world will not be blind.

The organizers of HMES 2010 envisioned creating from out of the existing world geo hazard map, a back up hazard GIS and response plan that will be maximum safe kept -- possibly in a demagnetized environment -- and taken out when the Carrington-event type of disaster or the combination of that event and other calamities strikes the planet.

All measures relevant to humanitarian assistance should already be laid out in advance and implemented to a T at the appointed time.

Since this is not easily done without proper consensus, UN member nations must agree to the proposal, vote as one and willingly sign the attendant declaration of solidarity.

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Letter to the United Nations Secretary General

October 31, 2009

HIS EXCELLENCY
BAN KI-MOON
Secretary General
United Nations

Dear Mr. Secretary General:

Greetings!

Every 5th of June since 1972 is commemorated by the United Nations as the World Environment Day.

In 2010-2011, scientists report that there will be a solar maximum that has not occurred since fifty years ago as reported in this article from Science@NASA:

a (solar) storm is coming--the most intense solar maximum in fifty years. The prediction comes from a team led by Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). "The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one," she says. If correct, the years ahead could produce a burst of solar activity second only to the historic Solar Max of 1958. Read more about it here

This and other factors will result in major disasters during the period in question. Our group of professionals advocating environment protection and disaster damage diminution respectfully request the United Nations to support our effort to organize a Geo Hazard Mapping and Environment Summit in 2010 and we are determined that this gathering be convened in Manila, Philippines.

In this connection, may we respectfully request the following:

1. United Nations and its concerned departments participate in the Summit and help in organizing said event
2. The Year 2010 be declared as the International Geo Hazard Mapping Year
3. The month of April 2010 be declared as the International Disaster Risk Reduction Month; and finally,
4. The date of April 17, 2010 be declared as the first World Hazards Awareness Day.

That these declarations be formally announced in Manila prior to the Summit.

Thank you ever so much! Mabuhay!!!

Respectfully yours,

Organizers HMES 2010

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HMES Agenda on Prevention Web

Forecasting with confidence

This paper addresses the gain the Philippine scientific community can get from the positive, constructive use of precedents, models, patterns and trends. It highlights the Global Scale Wave Model (GSWM), put up by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to provide a better understanding and forward perspectives on hydrologic movements around the world, and the GEO System of Systems of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), from where countries and institutions can cull a huge amount of data about geohazards, past and forthcoming disasters. It argues for all these sources of data to be able to guide weather, seismic and volcanic activity forecasting around the world.

View full document [PDF 1.44 MB]

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

Distraction brought by fighting Climate Change

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.

Global Geohazard System - extended discussion

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 > >

The Global Geohazard System

Crisis Mapping

In 2008 we determined to create a full-function Crisis Mapping project. This was borne out of the persistent eruption of hostilities in Southern Philippines between both communist - Islamist groups on one side and the government on the other. Fresh from the experience at confronting an incorrigible troublemaker such as the Juma'a Abu Sayyap, or more popularly known as Abu Sayyaf, we resolved to push stakeholders to join in formulating the Philippine conflicts crisis map.

This is modeled after the U.S.-Euro academe's successful crime and peacekeeping mapping efforts that had led to wide acceptance and invited broad-based support from as many sectors and as many countries as possible.

After all, the value of life is such that people and institutions, states and combines will pay as high a price as possible for the safety of both individuals and enclaves of people. More > >

Themes: #Yolanda, CEOS, disaster, forecasting, Geohazards Mapping, GGOS, hydro geo risks, ICRC, public warning, satellite, seismology, storm surge, terror, tidal wave, tsunami, typhoon, UN, UNISDR, volcano