HMES 2013 Agenda: environment hazards

Showing posts with label environment hazards. Show all posts

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Conference Agenda

Agenda

Geo Hazards Mapping and Environment Summit

HMES 2014 Manila

Protocol

Shift in policy regimes:

·   Factor natural phenomena and natural emissions in addition to industrial caused Greenhouse Gases (GHG) into Disaster and Climate Change risk parameters

·   All natural and man-made land deformations or wetlands defacements including altering life and inorganic objects therein should be seriously studied and factored into future Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) activities

·   Signing Declaration to observe 2014 as International Hazard Mapping Year

·   Signing Declaration for observing December 2014 and of every year thereafter as the Disaster Risk Reduction Month

·   Signing Declaration for observing December 17 on 2014 and on every year thereafter as the International Hazards Awareness Day

·   Signing expanded agreements between UN, member nations on sharing of GIS on disasters and information from outer space

·   Signing of Declaration for priority humanitarian care for disabled persons and waiver of immigration regulations in major disasters

·   Balancing campaign for community resilience with tagging of non buildable areas and relocation of communities directly in the path of disasters, extremely hazardous earthquake faults or liquefaction sites, other risk vulnerable places

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Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Will there be more Killer Quakes?

From over 40 casualties, the death toll has risen to nearly 100 in the Carmen, Bohol Province-Cebu City earthquake. At that figure, the Carmen-Cebu tremor can qualify as a Killer Quake. Cebu and nearby areas has to be declared to be in a state of calamity. There are limited manuevers that aircraft can make at the Cebu airport due to the cracking and opening up of the airport's runways.

The six million dollar question is: how many more incidents like those in Carmen, Bohol and Cebu City and the other ones in Leyte, Samar will we be expecting?

Were the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Philvolcs) prepared adequately enough with equipment to monitor ground movement, tectonic plate disturbance, the nearly 100 deaths could have been avoided. 27 Billion Philippine Pesos is earmarked for pork barrel in the 2014 General Appropriations Act out of a total expenditure program of 2.26 Trillion Philippine Pesos. Would it be difficult to allocate even half of that pork barrel budget for emergency preparedness, disaster risk reduction, equipment upgrade?

Past Warnings of Big Disaster

This site has been warning the public for more than four years since the time of the former President, Mrs. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Due to the total torpedoing of the private sector (Corinthian Gardens, Forbes Park, Dasmarinas Village, the owners of high rise condominiums at the left side of EDSA southbound, among others), of the program for predicting highly lethal effects of a major tremor in Metro Manila and the replication of this effort in many urban areas in the country by the same sector in collusion with some corrupt officials in the government, a large disaster and environmental hazards summit was proposed to be supported by the Philippine Government and the United Nations, among other institutions from many other sectors - including the non-profit (minus the Napoles et al NGOs).

Wanting responses

It is reiterated that in the time of Mrs. Arroyo, only the then Administrator of the Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA), Ms. Elaine Bautista, now Mrs. Horn, had the small effort to make an email message to the proponents of the 2010 Disaster and Environmental Hazards Mapping Summit. And that was only because the United Nations Environment Programm (UNEP) told the former Ms. Bautista to get in touch with HMES 2010 organizing group. At the time, concurrent to her post in MARINA, Ms. Bautista was considered a friend of UNEP and a significant point person for the Philippine Government in relation to selected UNEP concerns - particularly about emergency and assistance.

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.

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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