Ronald Jackson

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Doreen Bogdan-Martin:

Is this thing on? Can you hear me?

Technical Moderator:

Yes, we can loud and clear. Thank you. Welcome to the latest episode of the UNconnected, a podcast series about information and communication technologies and development with Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau.

Doreen Bogdan-Martin:

I'm happy to have with me today Mr Ronald Jackson, who heads the Disaster Risk Reduction and Recovery team for Building Resilience. He's with the UN Development Programme UNDP in Geneva, Switzerland. Ronald has more than 20 years of extensive experience in Disaster Risk Reduction and Management, especially in the Caribbean region. He previously served as the Executive Director of CDEMA, which is the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency. Prior to that, in the capacity of Director General of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management in Jamaica. Ronald has led numerous regional and national responses to tropical cyclones and other natural hazards. According to WMO, the number of disasters has increased by a factor of five, which is incredible. Over the past 50 years, this has been driven by factors such as climate change, and more extreme weather. Just recently, the disasters that struck the Philippines and Tonga have highlighted the importance of connectivity. And of course, the need for better preparedness in disaster management. Communications are important, not only for early warning, and disaster response, as comms networks themselves are often amongst the first casualties of extreme weather events. So we need to find ways to better protect this vital infrastructure and make it more resilient. That's what we're going to hear from Ronald today. Welcome, Ronald, it's so great to have you have you with us, because you have seen it all.

Ronald Jackson:

Thank you. It's certainly my pleasure to join you today on this particular topic.

Doreen Bogdan-Martin:

Excellent. So let me just dive into my first question. Let's start with key lessons. Can you share with us the key lessons you have learned in preparing for disasters? Of course, better connectivity and digital technologies help. But what kind of support do countries need? And I would say, including from the international community.

Ronald Jackson:

Certainly, I think over the many years operating in the field, one of the, or a set of lessons that I think we've seen repeatedly, and I'm not sure we've all learned them, but they've come up time and time again, is that we need to have a very clear understanding of the likely implications of an impact of a natural hazard of any type of form on various communities, and particularly the most vulnerable communities. Why do I say this? I think, you know, we often view being prepared as having all the resources to be able to apply it to the needs of all the people who can be affected, and that's not necessarily where we have to get to see we are fully prepared. It is important to understand who are the people who will be affected what their needs would be. But then true preparedness comes when we understand those needs and demands. And we've been able to allocate adequate budget ahead of time to address those needs. And those needs could include capacity building, they could include putting in the minimum, at least a minimum stock level, but also putting in the protocols that allow us to reach out to multiple partners, whether their local base is the private sector, or whether we're looking at external actors, where we have in place the appropriate mechanisms, measures, and arrangements to call on the support of those partners and to adequately receive and coordinate their support. That's one of the fundamental lessons. A second lesson really is the need for us to develop these scenarios. And now we see technology really giving us the opportunity to generate more dynamic real scenarios that allows us to exercise to test to plan better, to engage the communities at risk, and that's also a very important lesson being prepared. It also means engaging those individuals who we know are likely to be on the frontlines of these adverse events– they have to be a part of it. You know, you can't plan without these individuals being a central part of that particular process. And no technology allows us to be able to do that, you know, with greater efficiency, with the ability to engage all to animate those individuals who, who may get excited about the capacities of the technology itself. So that kind of support I think countries need really, and an obvious one most will gravitate to is always financing. And yes, we do know that, given the limitations on national budgets, especially in Least Developed developing countries, financing is going to be one of the primary elements that will be flagged by anyone. But I think we also need to look at the sort of knowledge sharing arrangements that allows us to capture some of the experiences of the key lessons and to share them, you know, so that's one of the sort of external facilitation that can take place some of the south-south cooperation and knowledge exchange capacity building support, how do we, you know, codify good practices from across the globe, and have them adapted to local circumstances. I mean, I think there certainly is a scope there for international engagement and for the international community to support this process. But also, in terms of the, as I said, the external support protocols for when we want to not only prepare better, but in a response, to be able to bring in the international community to support in the gaps which have already been identified through a very robust, you know, pre-event, preparedness exercise, where you've looked at the scenario, you've looked at your likely impact, and you've identified where your gaps will be. So I think that's where we're at places. And as I said, in the world of technology today, we have, you know, great advancements in digital technologies, for communications for helping with issues around search and rescue for doing better assessments for getting a better view of what the potential impact could be, we're talking about satellite technologies, we're talking about artificial intelligence, we're talking about being able to do better for siting and digital analytics. And so the world is opening up to allow us to be better prepared.

Doreen Bogdan-Martin:

Excellent, thank you very important lessons that you have shared. And I think I like your point about true preparedness, I think it's not just about having your plan on paper, but actually putting all the elements in place so that countries are ready, and they can respond from having the budget and the capacity and the trainings and drills and different scenario understandings, and of course, the importance of protocols, both with external support and other partners. And of course, the financing element and the importance of knowledge sharing. I wanted to perhaps dive deeper into the importance of cooperation and partnerships. So in the area of disaster management, can you share with us who are the main stakeholders that need to come together to ensure that we minimise the risk and that we better strengthen our preparedness? And I also wondered if you had any thoughts that you want to share about the importance of the Tampere Convention?

Ronald Jackson:

That's an excellent question. And I will come to the very important point on the Tampere convention, because I also have a personal story around that. I think cooperation and partnership is quite important in any effort around building resilient societies. And here we're looking at one minimising risk, understanding risk, but also being better prepared in areas where we can't present. And here cooperation and partnership starts locally. It's a cooperation and a partnership with the people who are most at risk– working with their local authorities, local governance, but also the private sector. And that can be scaled up within the national context as well. So first, all of the key stakeholders are those who have something at stake from the population who are at risk— from the local businesses who will become disrupted to the people who provide the appropriate governance and oversight for community or country. Now we look globally, what are the types of partnerships and cooperation? Certainly, yes, the private sector again sits there. But you know, we also need to see this, the stakeholders cooperating across political divide. But then also when we look externally, the UN community, the NGOs, nongovernmental organisations, who all have something to bring to the table. And so here, the panel of scientists, I think, locally and externally, are people we can leverage within this cooperation and partnership to bring better science, you know, engage in also the communities in driving a citizen science approach as well, because the science is going to be important to be able to better understand the risk and to be better prepared, and to minimise risk. Then we look at the first responder core, locally and internationally, we need to be a part of this process around, you know, cooperating and cooperating and coordinating, which is a term we often use, but we struggle to really be as effective as we can be with it. So that comes with building these relationships ahead of time. So we have the scientists, we have the first responders, we have the communities, we have the political directorate, but also the academia. Because we have to do more research into understanding not only people's perception, but the barriers to action. You know, there are a number of barriers that prevent people from converting what they know, the information they receive, into appropriate action. So I would say there that partnership is important. But then when we're looking at the issue of telecommunications, one very important group of stakeholders we have to look at is certainly the private sector, telecommunications organisations, and here, they have to be forward with national regulation that allows us to leverage what they have at their disposal, in helping to address this issue around knowing, understanding and better responding, preparing and responding to, to risk and threats. And here, I want to reflect a little bit on the Tampere Convention because in my time heading the National Emergency Management Agency, back in Jamaica, one of the things I advocated for was for my government to ratify this particular convention, because when we look also at accessing additional telecommunications capabilities, and additional technological capabilities, you know, the Tampere Convention was very clear around the ability to receive that assistance. To minimise the barriers or impediments towards that assistance. So if you want to have it in place before the event occurs… and also for looking at accessing best practices, I spoke earlier, the importance of codifying best practices and having these available to coordinate in linking the private and the public sector. And, of course, you know, the sort of international community led by the ITU and others who could be drawn on to provide the sort of telecommunications support, and all of that is enveloped within the Tampere Convention, quite detailed and articulated. But if we're not party to it, then I think it prevents… some challenges from us to adequately tap into the availability of resources that could backstop where we have shortfalls. So I think these are a set of partners that we have to look at, both in the private and public sector. And as I said, in particular the Telecommunications Act as we've seen, in the last set of events, and as we speak to on this podcast, one of the things we found out in Tonga, after the tsunami, and in the Philippines, after the Typhoon and that was that communications, again, was flagged as a major issue. And where there were, long standing communications blackouts because of the impact to the communication infrastructure. So our response or ability to support the affected community, or ability to recover quickly, is also leveraged on telecommunications. And so we have to have at our fingertips, the ability to access this resource, and in particular, the highest quality of the technology that's available for us to recover quickly.

Doreen Bogdan-Martin:

Absolutely, thank you. Thank you for that. So you've spoken about the importance of the individuals in the front line and of course the community engagement, I wanted to perhaps dive into how we can ensure that the most vulnerable communities and population groups, including persons with disabilities are prepared. And also, you mentioned this already a little bit the role of Digital and Information Communication Technologies in being able to reach these groups. And then perhaps linked to that, are there specific tools or platforms like Multi-Hazard, early warning systems or common alerting protocols that you think have been particularly successful?

Ronald Jackson:

Well, you know, as I reflect on your question, one of the quotes that keeps coming back to me, and I don't know who, who originally said it, but it keeps coming into my mind when we talk about at risk, most vulnerable communities and in particular, the differently abled community. And the quote goes– if you do something for me, without me, you do it against me. And the point there is really, that we have to engage people who are differently abled, or people who are vulnerable and exposed, they have to be a part of the process of being better prepared, of being better equipped to be on the front lines, because it starts with them, you know, they will be the first line of any response. And so we have to sit with them to understand their particular needs, and to design our systems to address those needs, and to co-create those solutions with them. You know, as we talked about ensuring that most vulnerable communities and populations are better prepared, we have to start there. So one, understanding their needs to co-creating the solutions with them. And within that, we can then infuse the value proposition that digital offers. So as we think, particularly around differently abled population, we now know that we can leverage technology to be able to reach the furthest point, you know, we refer to as the last mile, whether they're hearing impaired, sight impaired, they can get the information at their fingertips in the way that they can receive and consume this information. But I think one of the important things that we have to start to think about is how do we also integrate, you know, we talk about diversity and inclusivity and inclusiveness are core of service providers must include individuals with disabilities who are different abled, because they are differently abled doesn't mean they don't have tremendous amount of knowledge, skills, you know, qualifications, credibility, they should become a part of that, because they see, they understand the dimensions of the problems, even better than we do as it relates to hold these events can adversely impact their community. And so we have to improve them, we have to leverage a technology that can communicate and meet them, where they need to be met, in delivering information. And we see that now, as I said, being possible. Common alerting protocols have certainly been one of the main platforms that have been able to transmit the warning information to individuals who are at risk, we've seen, it's been heavily documented. I think we need to build on that. We also need to leverage all of the platforms that can provide this type of communication. We're talking now about multi-hazard systems, warning systems, you know, how do we make sure we can leverage these tools that can provide what I call macro returns to communities at risk, especially in this time of challenging resources, that we're not trying to build three, four or five different systems when we could actually leverage one system that can deliver multiple solutions based on the hazard event. I think that's where the technology is going. That's what we need to leverage going forward. But we also have to understand that you can have technology that is low cost. So you have high impact technology that is low cost, we have high costs, high impact technology. We need a mix of both, because some of the these communities that are vulnerable and at risk won't be able to finance unmaintained high cost technology. So we have to look at mixing. Where do we put high value technology? Where can we put low cost but high impact technology solutions? And we've seen this, certainly in Japan, where they've been able to do that. We've seen some approaches applied in SIDS [Small Island Developing States] that blends the two. And I think we need to see more of that as we help more communities that are exposed – often very poor communities that are most vulnerable and exposed population – to receive the message. But I think one of the bugbears for me though, is that whilst we've been able to make advances in technology deployment, we're still struggling with getting the communities to act. And if we don't close that gap in terms of investing in the science, investing in the technology, deploying the technology, with the ability of people to do something about the message that they've received, then we truly aren't delivering on the idea of early warning systems to the last man.

Doreen Bogdan-Martin:

Thank you so much for that. And I love that, quote, you started with. Whatever you do for me, without me, you do against me, I think that was a Gandhi quote. That really speaks to the issue of needing to be inclusive of all people in our preparations, and of course, in our processes and in the design of our systems. And, of course, as you mentioned, a mix of different technological solutions should also be brought into consideration. Including I would add, amateur radio, being an amateur radio operator myself.

Ronald Jackson:

Absolutely, absolutely. I'm a big fan of the amateur radio. And I think with the evolution of technology, we can certainly encourage a new generation of amateur radio operators into the field. Because I think that we've seen from lessons Doreen, you know, where technologies sometimes have failed in terms of communication, it is our amateur radio operators, who have really kicked in and saved the day, in terms of restoring the initial contact and transmitting important messages. So I'm a big fan of the amateur radio corps. I really look forward to seeing continued generations of actors join on and the technology, as I said before, makes it even more exciting in terms of a future to engage around this particular issue.

Doreen Bogdan-Martin:

Absolutely, absolutely. So you've mentioned the importance of engaging the scientific community, the academic community – thoughts about the role of technology for better tracking and monitoring? You know, do you think ICTs can help us to better monitor and to understand the impact of our work in the context, of course, of a growing climate crisis?

Ronald Jackson:

Oh, absolutely. That's something that cannot be overstated. You know, we've learned I think, as a people over time, that what doesn't get measured, doesn't get done. And, also what we need to track and measure to make sure that our investments are making the transformational change that we want to see. And that's also something we've really learned over time. And I think that we've been driven to that point, because, you know, monies are becoming less and less, so we have to be efficient with what we have. And being efficient mean, being able to track and monitor the impact or investments that we have made. And ICT is provided that, you know, from the point of integrative programming and monitoring the programmes and expenditure against these to looking even at monitoring impact. Here now I'm talking about, for example, we're looking at climate, we're looking at the variables that are leading to the types of climate impact. Whether it is sea level rise, whether we're looking at deforestation… we can now do this using ICTs better. Satellite imagery gives us a sense progressively of where, there are certainly changes in the vegetation in the geology, in the geography. And we can correlate a number of issues with that and ICTs are providing the ability to do that. It is allowing us to understand whether what we're doing as well is making a mark. So if we're looking at it from the point of view of fast tracking response, if we're looking at it from the point of view of deployment of relief, and who gets it, where has it gone, how has it been used. We now can use the suite of ICT tools to be able to do that from the point of dispatch to the point of delivery. We're now able to understand whole populations are responding to the information we deploy by virtue of where they moved to. And here tracking, you know, the signals of the towers provides a very clear sense of where people are, where they've moved to. So the world of ICT is has evolved to the point where we not only can monitor from the point of view of our, you know, programme investments, all the way to monitoring spatially the implications of doing our work or not doing our work well. You know, we are able to visualise this as well. And to visualise outputs or products that ICT provides us the capabilities to deliver. So yes, I think it's an important aspect that we should not overlook at all. And I think more and more investment needs to go into better tracking and monitoring because it increases our understanding, not just of our own work, but our understanding of risk or understanding of the value proposition we're making, in terms of where we invest, or where we have not invested, as opposed to where we should be investing.

Doreen Bogdan-Martin:

Excellent. Thank you. Thank you for that. And finally, if I may, I'm putting this same question to all of my interviewees. Can you share with us, what was your first mobile device? How did it change your life?

Ronald Jackson:

[Laughter]. That would have been, they called it a Motorola brick at the time, it looked very much like a boot. With the antenna, it was… I tell you… it was very much like watching one of those old army movies. And you know, the guys running with a backpack, and on it was a phone. A huge phone. I think my first mobile device was a version of that, a little smaller. They called it the ‘’brick’’ at the time. But that was my first mobile device. And, yeah, we were all very excited to have one of those. And, you know, you look at how technology has transformed in 30-40 years… 35 years, what we've moved to in terms of the size of our device, the processing capacity of the device, the multiplicity of use of one device… from not just talking, sending a call or receiving a call, but sending images and being able to write reports, capture photos, etc. It's amazing where technology has gotten and it's still unfolding and emerging.

Doreen Bogdan-Martin:

Absolutely, it is quite amazing. I remember those giant Motorola devices myself, that was me as well. And certainly technology has really transformed the world and will continue. We'll continue to do so. Ronald, thank you so much for spending time with us for sharing your stories, your experiences your insights.

This concludes our episode of the UNconnected. Ladies and gentlemen, until next time, let's stay connected. Thank you.