HMES Papers a(1): Forecasting with confidence

If you warn them and they keep on sinning and refuse to repent, they will die in their sins. But you will have saved your life because you did what you were told to do. If good people turn bad and don't listen to my warning, they will die. If you did not warn them of the consequences, then they will die in their sins. Their previous good deeds won't help them, and I will hold you responsible, demanding your blood for theirs. But if you warn them and they repent, they will live, and you will have saved your own life, too. . . Some of them will listen, but some will ignore you, for they are rebels.

<< Ezekiel 3:18-22 >>

For I was hungry, and you didn't feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn't give me anything to drink. 43 I was a stranger, and you didn't invite me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me no clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you didn't visit me.' 44 "Then they will reply, 'Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and not help you?' 45 And he will answer, 'I assure you, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.'

<< Matthew 25:41Matthew 25:42-45 Matthew 25:46 >>

Self-doubting prophecy

For nearly five years ago today, we have been goading 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 cyclone 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. More > >

Next: Reissuing call for a paradigm shift         

Setting the pace in hubs

Cyberpark Group is set to build as many ITC hubs in the Philippines, later in Malaysia and possibly Indonesia.

ASEAN has a lot of ground to cover in boosting bandwidth for internet covering as many applications as possible.

The Cyberpark projects in Luzon will venture into just that and in the near future, a project in the border of Indonesia and Malaysia.

No investors will be considered unwelcome, everyone who would like a stake in these hubs building projects are invited to participate in making ITC available to as many people as possible.

This is in preparation for increasing environmental changes and worsening natural as well as man-made calamities, as much as it bodes well for business, social interactions and improving the quality of life in general.

Needed: Very Convincing Maps

Do you have a map at home?
Would you still like me if I gave you, map, as gift?
Even if a select few of them are real treasures, some worth more than the price of gold, not everyone likes maps. You're talking about most people, the greater number of the population of this planet. Only a few will admit to liking maps, and not even all the time. Even a great number of those in the business of mapping, or selling the final product, hate those maps.
If you ask me, I'm not personally in love with maps. We used to have about four GPS gadgets lying around and some we installed in the cars. One went to Mr. Chito Morante in Leyte and despite repeated pleadings to return the item, he keeps it in his baul or runs around with it. Like a true Boy Scout, Mr. Morante might have a thing for the gadget, that's why he's holding on to my GPS.
But again even these GPS, they're still maps, even if they have the habit of talking to you without your asking, sometimes it even plays music, allows you to tinker on its screen with its plethora of games, so that you can even use it to gamble by placing bets with other people who will tinker with you.
Still and all, nearly twenty (20) years ago today, our company and its newly formed sister outfit, together with several other supportive companies finally resolved to establish a facility to make maps more persuasive. Really persuasive.
In case you're wondering, why does a map have to convince someone? We're not talking about simple maps here. We're dealing with maps of crisis areas and how to educate, warn the public about the danger to their persons and their families.
To jumpstart the process, CTI (Philippines) and its new sister company CPHI (Philippines), MAM Consultants (Philippines), UUR Events Management Specialists (Philippines), GH Sdn Bhd (Malaysia), RM Sdn Bhd (Malaysia), together with other organizations, initiated the project to establish a Standing Conference on Geo-Hazard Mapping Conference in Manila, Philippines. Due to delay in funding and an obvious lack of display of affection by our government (previous and present), the activation of the standing conference and launching of its maiden project, the GeoHazard and Environmental Risk Mapping Summit in Manila, Philippines (HMES MANILA) was postponed from its original date in April 2010 to the second semester of 2012.
At its best, the standing conference will be replicated in hazard prone areas to mitigate disaster risk – at least at the regional level. Unmistakably, crisis mapping can no longer be postponed for the country. Certainly not for the US after Hurricane Katrina; not for Australia, after the Christchurch incident; not for Japan, after the Sendai nuclear reactor meltdown following the Magnitude 10 earthquake and 30+ feet high tsunami and massive devastation in other parts such as Hokkaido, and many other prefectures; not for Chile and Haiti, as well as many other countries around the world today.
In the Philippines, the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority (NAMRIA) competes with a large number of map information service providers in the country and the ASEAN region for map data about the Philippines. On the other hand, the parent agency of NAMRIA -- the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) together with the Philippine Institute of Volcanology, Department of Science and Technology (PHIVOLCS, DOST) said they recently provided map information about geohazards and environmental risks to people in disaster prone communities.
The data provided by the NAMRIA, DOST and allied agencies such as the Mines and Geosciences Bureau of the public sector are extremely adequate.
A lot of heart goes into organizing data, taking photographs, coordinating, analyzing, interpreting all the available information from every available source, to create maps. From the base maps the various Departments and agencies create administrative maps (geographic political divisions), commodity maps, mineral maps, soil maps, water maps, forest maps, among many other specialized maps. Then there are the geohazard maps.
Specifically during the period of 1997-1998, the results of the World Bank supported earthquake hazard mapping, including risks from flooding and related incidents have been available to the public. While the output in hardbound book form was expensive (P2,995.00 per copy), it was sold openly especially at National Book Store (NBS) and possibly other book outlets. The NBS allows only fifteen (15) copies per delivery and for display on its shelves at any one time. It became the public's lookout however, that persons identified with the homeowners' association of Corinthian Gardens, where residential properties are priced at P50-Million up to more than P100-Million, risked losing their value if the information from the World Bank study became widespread kept buying the copies as soon as they landed on NBS' bookshelves.
It is difficult to say if the Corinthian Gardens homeowners' association are the only ones behind the aggressive buying of the limited supply of the WB funded hazard study book. If one is facing south towards Alabang and Calabarzon, the entire left side of EDSA with its originating point from UP Diliman, Quezon City passing through the Quezon City Hall compound right through the edge of Cubao, cutting across through Camp Aguinaldo then through and through to Corinthian, along the backside of Robinsons Galeria, to Asian Development Bank, cutting across Pasig River and straight ahead up to Alabang, passing by parts of Laguna or even Cavite, then onward to Batangas Province -- that's where the earthquake fault patiently lies. Waiting for a really powerful subduction and it will open up and swallow everything over and above it. Goodbye Corinth, RobGaler, Dasma and Forby.
Up to this time, the National Capital Region (Metro Manila) earthquake map of the PHIVOLCS displayed on its website in PDF form, is extremely mushy and difficult to read. You can't make out the names of towns and cities, or barangays, as it were. This makes crisis mapping in the country a ludicrous exercise and renders terrible injustice to the hard-pooled funds in the millions of US Dollars from the World Bank that was spent for that hazard mapping effort. Clearly, said funds in the 1997-1998 study are not the only money wasted. Other studies have been conducted in the past and the sum of these expenditures run to tens even hundreds of millions.
And besides the studies, there are the expensive trainings for map readers, photogrammetry specialization, funding and investment for risk mitigation, and a motley of other undertakings that not only the World Bank is bankrolling. At the core of all these efforts is the simple map.
The present, actual cost, aside from the 1997-1998 hazard mapping effort could really run to billions of pesos and hundreds of millions of United States Dollars.
To be punished with dissecting the exceedingly blurred and unintelligible PHIVOLCS earthquake hazard map for NCR is an abomination. Recently, the several megabyte PDF form map was changed into a topographic map (view from above, with elevations drawn into the map) with all of 69 megabytes of space, but the names of the localities or names of landmarks were conveniently erased. How do you find your house in that map unless you're sufficiently trained to read topo maps?
Moreover, it is extremely suspect that the formerly christmas-tree like branched-out illustration in bold red of the earthquake fault, has become a really, really thin red line. And now it doesn't hit the exclusive villages of the rich and cut across the huge new buildings along the left side of EDSA facing south, but the enclaves of the very poor communities off of the C-5 road and pinching a small portion of the Global City - The Fort. Hmmm...
It is no wonder that data about calamity prone areas are hardly quoted and internalized during national and sub-national agency policy making and most of all during the execution by decision makers of policies arrived at.
The death and destruction left behind by Ondoy hardly needs explaining. The repeat of that Metro Manila catastrophe in the south, as the United Nations says, was already foretold. That is repeating what we warned about more than one year ago, nevertheless that is still appreciated.
The reason why the so-called geo-hazard maps provided by the DENR and allied agencies to the local government units (LGUs) of Central Mindanao, prior to the tragedy caused by Typhoon Sendong, were not heeded is because people desperately want to be convinced, really convinced. The MGB DENR maps stated that certain residential areas in Cagayan de Oro and Iligan City, among others, were threatened by flooding. But the LGUs simply ignored the so-called DENR geo-hazard maps and did not relocate the residents of the threatened areas.
As a result, in the recent Typhoon Washi (local name – Sendong), estimated are at least five thousand (5,000) or more people dead, with only more than two thousand (2,000) casualties and missing persons being presently accounted. And they died needlessly, after serious efforts have supposedly been made to safeguard their welfare. In the end the victims became the receiving end of multiple factors, but the greatest among them being the incompetence of certain concerned authorities and on the other side, the incorrigible greed of some.
At least three police officers died after responding to calls for police assistance during that calamity. In hindsight, if the MGB and DENR are both saying, they have provided ample warning to the LGUs about the impending disaster and the toll it will exact upon the population, not excluding the PNP, shouldn't they at least have coordinated with the PNP and the DILG to allow the policemen in the disaster prone areas to have benefited from even a seminar, or a briefing about the dangers of policing when the catastrophes arrive?
Perhaps in the future that is what MGB and DENR should do. And the Secretary of the DILG should be on the lookout for these such areas DENR is warning about, so he could also undertake some initiatives on his very own.
The actions have to be undertaken, despite the overwhelming surge of love and affection of our national leaders for the country that it fully concentrates its efforts, time, money on waging war against selected objects of hate and vengeance and doing their utmost best at the tempting invitations of the devil to send these perceived fiends to hell. Under all our noses, our countrymen are dying by the thousands.
Since not all of us can be cavalier about the loss of lives and tremendous damage to property and our patrimony, those who keep a balanced mind and cannot afford sheer nonchalance, can join the effort to address our present blindness to forthcoming disaster and the pain and loss it will inflict upon the body politic.
The task is gargantuan, considering that to make people believe, it will not simply take a really glossy map such as the beautiful, multiple overlaying maps World Bank funds had produced on the Philippine earthquake faults that kept disappearing from bookstore shelves. A massive information campaign is demanded and this will require a lot of hands, great time, resources, blood, sweat and tears.
All for our people living in the path of disaster to believe that their lives, like ours, is too precious to gamble away.
The horrendous task of making people believe
Massive Communications Plan
How do you give a person a map and get him to believe in it?
As we mentioned earlier, a giant information drive is required to make the masses believe in the maps. But first, you have to convince their elected public officials, the appointed and career civil service managers and workers, as well as all the other big cats in the communities. That is really a tall order. Short of engaging in brainwashing techniques and the illegal use of subliminal advertising, a comprehensive communications plan should be launched to make the people in disaster prone areas to be more aware, more responsive to the dangers in their communities and to heed the call of their leaders to move when it will be time to move and act according to a risk mitigation plan.
Changing policy regimes
Can you really make people believe in maps? Can you make maps that convincing? Can it make people act?
Recently, I wrote the UN ISDR (after they sent me an email Christmas Card) about fostering more belief in maps. It doesn't mean the UN doesn't believe in maps; it's always surrounded by maps. The venerable United Nations is probably the only place in the world where people can't talk without pointing to a map or a globe. Beats the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and the world wide associations of map readers and map makers.
The United Nations and selected organizations like the World Bank have began a campaign to develop what they call resilient communities. That is a daunting task considering that building one resilient community after another will be hampered by the first resilient havens established going away with a very powerful calamity in one swoop. There is no easy way to bring down to the masses that they must move from their current residential havens to other areas. If the map says so, efforts at making a disaster prone community resilient will be useless.
In the case of countries that suffered a great deal of loss from powerful natural catastrophes, internal migration from their original enclaves to other places should have been done. Sovereign governments will have to swallow a lot of pride in pushing constituents to follow; yet in the first place, most governments hardly would even care to lift a finger.
Perhaps something is wrong with our officials. Is it because of unease in looking at maps?When officials stare down the maps, that won't budge these important officials of the government grow nervous, eat their fingernails, chew their shirts and hate their spouses? Is that why a good score of these officials refuse to look? At the maps? But to avoid the map, is to get out of touch. And that's what's government is all about now: out of touch.
The easier, cheaper, more sentimental and convenient way is to put up blocks and safeguards against the onslaught of disaster; although we all know how even this was foolhardy in the case of Japan against the 30-40 feet high tsunami. The rampaging waters broke through the breakwaters, dikes and anti-flood walls. But then, who cares about the maps on hazards anyway? Nor about the caveats, warnings they carry?
Resilient is good, but movement is better, even if more costly. The quantum loss of precious life and property cannot even be summed up in trillions and gadzillions. A good executive would say, "could you please fetch me that hazard map again?"
And then, if movement will still prove to be too costly, or impossible due to haranguing obstacles at all corners, nothing can stop the members of the community themselves itself from taking the initiative and rearranging their own landscape. On hindsight, I wonder how the people cruelly situated along the West Valley earthquake fault, in Corinthian Gardens, Dasmariñas Village, Forbes Park will rearrange their exclusive subdivisions? Now that would really be a sight.
Updated scientific benchmarks and technology vs. Indigenous concepts
The myth to implant in the collective mind should be a credible one. This could be based on both modern day information and indigenous concepts. There shouldn't be any going around the fact that better and more current scientific information, tempered with indigenous concepts that people of a particular culture will easily adapt to, can help convince people.
In the case of the pre-Typhoon Sendong scenario, providing maps that hesitated to show the real truth about the situation would have prevented the victims from leaving their homes. If the information given was better than the trashy PHIVOLCS earthquake map on its internet site, with a little help from the Isla de Oro and Bayug Island natural, indigenous leaders, the need to move away from the place could have been properly explained.
This was not done, but in the future, this should be the benchmark action: present better map information and heavily utilize the naturally occurring hierarchy within the community to create an effective cultural synergy.
Disaster Risk Reduction
To have a program of reducing risk from weather, climate and disaster events including catastrophes arising from man-made technical failures, becomes secondary to changing entire policy regimes. This, however does not negate the existence of the United Nations' department for International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction (ISDR) and the former National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) now renamed the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC). (Although when Hon. Voltaire Gazmin, Secretary of National Defense and The Honorable, The Members of the Council changed the nomenclature, it didn't necessarily reduce the number of victims from Pedring, Quiel, Ramon, Sendong and other recent calamities.)
Disaster risk reduction shall continue to have a very important niche of its own in the universe of cataclysms in this planet, however the work may be complemented greatly by having better policies, improved systems and procedures in dealing with disasters before they arrive, before they wreak havoc on populations.
Risk reduction will largely be eased with advanced scientific data, new approaches and coordination of viable technology. In the end, putting together all the applications (apps) in the wide world of science and technology as well as nature-defined old knowledge and knowhow, running them through several Cray-like Servers with artificial intelligence software, could model scenarios on how to treat an incoming weather disturbance, what measures to take to prepare the people or communities in its path and give a guide on what to do in the future.
There are a lot of policy suggestions on disaster risk reduction to be made during the geo-hazard summit, it is inappropriate to name them all here.
However, this is one of the significant goals of the projected summit on geo-hazard mapping: Each attending sympathetic company, group, individual, sovereign state, will bring in data, technology, applications and solutions of their own and enter into an agreement with a combine like the United Nations, to specifically waive proprietary rights to their hardware or software for the purpose of increasing the capability to deal with nature's proclivities and even man-made failures.
This notwithstanding, there are millions of new very basic applications, solutions to disaster data management that have not been put to use. Perhaps, it is now high time for people to feel for their brethren everywhere and start the ball rolling by signifying their intent to allow their proprietary inventions and designs specifically to be tested for disaster risk reduction purposes.
If these humans want revenue for letting their intellectual property run for humanitarian purposes, let them have their compensation. After all, if a lot of money is spent on coffins and gravestones, insurance payouts and charity doleouts, notwithstanding the colossal price to pay for rehabilitation, reconstruction of the devastated communities after disaster, then why is it not also practical to spend for the wellbeing and the safety of the living?
Happy New Year, and hoping you start liking maps from 2012 onwards!


Read related articles:


Google is also into crisis mapping now. Shows more hazard areas in Mindanao and Visayas

Manay Lucille Sering's take on Sendong

Authorities blame each other for thousands that died from Sendong

Housing Project of Cagayan de Oro constructed on top of sandbar, not island

NPA temporarily ceases hostilities after recent calamity

Mr. Jess Dureza angry at critics of post-Sendong mishandling

After Sendong Agusan homeless now 41,000

Management Consultant

Our Malaysia concern will service local clients. To enable speedy disposition of client requirements and requests our outfit in Malaysia requires a local counterpart.

Synergy with a local Management Company with years of experience and familiarity with the local market will be favorable for us and our new partner.

We would like to invite Management Consultancy and / or individual Consultants to qualify and engage in a partnership with us in dealing with both private and public institutions in the Philippines.

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tel: +6039496798111

or sol@cyberparktelecom.net.ms

Call us Building Floor(s) / Whole Building for sale

This was posted in the first quarter of the year, 2009:

The CTI, Inc. will acquire a building for its headquarters. The right location and the right orientation (feng shui, if you will) could matter. Make a formal offer to email asiacyberpark@msn.com or telephone +63917 2088795.

We reiterate our call for offerors however we have since changed our contact number to Tel: +632 507 4402  and  Mobile: +63942 567 4988. Our email is changed to info@cyberparktelecom.com.

Please contact us immediately!

Microsoft

When I was not around, someone from Microsoft made a cold call. I asked their office what it's all about, no one seems to have an idea about calling up Cyberpark Telecom. hmmm... I wonder why Microsoft is interested in our company?

Not the slightest idea.

Investment in Telecom Project?

In May 2009, we are screening for telecom, communications, internet-based, information technology and similar projects inside the Philippines or other nearby countries that are in need of investment capital. Preferentially, we are looking for projects that could have an impact on education, technology advances, convergence, interconnectivity and related genres.

We already have 2,900 applications at hand but this does not preclude non-acceptance of newer submissions. Kindly send a resume of your organization and your proposal for funding.

We will be glad to entertain your projects and hope that it would help your revenues and that it will be for the good of the public.