Digital Technology and Disaster Risk Reduction - Help or Hindrance?

Computers and technology

By Dr Peter Williams chairs ARISE-US. His background includes 30 years in IBM, where he became an IBM Distinguished Engineer, and extensive experience in creating DRR tools such as the UN City Disaster Resilience Scorecard and its many offshoots, now used by hundreds of cities (and countries) globally. His PhD is in Politics.

Digital technology (sensors, network connectivity, "big data", artificial intelligence, block chain) has enormous potential to help with disaster risk reduction (DRR). But it also creates enormous issues. ARISE-US, with ARISE-Americas, will be working to examine how to deal with these issues and reap the benefits that are unquestionably available.

First, the "prize" that the technology offers:

Digital technology enables predictions of climate change outcomes that are ever more specific spatially and temporally, allowing risk to be assessed much more accurately. Growing global availability of data about habitation, vegetation, water levels, and growing sophistication in outcome modeling, allow exposures and vulnerabilities also to be assessed more accurately - along with mitigation and adaptation strategies.

Warnings of events (including, now coming within reach, earthquakes) can also be more accurate and, with the widespread availability of internet access, reach more people.

Digital technology can enable better disaster preparation, for example in modeling infrastructure impacts and assessing investment needs, enabling insurance risk to be assessed (and thus cover to be offered) and engaging communities with social media.

Disaster response can be helped, for example with smart traffic systems that improve evacuation capability, impact assessments from sensors, satellites or drones, and systems for tracking people and supplies.

Digital technology can assist with post event recovery, for example with confirming structural safety, triaging repairs, warning of follow-on events such as landslides and tracking relief funds.

The "prize" means that digital technology will form a huge part of humankind's response to growing risk on the planet. But before it can be seen as a complete solution to anything, some major issues need to be addressed:

Equity of access. Not everyone has internet access or a smart phone, or if they do, they may not have a data plan. Warning systems and community mobilization activities that are based on these technologies alone will therefore fail to reach segments of the population. Mitigation and adaptation modeling that is only applied in and around wealthier communities will also leave others behind. Unequal access and application may therefore perpetuate social inequalities by making disadvantaged communities relatively more vulnerable.

Fragility. Digital systems on which everyone depends can become single points of failure, for example when cellphone towers are disabled, or when sensors fail. They are vulnerable to cyber-attack. And where vast quantities of data are accumulated human or AI decision systems may misinterpret that data. Like levees, digital technology can accumulate risk as well as mitigate it.

Integration. This is a "damned if we do, damned if we don't" issue. Different digital systems may not be interoperable and thus fail to help with data integration or coordination. Yet, if they are interoperable they may create a pathway for cascading failures across the systems they integrate, so further accumulating rather than reducing risk.

Privacy remains a major issue for many, where personal or land use data, for example, is accessed by the community ad it tries to become more resilient.

There are solutions to these issues. Fragility and integration issues can be technology-driven, for example through better system design, redundancy and standards, perhaps with accompanying policy directives to deploy the required changes. Access and privacy issues will require policy-driven solutions, accompanied by technology innovations, for example in enabling access in very remote areas. With all the issues, people will need to become comfortable with, and accept, the technology; institutional and process changes are likely also to be required to maximize the "prize" available to us. ARISE-US looks forward to working with ARISE Americas to identify how best to move forward.