Today, our friends in Nepal are commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Gorkha Earthquake which took the lives of around 9,000 people and injured 22,000. I was reminded of the wide-ranging relief and recovery activities undertaken by our partners in the Nepal chapter of the Internet Society, focusing on supply of emergency power and connectivity to relief workers. We had just come back from teaching an eventful course in Nagarkot. Here is what I had said when interviewed by the BBC Sinhala Service the next day: 1. The immediate priorities should be rescue and housing and care of those rendered homeless.
I was hoping we’d get more reports about congestion caused by changing use patterns caused by people confined to their homes. Here is a report on India. Despite the impact on their business, India’s operators have complied with regulatory requests aimed at encouraging subscribers to stay at home. These included providing free voice minutes as well as making prepaid accounts valid for a longer period. While subscribers are evidently topping up their airtime less under the lockdown, they do not appear to be using their devices any less – quite the contrary.
This short note allows for easy comparison of the options available to policy makers considering the introduction of remote voting in the context of the current pandemic conditions.
Contextualizing digital solutions to COVID-19 in developing Asia, via AfterAccess. Updated daily.
Coronavirus (the virus causing the disease Covid-19) has two universal problems: no vaccine or drug has been developed as yet, and the diagnostic tools are scarce. This combination has dangerously multiplied the risk of infecting Bangladesh. Because, our population density is much higher than those countries that have been fatally hit by far (see the graph). Covid-19 is not the last pandemic virus. And nobody knows when the next one will attack, followed by another.
This tour d’horizon examines the possible of uses of data to help stop or slow the spread of COVID-19 directly. It gives weight to what can be done in the short term.
Drägerwerk is a world leader in the production of ventilators. In an interview, company head Stefan Dräger, 57, discusses the challenges of keeping up with current demand as the corona crisis accelerates. Following is the excerpt: DER SPIEGEL: The German government has contracted you to build 10,000 ventilators. How far along are you? Dräger: The contract has a detailed delivery plan that spans the entire year.
E-Resilience is a system property but poorly understood in Asia and the Pacific because it is understood almost exclusively in terms of continuity and recovery; the “bounce forward” adaptive role of E-Resilience remains uninvestigated doesn’t Included the fundamental enablers of E-Resilience, which are robustness, self-organization, and learning hasn’t fully employed diagnose and remediation programs to bounce forward; thus, ensuring improving telecom survivability/availability, rapid restoration of access to telecoms, real-time data services, dedicated public security networks, and proven business continuity and disaster recovery plans and procedures. VIEW SLIDES – “e-Resilience in support of emergency communication: best-practices.” These facts are worth considering for steering the AP-IS E-Resilience initiatives. As shown in Figure 1, resilience should elevate each additional state above the previous (initial) state. Nevertheless, I’m very excited to see UN-ESCAP AP-IS initiative taking two and half of the recommendations presented in the previous year; i.
Presentation on e-Resilience in support of Emergency Communications: best-practices; – 3nd session of the AP-IS steering committee and WSIS regional review meeting held 26th & 29th August 2019, UN Conference Center in Thailand. The event was part of the UN-ESCAP Disaster Resilience Week. Slides: waidyanatha_e-resilience(session5)_LIRNEasia
Presented by Nuwan Waidyanatha at the Subregional workshop on implementation of the Asia-Pacific Information Superhighway for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in Pacific island countries. 20 November 2018, Nadi, Thailand
Presented by Nuwan Waidyanatha at the Subregional workshop on implementation of the Asia-Pacific Information Superhighway for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in Pacific island countries. 20 November 2018, Nadi, Thailand
Presented by Nuwan Waidyanatha at Subregional workshop on implementation of the Asia-Pacific Information Superhighway for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in Pacific island countries on 20 November 2018, in Nadi, Thailand
ESCAP invited us to introduce the RASTER method to participants of the Subregional workshop on the implementation of the AP-IS and SDGs in Pacific Islands. The tool and its participatory approach reveal "black swans", in telecommunications, to then derive policies and procedures for mitigating those low-frequency high impact vulnerabilities.
United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP), and their Asia Pacific Information Superhighway (AP-IS) initiative, might consider offering their member states: A set of tools and methodologies for technology stewards to assess their own E-Resilience in their organizations and communities; then, supply the quantitative and qualitative findings to include in an AP-IS database for researchers and practitioners to use in analyzing national, cross-boarder, and regional strategies for addressing E-Resilience. Best-practices for developing community centered communications networks with options for reliable and proven back-haul and interconnection; along with their resilience to various disaster, geographic and socioeconomic constraints. Guidelines for building Business Continuity – Disaster Recovery Plans (BC-DRPs) that comply with emergency communications requirements; taking into consideration survivability & availability and Rapid Restoration of Access to Telecommunication (RReAcT) programs These were three key recommendations contributed to the 2nd session of the AP-IS steering committee and WSIS regional review meeting held 27th & 28th September 2018, UN Conference Center in Thailand. The event was a precursor to the Committee on Information and Communications Technology & Science, Technology and Innovation, Second session. The main contribution, of my talk, was to cover E-Resilience: i.
Presentation on e-Resilience in support of Emergency Communications: Contingencies; – 2nd session of the AP-IS steering committee and WSIS regional review meeting held 27th & 28th September 2018, UN Conference Center in Thailand. The event was a precursor to the Committee on Information and Communications Technology & Science, Technology and Innovation, Second session.
Cybersecurity of developing countries is most at risk! Gartner projects that more than 20 billion IoT devices will be connected by 2020. The security of these Internet Of Things (IOT), relating to cyber security, in a broader sense hinges on service continuity and availability. Whether it be a DDoS attack that affects the availability or a malicious attack on the configuration that brings down the IoT device(s) or exposes private data, they all converge on the concept of cybersecurity. LIRNEasia partnered with Vanuatu Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, Prime Minister’s Office, Netherlands Radio communications Agency / University of Twente and the Internet Society (ISOC) in introducing the Raster Tool and engaging the participants in an IOT cybersecurity assessment exercise.