Strengthening Disaster Prevention Approaches in East Africa (STEDPEA)

Abstract

This report is about the national training conducted in the country to build capacity for disaster prevention in Uganda. It is a response to the many disasters experienced over the past decade. With high sensitivity and limited adaptive capacity, weather-related and geological hazards have resulted to many events such as the floods, landslides, flush floods, droughts, earthquakes, tremors, volcanism and wildfires in most parts of Uganda have caused deaths of hundreds of thousands and displaced close to five million inhabitants. One way of enhancing the overall awareness and responsiveness is to combine citizen science and modern technologies to bridge the gap. Technological advancement and innovation have created new opportunities for enhancing disaster resilience and risk reduction. The project aimed at supporting the development and integration of science-evidenced measures such as artificial intelligence (AI) innovations, citizen science and gender-responsive actions into strategies and action plans for disaster risk reduction in schools, communities and public sector institutions in Eastern Africa. Among several outcomes, the project implementation targeted the state and non-state institutions use and apply artificial intelligence in disaster response. In all, 240 trainees benefited from the project.

The project was a partnership between UNESCO and Japanese partners (Weathernews Inc. and LINE Cooperation) developed an Al Chatbot Smartphone Application for DRR that enables users to receive early warning on future disasters and allow them to report any damage (with pictures and georeferenced information) when disasters occur. The data is processed by AI to generate a map so that relief agencies and government can utilize it for identifying the most impacted locations that need urgent rescue. Throughout all the six different trainings, the participants raised many issues ranging from internet, data, and applicability of the app. The categories of disasters, fears about coordination problems from reporters and the involvement of the department of disaster preparedness in the Office of the Prime Minister.

Among the recommendations proposed were that disasters be categorized according to various sectors e.g., Education, where a specific application be developed for Disaster reporting and response in the country without relying on the external application to which the government has no control over, the various institutions concerned with disaster prevention and management should work together at all times e.g., Uganda Police, Office of the Prime Minister, UNATCOM and others, the institution (s) responsible for managing the AI Chatbot, filtering and authenticating the information shared on the platform should be clearly stipulated and given the mandate to ensure that the AI Chatbot serves the purpose for which it was designed. The application should be customized and adopted by Uganda as a disaster reporting platform and then uploaded to Ug Hub by NITA-U such that it is easily accessed and managed. It was also recommended that the application should be user-friendly to enable reporting of simultaneous events. It should also enable getting events in real-time, allow for uploading of videos, real-time editing to add and subtract information and provide for follow-up of the disaster reports sent. There is need for up-to-date maps for accurate and quick response for team arrivals to the scene of disaster. The app should also be able to operate off-line and should be made simpler to provide prompts for action. Also participants urged to come up with more innovations and new technology that can be applied in the field of Disaster response and management.