Digital University Kerala partners with UN and WHO on disaster preparedness

The workshop aims to address the absence of requisite skills that hinder the application of digital technologies in combating disasters

The Digital University Kerala has partnered with United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and World Health Organization (WHO) to organise a two-week knowledge workshop on 'Integration of Digital Technologies in Disaster Preparedness'.

The workshop, which commences on May 16 and concludes on May 27, aims to address the lack of understanding and absence of requisite skills that hinder the broad application of digital technologies in combating disasters.

The workshop is part of an ongoing collaboration of Sinnu Susan Thomas, Assistant Professor, Digital University Kerala and Edilson K. Arruda, Lecturer, University of Southampton, UK funded by the British Council’s ‘Going Global Partnerships Exploratory Grant’, a DUK statement said here.

According to UNEP, despite the astounding advancement of digital technologies in all walks of human life that effectively set forth a technology revolution dubbed as fourth Industrial revolution, the huge potential of modern technologies remains under exploited when it comes to disaster management and disaster risk reduction.

The workshop is aimed at creating capacity building for government officials, students and anyone who is interested in the use of modern technologies in disaster management.

The event also envisaged to deepen the understanding of the audience regarding the complexities of digital technologies - especially artificial intelligence - and equip them for informed decision making in this field, it said.

Major domains of discussion will be learning aiding response and recovery, visual perspective of disasters, robots and drones to the rescue, speech as an aid, emergency networking through trial and error, disaster management and related challenges, optimizing and simulating logistics operations under uncertainty and logistics issues in humanitarian operations, the statement added.