Tag: criticalinfrastructureprotection

UNDRR ROAMC: Investment in education creates more resilient societies

Agency News, Industry News, University/Research/Academia sector
Investments in safe schools provide economic returns for society and also contribute to economic recovery, according to the latest evidence. They represent a clear way to finance risk reduction initiatives in the education sector and are a direct contribution to the creation of more resilient societies.
The suspension of classes for more than a year, due to the pandemic, has not been duly dimensioned.  Until now. Education may well be one of the most affected sectors by the COVID-19 crisis. According to different analyses, students affected by school closures will obtain 3% less income during their professional lives, which will mean an approximate GDP loss of 1.5% over the remainder of the century. The pandemic will also increase school desertion and will have a profound effect on learning processes for an entire generation, without taking into account systemic effects from school closures, such as increased malnutrition, mental health effects, and other vulnerabilities.
These are devastating figures that demonstrate the need for schools and their safety to be a fundamental part of national budgetary preparations. 3 out of 5 students who did not go to school last year live in Latin America and the Caribbean.  This was emphasized during the Virtual Caribbean Safe School Initiative Pre-Ministerial Forum, held between the 15th to the 26th of last March, which was oriented towards the promotion of safety in Caribbean schools, and which is the regional mechanism for putting into practice a relationship between education and resilience.
The sixth session of the Pre-forum: School safety investment as a Key Element of Economic Recovery showed the importance of integrating into recuperation processes all the lessons learnt during this crisis.
“We should invest in gathering and use of information for observation and mapping of precise interventions, while at the same time modernizing our technological infrastructure, not only to be able to face disasters, but also in regards to contemporary realities,” stated Fayval Willams, Minister of Education, Youth, and Information of Jamaica.
According to João Pedro Azevedo, World Bank economist, the educational system must prepare its teachers to confront lower learning levels and higher inequality levels. That is to say, to prepare them for the consequences of the pandemic. “Vulnerable sectors have been those most affected by the closures during the pandemic since they have no access to the necessary technology,” added Cynthia Hobbs, an education specialist from the Interamerican Development Bank.
Andrew A. Fahie, Prime Minister of the British Virgin Islands, stated that reconstruction of the school system after the pandemic must consider technology. “Inaction cannot be an action,” he stated.
FUNDING PRIORITY
Kamal Ahmed, an international disaster risk finance consultant for the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), elaborated further on the importance of investing in all aspects of school safety. “A school structure that collapses or closes interrupts nutritional programs, for example, which are a key element in social programs of many countries, and which at times are the only access to nutrition for many vulnerable children. In the case of the pandemic, if the child stays at home, and the father or mother must also stay, it reduces participation of that home in the labour market and therefore, their income,” stated Ahmed. “Investment in education produces amazing results, but also a lack of investment leaves surprising consequences.”
According to Ahmed, governments should develop a comprehensive evaluation of schools, identifying strengths and capacities, in addition to creating a matrix with safe and resilient school strategies, fragile and marginal school programs, and most vulnerable school projects. A plan must be created to compensate for learning losses.
From the financial point of view, added Ahmed, investment must be made in such a way as to reduce economic, social, environmental, physical, and lack of governance vulnerabilities. The Ministry of Education must be the priority in national budget preparation, with projections not only for costs but also for emergency funds.
Raúl Salazar, chief of UNDRR - Regional Office for the Americas and the Caribbean, stated that “loss of education increases gaps and inequality in the school system, and therefore social vulnerabilities. The disappearance of a large sector of the school population from the educational system will create significant effects on all social systems, including the economic systems.”    This clearly underlines the dimensions of systemic risk by its characteristics and requires us to confront them with a holistic and comprehensive vision.
Fahie, Prime Minister of the British Virgin Islands, specified that 20% of the 7% tax collection is applied to financial services for the improvement of schools structure. In this case, risk reduction forms a permanent part of state expenditures.
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030) is clear on this subject: “disaster risk reduction should be strengthened by providing adequate resources through various funding mechanisms, including increased, timely, stable and predictable contributions to the United Nations Trust Fund for Disaster Reduction and by enhancing the role of the Trust Fund in relation to the implementation of the present Framework”.
The world initiative for Safe Schools was accepted by the States during the signing of the Sendai Framework, which has been in effect for six years as of the 18th of March.
“In order to go forward, we must do it together, in a comprehensive way, with inter-institutional and inter-sectorial effort that would employ the disaster management abilities of various sectors which will put in motion well developed plans and strategies, financed and coherent with other large agencies, such as the Sustainable Development Objectives, and the Paris Agreement,” stated Mami Mizutori, the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Disaster Risk Reduction, during the opening day of the Pre-Ministerial Forum.
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How AI will shape smart cities

Cyber Security CII sector, Industry News
Cities worldwide are not just growing, but also trying to reconfigure themselves for a sustainable future, with higher quality of life for every citizen. That means capitalizing on renewable power sources, maximizing energy efficiency and scaling up electrified transport on an unprecedented scale.
In parallel, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are emerging as key tools to bring that future into being as global temperatures creep upward.
The 2015 Paris Agreement called for limiting the rise in average global temperatures to 1.5oC compared to pre-industrial levels, implying a massive reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Meeting the ambitious climate goal would require a near-total elimination of emissions from power generation, industry, and transport by 2050, said Ariel Liebman, Director of Monash Energy Institute, at a recent AI for Good webinar convened by an ITU Focus Group studying AI and environmental efficiency.
A key role in renewables
Renewable energy sources, including the sun, wind, biofuels and renewable-based hydrogen, make net-zero emissions theoretically possible. But solar and wind facilities – whose output varies with seasons, the weather and time of day – require complex grid management and real-time responsiveness to work 24/7.
Smart grids incorporating data analytics, however, can operate smoothly with high shares of solar and wind power.
"AI methods – particularly optimization, machine learning, time series forecasting and anomaly detection – have a crucial role to play in the design and operation of this future carbon-free electricity grid," explained Liebman.
One power grid in Indonesia could reach 50 per cent renewables by 2030 at no extra cost compared to building new coal- and gas-fired plants, according to a modelling tool used at Monash. Renewable power generation costs have plummeted worldwide in recent years.
Anticipating future needs
Shifts in consumer demand for heat, light, or mobility can create further uncertainties, especially in urban environments. But reinforcement learning, combined with neural networks, can aid the understanding of how buildings consume energy, recommending adjustments and guide occupant behaviour.
"AI can make our existing assets more effective and efficient, but also help us in developing new business models, both in terms of cleaner technology, and also for our customers," said Dan Jeavons, General Manager, Data Science, at Shell.
The global energy giant put over 65 AI applications into service last year, enabling the company to monitor 5,700 pieces of equipment and generate real-time data feeds from across its asset base.
A data-driven approach
Digital consultancy Capgemini uses satellite data to understand fire risks and devise rescue plans. Another project uses data from Copernicus satellites to detect plastic waste in our natural environment.
“Deep learning algorithms simulate the shape and movement of plastic waste in the ocean and then train the algorithm to efficiently detect plastic waste," said Sandrine Daniel, head of the company’s scientific office.
Electric vehicle start-up Arrival takes a data-driven approach to decisions over the entire product lifecycle. Produced in micro-factories with plug-and-play composite modules, its vehicle designs reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing and use.
"We design things to be upgradable," said Jon Steel, Arrival’s Head of Sustainability. Functional components facilitate repair, replacement, or reuse, while dedicated software monitors energy use and performance, helping to extend each vehicle’s useful life.
Digital twins for urban planning
Real-time virtual representations – known as digital twins – have been instrumental in envisioning smart, sustainable cities, said Kari Eik, Secretary General of the Organization for International Economic Relations (OiER).
Under the global United for Smart Sustainable Cities (U4SSC) initiative, a project with about 50 cities and communities in Norway uses digital twins to evaluate common challenges, model scenarios and identify best practices.
"Instead of reading a 1,000-page report, you are looking into one picture,” Eik explained. “It takes five seconds to see not just a challenge but also a lot of the different use cases."
For digital twins, a privacy-by-design approach with transparent, trusted AI will be key to instil trust among citizens, said Albert H. Seubers, Director of Global Strategy IT in Cities, Atos. He hopes the next generation of networks in cities is designed to protect personal data, reduce network consumption, and make high-performance computing more sustainable. "But this also means we have to build a data management function or responsibility at the city level that really understands what it means to deploy data analytics and manage the data."
Seubers called for open standards to enable interoperability, a key ingredient in nurturing partnerships focused on sustainable city building. "Implementing minimal interoperability mechanisms means that from design, we have private data security and explainable AI. In the end, it's all about transparency and putting trust in what we do," he said.
[Source: ITU]
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Security updates released for Microsoft Exchange Servers

Agency News, Cyber Security CII sector, Industry News
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is encouraging organisations to install critical updates following a number of vulnerabilities being addressed in Microsoft Exchange.
As part of Microsoft's scheduled April update cycle, a number of critical severity vulnerabilities were addressed in Microsoft Exchange. We have no information to suggest that these vulnerabilities are being used in active exploitation. However, given the recent focus on Exchange, we recommend the installation of updates as soon as practicable, as attackers may seek to build exploit capability which could be used against systems before the updates are applied.
The vulnerabilities affect Microsoft Exchange Server. The affected versions are:
- Exchange Server 2013
- Exchange Server 2016
- Exchange Server 2019
Organisations running an out-of-support version of Microsoft Exchange should update to a supported version without delay.
Exchange Online customers are already protected.
Recommendation
The NCSC recommends following vendor best practice advice in the mitigation of vulnerabilities. In this case, the most important aspect is to install the latest security updates immediately. The April 2021 security update fixes a number of security vulnerabilities and more information can be found on Microsoft's website.
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IAEA Helps Romania Enhance Exercises on Transport Security

Industry News, Transport sector
Strengthening the security of nuclear and other radioactive material in transport, and developing practical skills for planning, conducting and evaluating transport security exercises was the focus of a recent IAEA workshop held in Romania.
“Nuclear and other radioactive material is regularly transported from one place to another for various uses, such as for medical applications, agriculture, nuclear power and scientific research,” said Elena Buglova, IAEA Director of Nuclear Security. “When this material is in transport, whether nationally or internationally, it is potentially vulnerable to security threats, for which we need to be vigilant.”
The four day workshop included classroom presentations and field demonstrations, as well as a virtual exercise in which participants watched a simulated event involving an attempted malicious interception of a vehicle transporting a radioactive source, and practiced evaluating the situation and developing an appropriate course of action in a realistic and interactive way. These actions included summoning additional response forces and executing evasive and protective maneuvers to prevent the adversaries from achieving their objective.
“Romania experiences a high number of nuclear and other radioactive material shipments both within and across its borders,” said Sorin Repanovici, Senior Expert at the Romanian National Commission for Nuclear Activities Control (CNCAN). “Ensuring that our response plans are effective and that all national stakeholders are fully trained to rapidly respond to a nuclear security event during the transport of these materials is of utmost importance.”
“By practicing scenarios during exercises and assessing our capabilities, we can establish good practices, as well as identify areas needing improvement, so we can then make targeted efforts to strengthen our national nuclear security regime,” he added.
It is estimated that worldwide, around 20 million shipments of radioactive materials are transported every year. The IAEA assists Member States to enhance their capabilities to help ensure both the safety and security of nuclear and other radioactive material during transport. Safety, in this context, refers to protecting the public from the radioactive contents of a package, whereas security refers to guarding nuclear and other radioactive material with locks, seals and other technologies and methods to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.
Nineteen participants from national stakeholder organizations involved in nuclear security took part in the workshop, including nuclear security response forces, the national regulator, and nuclear facility operators and carriers. Discussions focused on the need for robust coordination among stakeholders and the importance of conducting and learning from regular transport security exercises, in order to properly evaluate the readiness of response forces to deal with a nuclear security event during transport.
The workshop was conducted in a hybrid format, which included in-person presentations from local and IAEA instructors, as well as virtual contributions from experts in the United Kingdom and the United States. The Romanian Horia Hulubei National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering and the General Inspectorate of the Gendarmerie provided a practical demonstration of a radioactive material transport vehicle and the physical protection equipment used by response forces. The virtual transport security exercise was conducted remotely with the assistance of experts from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States, who used newly developed innovative exercise software to portray the hypothetical nuclear security event using advanced high-resolution satellite imagery.
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Report First 3 months of 2021 brought billion-dollar disaster, warm start to spring for U.S.

Agency News, Industry News, Water sector
Since January, conditions across the U.S. have been running warmer and wetter than normal. The nation also recorded its first billion-dollar weather and climate disaster of 2021 — the deadly deep freeze that enveloped much of the central U.S. in February — and two tornado outbreaks in late March.
The month of March turned out a bit warmer and drier than average, according to NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.
Here are more highlights from NOAA’s latest monthly U.S. climate report:
Climate by the numbers
Year to date | Billion-Dollar Disasters
The average U.S. temperature for the year to date (January through March) was 36.9 degrees F (1.8 degrees above average), which ranked in the warmest third of the record.
The contiguous U.S. also kicked off the year a little on the wet side, with a year-to-date average rainfall of 6.55 inches — 0.41 of an inch above average.
Most notable, the U.S. saw its first billion-dollar disaster of 2021 that had a devastating death toll: At least 125 people died as a direct or indirect result of a mid-February blanket of arctic weather that dropped temperatures to historic lows across the central United States. Texas experienced the majority of the property and infrastructure losses that were incurred by more than a dozen states. The preliminary total damage estimate for this extreme event — in excess of $10 billion — makes it the most costly winter weather disaster on record for the U.S., surpassing the so-called “Storm of the Century” that struck the Gulf Coast all the way up to Maine in 1993.
March 2021
The average monthly temperature across the contiguous U.S. was 45.5 degrees F (4.0 degrees above the 20th-century average) and ranked in the warmest third of the climate record.
Above-average temperatures were observed across much of the country, from the Northwest to the Northeast, as well as from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. North Dakota, for example, had its fourth-warmest March on record.
The average precipitation in the contiguous U.S. last month was 2.45 inches (0.06 of an inch below average), ranking in the middle third of the climate record.
Below-average precipitation fell across the Northwest, northern Plains, and Northeast, as well as portions of the Southeast, Deep South and West. Both Montana and North Dakota saw their second-driest March in 127 years.
More notable climate events in March
Deadly tornado outbreaks: In March, two rounds of deadly severe weather and tornadoes raked the U.S. South. More than 100 tornadoes were reported during the two outbreaks (March 17-18 and March 25-27). One particularly violent EF3-tornado struck Calhoun County, Alabama, on March 25 and caused five deaths.
A chilly, wintry month for Alaska: The state shivered through its coldest March in four years. The average March temperature for Alaska was 7.2 degrees F, 3.6 degrees below the long-term average. The capital city of Juneau reported its snowiest March since 2007.
Drought improved slightly: By the end of March, the U.S. Drought Monitoroffsite link reported that nearly 44% of the contiguous U.S. was in drought, down from 46.6% at the beginning of the month. Drought improved across parts of the central Rockies, central Plains, Puerto Rico and Hawaii.
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European Space Agency signs Memorandum of Intent with Public Safety Communication Europe

Agency News, Industry News, Space Sector
Public Safety Communication Europe (PSCE) and the European Space Agency (ESA) have signed a Memorandum of Intent (MoI) to support the utilisation of satellite applications for Public Safety.
ESA and PSCE will work together under the new MoI towards establishing interoperable public safety communications systems.
The MoI will support the emergence of space-based applications in the Public Safety domain such as public safety services relying on secure mobile broadband communication solutions. These include applications within disaster preparedness, response and resilience, situational awareness, assessments of damages, navigation-based services for tracking and coordinating rescue forces on-site and for emergency vehicles.
"ESA Space Solutions and the 4S Strategic Programme Line will support through this agreement the emergence of solutions making use of secure satellite communications for institutional Public Safety user communities. This can be achieved as of today through existing satellite telecommunications infrastructures. In the future it will be possible to make use of new and innovative infrastructures with enhanced capabilities. Early pilots and demonstrations will showcase the unique benefits granted by satellites to the user communities and early adopters", says Rita Rinaldo, ESA
"The cooperation with ESA will help to explore complementary solutions that will contribute to cover capability gaps and needs for public safety. It is of extreme importance to improve public safety communication systems with cutting-edge and rapidly deployable solutions that will facilitate PPDR missions", explains Marie-Christine Bonnamour, PSCE.
The cooperation between ESA and PSCE will be activated as a first step through PSCE participation in the ongoing user studies on "Satellite Applications for Public Safety".
PSCE will contribute to the identification of the needs of public safety stakeholders such as emergency services, fire brigades and law enforcement.
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Building Trust in the Digital Era: ENISA boosts the uptake of the eIDAS regulation

Agency News, Cyber Security CII sector, Health & Social Care, Industry News
The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity issues technical guidance and recommendations on Electronic Identification and Trust Services helping Member States to implement the eIDAS regulation.
The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) completed a package of five reports in order to boost the implementation of the eIDAS regulation and promote the uptake of Electronic Identification and Trust Services. This work falls under the scope of the EU Cybersecurity strategy for the Digital Decade.
ENISA has been in the forefront of the developments on eIDAS since 2013 and with the Cybersecurity Act, established in 2019, the Agency has an extended mandate to support and assist the European Commission and the Member States in the area of electronic identification.
In this challenging period, the “EU digital ID scheme for online transactions across Europe” initiative will drive the revision of the eIDAS and will promote digital identities for all Europeans. ENISA in order to support the Commission has undertaken activities to explore the security considerations for trust service providers and remote identity proofing.
Four of the reports on trust services form an update of ENISA’s guidelines for qualified trust service providers. They represent a voluntary toolset designed to help those trust service providers comply with eIDAS. Specifically, they include:
- technical guidance on the security framework for Qualified Trust Service Providers (QTSP) and for the non-Qualified ones;
- security recommendations for Qualified Trust Service Providers based on Standards;
- guidelines on Conformity Assessment of Trust Service Providers.
A fifth report includes an analysis of the methods used to carry out identity proofing remotely and exploring security considerations. Remote identification allows customers to have their identification information collected and validated without the need for physical presence to the premises of the operator. This has become crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic as it allows access to cross-border online services offered by Member States.
Technical Guidelines on Trust Services
ENISA issued the reports in order to update existing recommendations and guidelines issued in 2017 for qualified trust services. The purpose of these reports is therefore to focus on the requirements set by the eIDAS regulation and the emergence of new standards and new TSP services.
The new guidelines are presented in four different reports according to the following topics:
- trust service providers (qualified or not) looking for guidance on how to meet the requirements of the eIDAS Regulation;
- service providers seeking to clarify whether they qualify as a trust service provider according to the provisions under the eIDAS regulation;
- relying parties seeking to evaluate to what extent their trust service provider complies with the eIDAS requirements.
As a result, the set of recommendations include:
- Security Framework for Qualified Trust Service Providers and for Non-Qualified Trust Service Providers. These guidelines consider the greater potential variety encountered in non-qualified trust service providers;
- Security Recommendations for Qualified Trust Service Providers based on Standards, and Guidelines on Conformity Assessment of Trust Service Providers.
These guidelines have been consulted with and validated by experts in the eIDAS field from various sectors.
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ITU Handbook update: Wireless guidelines to support intelligent transport

Agency News, Industry News, Transport sector
As the world’s population approaches 8 billion, with more and more people migrating to ever-expanding cities, life and work are also becoming increasingly mobile.
But while these long-term trends can boost quality of life and create new communities, they also bring unprecedented traffic congestion, air pollution, and road safety challenges.
Managing these negative impacts calls for new levels of intelligence and responsiveness in the world’s transport systems.
Since most of us rely on some form of transport in our everyday lives, a tremendous number of people stand to benefit from smarter mobility.
What are ITS?
Intelligent transport systems (ITS) combine computers, communications, positioning, and automation technologies to improve the safety, management, and efficiency of terrestrial transportation.
Systems using wireless communications, sensors, and computer and control technologies are well placed to ease traffic congestion and reduce incidents. Communication standards ensure interoperability and make ITS easy for anyone to use.
Land Mobile Handbook updated
Growing ITS use increases the need for well-informed digital infrastructure planning, especially in relation to wireless-based land mobile systems. To strengthen decision-making in this area, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has published an updated volume of a key reference guide, the Handbook on Land Mobile (including Wireless Access), whose fourth volume deals with ITS.
The Handbook is designed to assist in training engineers and planners in regulating, planning, engineering, and deploying these systems, especially in developing countries.
The new Volume 4 replaces the 2006 edition. Development of the multi-volume Handbook began in the late 1990s, aiming to help developing countries build state-of-the-art land mobile services of all kinds.
The five volumes published to date are:
• Volume 1: Fixed Wireless Access
• Volume 2: Principles and Approaches on Evolution to IMT-2000
• Volume 3: Dispatch and Advanced Messaging Systems
• Volume 4: Intelligent Transport Systems
• Volume 5: Deployment of Broadband Wireless Access Systems
Volume 4 summarizes the current and developing use of wireless communications in ITS around the globe, including ITS architecture and applications. Despite rapid uptake, ITS remains in its infancy as a technology.
The new volume gives an overview of wireless communications used in ITS globally by 2020.
It also includes chapters on ITS applications, ITS communication architecture, radio technologies for ITS, and international and national standardization. The final chapter describes radio frequency usage for ITS systems.
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Using AI to better understand natural hazards and disasters

Industry News
As the realities of climate change take hold across the planet, the risks of natural hazards and disasters are becoming ever more familiar. Meteorologists, aiming to protect increasingly populous countries and communities, are tapping into artificial intelligence (AI) to get them the edge in early detection and disaster relief.
Al shows great potential to support data collection and monitoring, the reconstruction and forecasting of extreme events, and effective and accessible communication before and during a disaster.
This potential was in focus at a recent workshop feeding into the first meeting of the new Focus Group on AI for Natural Disaster Management. The group is open to all interested parties, supported by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) together with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and UN Environment.
“AI can help us tackle disasters in development work as well as standardization work. With this new Focus Group, we will explore AI’s ability to analyze large datasets, refine datasets and accelerate disaster-management interventions,” said Chaesub Lee, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau, in opening remarks to the workshop.
New solutions for data gaps
"High-quality data are the foundation for understanding natural hazards and underlying mechanisms providing ground truth, calibration data and building reliable AI-based algorithms," said Monique Kuglitsch, Innovation Manager at Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institut and Chair of the new Focus Group.
In Switzerland, the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research uses seismic sensors in combination with a supervised machine-learning algorithm to detect the tremors that precede avalanches.
“You record lots of signals with seismic monitoring systems,” said WSL researcher Alec Van Hermijnen. “But avalanche signals have distinct characteristics that allow the algorithm to find them automatically. If you do this in continuous data, you end up with very accurate avalanche data."
Real-time data from weather stations throughout the Swiss Alps can be turned into a new snowpack stratigraphy simulation model to monitor danger levels and predict avalanches.
Modelling for better predictions
Comparatively rare events, like avalanches, offer limited training data for AI solutions. How models trained on historical data cope with climate change remains to be seen.
At the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) data is monitored in support of tsunami warnings. With traditional seismic systems proving inadequate in very large magnitude earthquakes, University of Washington research scientist Brendan Crowell wrote an algorithm, G-FAST (Geodetic First Approximation of Size and Timing), which estimates earthquake magnitudes within seconds of earthquakes’ time of origin.
In north-eastern Germany, deep learning of waveforms produces probabilistic forecasts and helps to warn residents in affected areas. The Transformer Earthquake Alerting Model supports well-informed decision-making, said PhD Researcher Jannes Münchmeyer at the GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam.
Better data practices for a resilient future
How humans react in a disaster is also important to understand. Satellite images of Earth at night - called "night lights" – help to track the interactions between people and river resources. The dataset for Italy helps to manage water-related natural disasters, said Serena Ceola, Senior Assistant Professor at the University of Bologna.
Open data initiatives and public-private partnerships are also using AI in the hope of building a resilient future.
The ClimateNet repository promises a deep database for researchers, while the CLINT (Climate Intelligence) consortium in Europe aims to use machine learning to detect and respond to extreme events.
Some practitioners, however, are not validating their models with independent data, reinforcing perceptions of AI as a “black box”, says Carlos Gaitan, Co-founder and CTO of Benchmark Labs and a member of the American Meteorological Society Committee on AI Applications to Environmental Science. "For example, sometimes, you have only annual data for the points of observations, and that makes deep neural networks unfeasible."
A lack of quality-controlled data is another obstacle in environmental sciences that continue to rely on human input. Datasets come in different formats, and high-performing computers are not available to all, Gaitan added.
AI to power community-centred communications
Communications around disasters require high awareness of communities and their comprising connections.
"Too often when we are trying to understand the vulnerability and equity implications of our work, we are using data from the census of five or ten years ago,” said Steven Stichter, Director of the Resilient America Program at the US National Academies of Science (NAS). “That's not sufficient as we seek to tailor solutions and messages to communities."
A people-centered mechanism is at the core of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, a framework providing countries with concrete actions that they can take to protect development gains from the risk of disaster.
If AI can identify community influencers, it can help to target appropriate messages to reduce vulnerability, Stichter said.
With wider internet access and improved data speeds, information can reach people faster, added Rakiya Babamaaji, Head of Natural Resources Management at Nigeria’s National Space Research and Development Agency and Vice Chair of the Africa Science and Technology Advisory Group on Disaster Risk Reduction (Af-STAG DRR).
AI can combine Earth observation data, street-level imagery, data drawn from connected devices, and volunteered geographical details. However, technology alone cannot solve problems, Babamaaji added. People need to work together, using technology creatively to tackle problems.
With clear guidance on best practices, AI will get better and better in terms of accessibility, interoperability, and reusability, said Jürg Luterbacher, Chief Scientist & Director of Science and Innovation at WMO. But any AI-based framework must also consider human and ecological vulnerabilities. "We have also to identify data biases, or train algorithms to interpret data within an ethical framework that considers minority and vulnerable populations," he added.
Image credit: ITU-Camptocamp.org via Wikimedia Commons
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The Bahamas strengthens its cybersecurity capacity

Agency News, Cyber Security CII sector, Industry News
The Bahamas has launched a project with ITU to set up a national Computer Incident Response Team (CIRT) to help protect the small island country’s critical digital infrastructure and data.
The National Cybersecurity Project, started in January and officially launched in February at national level, aims to help assess current Bahamian capabilities in this rapidly evolving field, as well as develop its National Cybersecurity Strategy.
The national CIRT will also support the government in building national cybersecurity expertise, closing human resource gaps, and supporting the elaboration of a cybersecurity framework and policies. Bahamian officials must do all they can “to put mechanisms in place to protect the government’s systems and citizens’ data from exposure to [cyber] attacks,” said the State Minister for Finance, Kwasi Thompson.
Digitizing hundreds of government services
The government’s recent decision to digitize more than 200 public administration services over the next five years has heightened the country’s need for a well-equipped cybersecurity team that can identify, defend, manage, and respond to cyber threats, Thompson added.
“The creation of this National Cybersecurity Strategy will help with review and further implementation of cyber legislation for the protection of citizens and clients,” he said.
Rapid growth in online business transactions – among both government entities and the private sector – makes cybersecurity enhancements paramount. The Bahamas, like other small island developing states in the Caribbean, needs to provide a safe online environment that minimizes any risks associated with online service provision.
The project will also support the development of related national cybersecurity platforms, including a national public key infrastructure (PKI), e-government services (including national identity services), and an access management framework.
ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau Director, Doreen Bogdan-Martin, highlighted the project’s region-wide significance. Projects like this one on the Bahamas will strengthen the Caribbean “cybersecurity supply chain” and reinforce international cooperation to combat cyber threats, she said, thanking the Bahamian government for seeking ITU support and expertise.
Building skills and updating tools
Key project objectives include a National CIRT Readiness Assessment, a Cybersecurity Capacity Maturity Model (CMM), a National Cybersecurity Strategy and Action Plan, and all necessary capacity building and service upgrades to activate the national CIRT, said Bruno Ramos, ITU Regional Director for the Americas.
The project is set for full implementation by the end of 2022, with interim steps including six months of ITU support help the CIRT reach maturity.
The national CIRT’s skills and tools will need constant updating, Ramos added. “It is vital to equip the response team with new technologies, deploy additional services, provide technical training, and coordinate and collaborate with other international organizations.”
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