MANILA -- A group advocating disaster preparedness on Thursday called on the private sector to come up with a roadmap that will strengthen collaboration with the government in implementing disaster risk reduction and management programs in the country.
The Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation (PDRF) said the roadmap will focus on the areas of disaster prevention and mitigation, disaster preparedness, disaster response, and disaster rehabilitation and recovery to complement with the implementation of the government's National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Plan 2011-2028.
“This joint roadmap is needed and it has to be risk-informed and science based. We all have to come together to a common understanding of resilience,” said PDRF chief resilience officer Guillermo Luz in his address during a forum on disaster resiliency in Makati City.
“We need to build a culture of preparedness. The more we are ready and prepared the less we need to string the available resources which can be channeled to people who really need the help,” he added.
Luz urged for cooperation among the public and private sector for the implementation of the GeoRisk PH platform, a mobile application developed by the Department of Science and Technology that uses crowdsourced data for geohazard mapping of disaster-prone areas in the country.
“I propose that we have a partnership and let’s use the georisk Philippines platform and all of us get a briefing from the Office of Civil Defense . Let’s get an army of people who can be the crowdsource troops to feed data into the georisk Philippines platform,” he said.
Climate Change Commission Secretary Emmanuel de Guzman, meanwhile, assured that the government will provide technical and capacity building support to private businesses on climate change adaptation and mitigation as well as disaster risk reduction.
“We need to step up multi-stakeholder action in order to undertake science-based preventive and anticipatory approaches to reducing loss and damage whenever natural hazards strike,” de Guzman said.
During the forum, key representatives of the public and private sector vowed to strengthen public-private collaboration in capacity building for disaster risk reduction at national and community levels; enhance risk assessment and improving early warning systems; develop innovation to build resilience; mainstream resilience into policies, plans and implementations; and enhance emergency response and recovery capabilities.
The event is among the series of discussions that aim to consolidate inputs on how partnerships in disaster management can be further enhanced. (PNA)
