The University of Salford THINKlab has been awarded almost £1 million from the UK Research and Innovation Collective Fund to develop an advanced digital platform which can be used by various government agencies and communities to work together to analyse, forecast, visualize and debate disaster risk and to choose development plans that ensure sustainability and equitable resilience which will help guide climate change adaptation and decision making.

This project which aims to promote a participatory approach that supports the transparent and democratic involvement of all the relevant stakeholders (known as TRANSCEND) builds on the THINKlab’s groundbreaking research on digital platforms for sustainable cities and on the disaster community resilience research from the Centre for Disaster Resilience at the University of Salford. It will also include experts from the University of York (UK), University of Moratuwa (Sri Lanka), University of Peshawar (Pakistan), Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia and the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, thus bringing together their research expertise in social science, urban planning and community engagement.  The project is supported by an international advisory committee and key government organisations such as disaster management centers, urban development authorities and community-based charity organisations.

This project builds on the MOBILISE project, which is another UKRI funded project that has successfully worked with government organisations in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Malaysia to develop an advanced technology platform for risk assessment using satellite technologies, drones, sensor data and social information. The new research will take a different approach; rather than focusing on how to manage a disaster, it will look at the urban planning of risk-sensitive areas.

Professor Terrence Fernando, Director of THINKLab said: “The transformation of current urban development and disaster management practices is at the heart of this project. Our challenge in this project is to study how current practices can be transformed by establishing new partnership models and introducing participatory methods that empower vulnerable communities through advanced digital solutions.”

Professor Bingunath Ingirige, Director of the Centre for Disaster Risk Reduction: “TRANSCEND will study the narratives that need to be developed, presented and discussed to establish a comprehensive understanding of the impact of proposed developments on the community, economy and environment.  TRANSCEND will study approaches to communicating the conflicting narratives and discussing the trade-offs that need to be considered in promoting a new form of development practice that is equitable and resilient.”

Dr. Kaushal Keraminiyage, one of the Co-Investigators, said: “There are many examples around the world which indicate that vulnerable communities are facing the consequences of risk insensitive urban development’s firsthand. In TRANSCEND we intend to tap into their knowledge and experience in promoting a risk sensitive urban development strategy.”       

The project will establish three Living Labs in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Malaysia creating an ‘Experimentation and Learning Environment’. These Living Labs will involve academic experts and government organisations in co-creating solutions and partnerships to try out new methods and tools to explore a digitally enhanced participatory process for urban development.

The project’s consortium held an initial project launch in Sri Lanka in December 2019 in collaboration with relevant government organisations. The project brings together public and private partnerships between a host of organizations in the UK and in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Malaysia.

Key messages and notes:

The University of Salford has been awarded funding of almost £1 million to promote risk-sensitive urban development to reduce the impact of natural disasters on vulnerable communities around the world.

The goal of the project is to transform current “silo” based urban development and risk reduction practices in disaster prone countries (such as Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Malaysia) to a participatory approach that promotes cross-organisational collaboration, openness, adaptability, learning, impartiality, power sharing and public participation.

The project will take a proactive approach by setting up three Living Labs as experimental and learning environments in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Malaysia which will work collaboratively with a range of government organisations, NGOs and marginalized communities to transform current practices.

Evidence-based decision making that exploits the power of data, modelling, urban simulation and visualisation is at the heart of this project.

This work is based on the digital expertise in the THINKlab and on the disaster risk reduction expertise within the Centre for Disaster Resilience at the University of Salford.

The funding has been awarded to the research facility THINKlab that undertakes leading research in advanced technology platforms for smart city applications.

The TRANSCEND project builds on the previous GCRF funded MOBILISE project that focused mainly on developing digital capacity for understanding risks and risk governance in disaster-prone areas.

Notes to editors:

* The project is a 3-year programme funded by ESRC and GCRF.

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is part of UK Research and Innovation.

The Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) is a £1.5 billion fund announced by the UK Government in late 2015 to support cutting-edge research that addresses the challenges faced by developing countries.

The University of Salford’s THINKlab is pleased to announce the launch of the MOBILISE digital platform version 2.0 with a range of new features for supporting disaster risk reduction and response for natural disasters.

MOBILISE 2.0 offers a scalable digital platform with a user-friendly interface, allowing agencies to upload and explore hazard, exposure and vulnerability data in an interactive manner to establish a common understanding of their local risks and implement disaster risk reduction actions. The underlying risk information server runs on an Azure cloud service and the new visual interfaces allow agencies to access risk information remotely via tablets, touch tables, workstations or mobile phones, thus enhancing capabilities for agencies to implement a collaborative approach in disaster risk reduction and response.

MOBILISE 2.0 comes with a VR interface, based on the Unity game engine, in addition to a browser-based interface. This novel VR interface allows the user to visualize 3D city representation as textured point clouds or meshes which are captured from airborne sensing devices such as drones. This development enhances the capability of the MOBILISE platform when itis used during the disaster response phase, as well as the post disaster reconstruction phase. 

The MOBILISE digital application, funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), allows disaster management centres to combine vulnerability, exposure and hazards’ information from multiple agencies to create a comprehensive understanding of the risks in their country and to undertake disaster mitigation actions as well as prepare and respond to disasters.   

Ben Monaghan, MOBILISE lead Software Engineer said: “MOBILISE 2.0 has been redesigned with a scalable architecture and reconfigurable user interface allowing the agencies to create a bespoke solution to suit their own disaster risk management practices.  The platform has been implemented using advanced software toolkits to achieve performance and ease of use while enhancing the learnability, efficiency and effectiveness of the overall platform.”

Professor Terrence Fernando, Director of THINKlab said “The THINKlab team has been working tirelessly over the last few months to produce MOBILISE 2.0 which is a state-of-the-art digital platform for conducting disaster risk reduction and response activities. We now plan to make the MOBILISE 2.0 version available to countries other than our current partner countries – Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Malaysia. This will allow us to accelerate the uptake of the MOBILISE platform and create a greater impact around the world in saving lives through intelligence driven based disaster preparedness and response activities.”

The MOBILISE platform is targeted at helping various governments to implement the Sendai Framework Priority 1: ‘Understanding Risks’ and Priority 2: ‘Risk Governance,’ as established by the United Nations.

Led by the THINKlab Director, Professor Terrence Fernando, the digital platform creates an infrastructure which offers intelligence to multiple stakeholders who can work together to help reduce the impact of natural disasters on their local communities. Set up in May 2017, the project is due to be completed in December 2020. For more information visit.

The University of Salford’s THINKlab Director, Professor Terrence Fernando was recently invited by Sri Lanka’s National Building Research Organisation (NBRO)  to make a keynote speech at their 10th Annual Research Symposium on Equitable Resilience.

The event took place on 17 and 18 December 2019 at the Hotel Galadari in Colombo and was attended by more than 400 delegates who are involved with disaster risk reduction activities across Sri Lanka. Senior dignitaries included Major General Kamal Gunaratne, the Secretary to the Ministry of Defence who was the chief guest, and Trine Jøranli Eskedal, the Ambassador for the Royal Norwegian Embassy who was the guest of honour.

The theme of the symposium was ‘Equitable Resilience’ and Professor Fernando’s keynote speech highlighted the importance of ‘Technology Enhanced Adaptive Governance to Support Equitable Resilience.’ The keynote included findings and recommendations from both the MOBILISE and TRANSCEND projects where Professor Fernando is the Principal Investigator of each project and leads a team of partners in UK, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Pakistan. Funded by UKRI (EPSRC, ESRC) and Global Challenges Research Fund, the MOBILISE project focuses on LMIC communities in disaster prone areas who are regularly affected by natural disasters such as flooding, landslides and earthquakes and the TRANSCEND project focuses on risk sensitive urban development and equitable resilience.  

During the symposium, Prof Fernando launched the MOBILISE platform which has been donated to the Disaster Management Centre and NBRO for enhancing the disaster risk reduction and disaster response activities in Sri Lanka.

The two-day event included panel discussions with industry experts and academics who contributed their experiences across the field of disaster reduction. The technical sessions discussed landslide risk reduction and building research which are aligned with the NBRO’s key objectives.

The event was jointly organised by the NRBO, The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC), NITTOC Construction, NIPPON KOEI Co, Engineering & Laboratory Services Ltd and the University of Salford as the academic partner.

Further reading: http://www.defence.lk/Article/view_article/778

After intensive research and development work over the last two years, the THINKlab team is now ready to release their first interactive digital platform to disaster management centres in Colombo, Sri Lanka; Sarawak State, Malaysia; and Peshawar, Pakistan.

The donation from the THINKlab is the MOBILISE digital platform which runs on a state-of-the-art multi-touch screen driven by a high-performance computer.  Agencies have the choice of using a web-based interface or a 3D virtual reality interface of the platform to explore and develop their risk reduction strategies. The software created and developed by the XR software engineers, the UX designers and researchers from the THINKlab combines seven main data categories (including built and natural environment, social information, land characteristics, hazards, real-time and remote sensory data) which segment a further 60 data layer and attributes to determine disaster risks.

This digital platform, developed as a part of the MOBILISE project, funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and UK Research and Innovation, will allow the disaster management centres to combine various vulnerable, exposure and hazards’ information from multiple agencies to establish a more holistic understanding of their local risks. In turn, this will enable them to work together to develop disaster risk reduction strategies to reduce the impact of natural disasters on the local communities, infrastructure and economy.   

The Director of the THINKlab, Professor Terrence Fernando stated: “It has been a challenging journey for developing a common approach and vision for our partner countries and bringing digital innovation to their current disaster risk reduction and disaster response activities. This is only a beginning of a long journey to transform current disaster risk reduction activities by various government organisations in middle-income countries. We are fortunate to have committed academic partners and government organisations in our project consortium who have worked with us to progress this far.”

Professor Fernando also added: “The feedback from various disaster management agencies and other government agencies has been extremely positive. We hope to make the MOBILISE platform available to other governments around the world very soon. I hope other research organisations will join us for creating bespoke environments for their local governments.”

Funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the MOBILISE project focuses on LMIC communities in Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Pakistan who are regularly affected by natural disasters such as flooding, landslides and earthquakes. 

The MOBILISE platform is targeted at helping various governments to implement the Sendai Framework Priority 1: ‘Understanding Risks’ and Priority 2: ‘Risk Governance,’ as established by the United Nations.

Led by the THINKlab Director, Prof Terrence Fernando, the project is developing a digital infrastructure which offers intelligence to multiple stakeholders who can work together to help reduce the impact of natural disasters on their local communities. Set up in May 2017, the project is to be completed in December 2020. For more information about the MOBILISE project.

Members of the UK based MOBILISE Project team are currently visiting Malaysian partners to explore how best to strengthen the impact of the MOBILISE project in various states in Malaysia, especially Sarawak State and Selangor State. 

Funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the MOBILISE Project has been working with its partners to create a digital platform which can be used by agencies to work together to reduce disaster risks and response better.

As part of an extensive visit (which also includes visiting Sri Lanka), Prof Terrence Fernando, Director of THINKlab at the University of Salford, has met with Dr. Khamarrul Azahari Bin Razak and his team at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) based in Kuala Lumpur, and Mr Ahmad Fairuz Mohd Yusof, Director of Selangor Disaster Management Office to discuss how the outcome of the MOBILISE project can be used to strengthen disaster management strategies in Selangor State and in Malaysia in general.

The Selangor Disaster Management Office, the only state-level dedicated office for disaster management works with its 52 technical agencies in the State of Selangor and key government agencies at federal level including National Disaster Management Agency (NADMA), the Fire and Rescue Department, the Royal Malaysian Police and the Malaysian Armed Forces.

Prof Terrence Fernando said “The Universiti Teknologi Malaysia has already joined the MOBILISE project as an Associate Partner and this visit has helped us to discuss how UTM and THINKlab can work together to strengthen the disaster management strategies in Malaysia. We hope to combine the research strengths of Dr. Khamarrul Razak’s team and the THINKlab to create a world class digital infrastructure in supporting disaster risk reduction activities”.

Dr. Khamarrul said “We are excited about the opportunity to work with the MOBILISE project led by the THINKlab and bring technology innovation into disaster risk reduction and response in Malaysia. During our discussions, we identified a range of future research project ideas and we look forward to implementing them through joint research programmes with the THINKlab.”

For more information please visit: THINKlab and MOBILISE

The MOBILISE Project Consortium will organise its second project workshop on “A Collaborative Multi-Agency Platform for Building Resilient Communities” in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on 29 – 31 October 2018. The event is funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

The workshop is being coordinated by Dr Noralfishah Sulaiman at the Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia and THINKlab at the University of Salford. Dr Sulaiman is one of the Co-Investigators and is the project lead for the MOBILISE project’s Malaysia activities. Over forty-five government, academic, non-government and business organisations from Malaysia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom, are contributing to the workshop which will be held in English.

The workshop will particularly focus on three specific themes relating to disaster risk governance:

1. Collaborative disaster risk reduction and response governance
2. Building community resilience
3. The use of technology for understanding, monitoring, predicting local disasters’ risk and cascading impacts.

For further details about the event:  http://mobilise.uthm.edu.my

Photo by: Ishan @seefromthesky on Unsplash

We are delighted to welcome Professor Marie-Christine Therrien from Montreal’s École Nationale d’administration publique and Cité-ID LivingLab, to the THINKlab for a very special event.

Taking place on Thursday 11 October 2018, Professor Marie-Christine will deliver a unique lecture on “Implementation of Urban Resilience Governance and Social Capital” which focuses on projects in Montreal and London.

Professor Marie-Christine Therrien is a Management Professor at the École Nationale d’administration publique, which is one of the largest public administration universities in the world. Since its creation in 1969, it has positioned itself as a leader in the renewal of a modern and effective public administration in Quebec and overseas. It has set the standard in this field, in both academic and practitioner communities.

As a Director of The Cité-ID Living Lab in Urban Resilience Governance, the organisation is a collaborative initiative that brings together individuals from across Canada and around the world working on urban resilience. It brings together city managers to private enterprises, non-profit organisations, citizens and academic researchers and is an incubator for new inter-sectoral evidence-based approaches and innovative practices in urban resilience.

In the presentation, there will be a discussion on two projects underway.  The first is a project looking at enabling strategies and hindering factors in urban resilience implementation by comparing the cities of Montreal and London.  The second project looks at identifying enabling factors in two Montreal neighbourhoods to develop social capital as a way to increase resilience to disasters.

The event takes place from 11.00am – 12.00pm (inc Q&A session) on Thursday 11 October 2018, in the THINKlab, 7th Floor, Maxwell Building.

If you would like to attend this presentation (open to all) please book in via this Eventbrite link https://www.eventbrite.com/e/implementation-of-urban-resilience-governance-and-social-capital-tickets-50961838230

MOBILISE builds global partnership against natural disasters

THINKlab’s £1.2M research project MOBILISE is developing digital infrastructure to protect communities from natural disasters in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Malaysia.

Experts from Salford are working with local agencies to better plan for disasters like floods and earthquakes by exploiting the latest information and communication technologies.

As part of the EPSRC-funded project, the SoBE team have been travelling the globe building partnerships to make the project as effective and sustainable as possible.

Prof Terrance Fernando, Director of THINKlab, recently attended the Director Generals’ Conference in Sri Lanka to agree on an approach to strengthening multi-agency collaboration for disaster risk reduction.

Technology

The two-day roundtable conference involved senior government officials who discussed a collective way for implementing the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030).

The conference welcomed the objectives of MOBILISE to create a collaborative multi-agency platform that can be used for building resilient communities in disaster-prone areas, as well as on joint approaches for risk modelling, assessment, mitigation, preparation and response.

The MOBILISE team were also involved in organising several key workshops at this year’s annual Geomatics & Geospatial Technology Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Professor Fernando and Dr Che Zulkhairi Abdullah presented to government, environmental and educational organisations with Terrance also giving a keynote speech on the MOBILISE project and the wider stakeholder engagements in Malaysia.

A larger Director Generals’ Conference is planned for October in Kuala Lumpur and aims to start a collaborative approach for disaster risk reduction in Malaysia.

MOBILISE is also funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund.

Original article: https://www.salford.ac.uk/news/articles/2018/mobilise-builds-global-partnership-against-natural-disasters

THINKlab were delighted to host part of a citywide event for the Uscore2 project and their Portuguese partners.

The final day of a three-day event included meetings, discussion and focus groups. The Amadora peer review team considered ‘Increase Infrastructure Resilience’ (E8a) and ‘Recovery’ (E10) with experts from Salford City Council, Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, Association for Greater Manchester Authorities, Greater Manchester Resilience Forum, The Environment Agency and Urban Vision.

The Uscore2 project aims to design and test a generic, practical, city-to-city, disaster risk reduction, peer review for European and worldwide members. Salford, Viggiano and Amadora are currently piloting the project. Each has unique disaster risk profiles and are role models for the Making Cities Resilient Campaign.

Following the conclusion of the peer review, the Portuguese team will prepare a report which will help build a larger framework of resilience across Greater Manchester.

Read more about the event and the Uscore2 Project here.