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Telecom firms team up to boost early warning system   By Patrick Joubert |24 March 2023

Telecom firms team up to  boost early warning system     By Patrick Joubert

The signing of the MoU: (l to r) Mr Dina, Mr Amelie and Mr D’Offay

The Seychelles Meteorological Authority will be in a better position to issue early warnings to the population and also in time, now that Cable and Wireless Seychelles and Airtel Seychelles have agreed to send out those alerts for free through their SMS services.

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the agreement under the ‘Early Warning for All’, was signed yesterday by the chief executive of Cable and Wireless Seychelles (CWS), George D’Offay, his counterpart from Airtel, Amadou Dina and the chief executive of the Seychelles Meteorological Authority (SMA) Vincent Amelie.

The accord was signed during a half-day workshop organised by the SMA to commemorate World Meteorological Day which was celebrated under the theme ‘The Future of Weather, Climate, and Water Across Generations’.

The workshop held the Savoy Seychelles Resort and Spa, Beau Vallon, was for the SMA to brief stakeholders on new actions being taken to ensure everyone is protected by early warning systems within the next few years, given that not everyone is covered by efficient early warning system.

Apart from the SMS service, the other technologies for dissemination of accurate early warnings include the acquisition of a Doppler radar which detects clouds and accurately measure the level of water in them.

Present were the Minister for Agriculture, Climate Change and Environment Flavien Joubert, principal secretaries, the vice-chancellor of the University of Seychelles, Joelle Perreau, the chairman of the SMA board, Gerard Hoareau, the SMA board members, representatives of different ministries, along with representatives of other entities, including law enforcements, civil society, district administrators and senior citizens.

Speaking on behalf of CWS and Airtel respectively, Mr D’Offay and Jude Valmont, the brand, marketing and communications manager, said given that their respective telecommunication companies are engaged in supporting the country and the community, they are happy to have come onboard for the continued support for a good cause, in terms of providing a simple text which could save lives.

Today, one third of the world’s population, mainly in least developed countries and small island developing states, including in the Seychelles, are still not covered by early warning systems. This is very alarming, particularly with climate impacts sure to get even worse.

In his opening remarks, Mr Hoareau said amid the scare of the ever changing weather and climate related matters that impacts the world including ours, early warning system have proven to be effective against such impacts. He noted that coupled with feasible climate adaptation measures, they have no doubt helped to save lives and provide perhaps, a tenfold return on investments.

“This is encouraging and it is therefore, critical in our local context, for the SMA to double its effort to provide accurate, timely weather and climate predictions,”  said Mr Hoareau who commended the two telecommunication service providers to combine forces in disseminating in a timely manner, weather alerts from SMA to the entire population.

He added that SMA has plans to work with the district administrators to bring the understanding and interpretation of early warnings such as definition of colour codes to the districts.

He also said, faced with the challenge to provide accurate early warnings, the SMA will in the near future be commissioning the new radar mentioned above and other sophisticated meteorological equipment to improve its response to weather forecasts and early warnings.

During the workshop which included various presentations, Mr Amelie spoke about climate change projections for the country, a work published in 2021.

He said the impacts of climate change which is causing an increase in temperatures and changes in the patterns of the rainfall and its intensity, show that the country has to raise its level of preparedness to react to future changes.

He added that in the meantime, a mobile-based early warning system, among other new technologies such as weather radar that needs to be acquired, presents a key opportunity to raise awareness on extreme weather events.

The meaning of the colour codes and early warning system was the presentation given by Gerard Bijoux, a senior staff of the SMA.

It focused on the SMA’s mandate in regards to early warning, including the different colour codes – Yellow: be aware, Orange: be prepared, Red: Take action – used, and the challenges the organisation faces in issuing weather warnings.

He said early warning information allows communities to be aware of oncoming hazardous events and informs governments and vulnerable communities to act and minimise the potential impacts.

He added that to make the communities aware of oncoming hazardous events is a challenge given that they only rely on others like the Disaster Risk Management Division (DRMD) and Seychelles Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) which is not enough to reach the wider population among a lack of state-of-the-art technologies such as a high resolution numerical weather prediction model and a weather observing system (Doppler radar) among others.

The last presentation was by SMA Information Technology (IT) technician Michael Quatre who spoke about using IT in early warning dissemination and how different methods of ICT, especially the mobile network, used to help in improving early warning in saving lives and property.

In his closing remarks, Minister Joubert congratulated the SMA for organising the event and thanked the two telecommunication service providers for their commitment to help to inform the population on the decrement weather and on disasters when they happen.

 

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