Tue, Feb 19
|Quezon City
Innovation for Earthquake Resilience and Response in the Philippines: Workshop 2
For teams who have found an applicable solution, we will help you to analyse where the solution might need to be adapted, & how implementing organizations might need to change to accommodate it. Where existing solutions do not exist, we will seek to develop ideas of what a solution could look like.
Time & Location
Feb 19, 2019, 9:00 AM – Feb 21, 2019, 5:00 PM
Quezon City, Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines
About the event
CONVENING INITIATIVE
INNOVATION FOR EARTHQUAKE RESILIENCE AND RESPONSE IN THE PHILIPPINES
According to the World Risk Report in 2016, the Philippines is the third most vulnerable country to disasters. The country lies in the Pacific Ring of Fire where 80% of earthquakes occur, and the Metro Manila authorities are increasing preparations for the so-called ‘Big One’. According to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS), the fault moves every 400 to 600 years. It last moved in 1658, or 360 years ago.
The CDP-ATIH-HIF convening initiative aims to bring together civil society with academe, government and the private sector to explore unsolved problems in earthquake resilience and response in the Greater Metro Manila Area (GMMA), and develop new solutions and partnerships. Focusing on community and household resilience, and key preparatory measures in areas such as water, food, logistics, coordination and communications, two planned workshops will provide a forum for individuals and organisations to further understanding of current problems and potential solutions through the use of innovation tools and techniques.
The innovation process enables people to take a step-back from their day-to-day jobs and think about how traditional approaches to humanitarian programming might be improved, and to bring together different sets of expertise to work on cross-disciplinary problems. We aim to complement and reinforce ongoing planning efforts at varying levels by supporting different actors to come together and consider the challenges to effective resilience and response from the ground up.
We invite applications to participate in the convening initiative from groups that hope to gain a better understanding of the problem that they are trying to tackle in order to develop new and improved products and services for humanitarian action. Please see below for further information on how to apply.
Our approach
Most of what we do is about solving different kinds of problems, whether that’s the humanitarian problems that define our purpose, or the operational problems that knock us off course in our day-to-day work. To be successful as individuals and organisations, we must constantly respond to problems and look for improvements in the way that we work and the outcomes that we deliver.
This often involves relatively minor corrections or adjustments to standard practice, but sometimes a failure to see the change that we want, a reassessment of our priorities, or a greater ambition might lead us to rethink ‘standard practice’ entirely. Innovative ideas come in all shapes and sizes, but we are primarily focused on the development of new products, services and processes with the potential to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of humanitarian preparedness and response.
We think innovation is about more than new technology. While technology often drives innovation, we believe that innovation is a process of defining problems, adapting and developing new context-based solutions, and taking them to scale. Good innovation has clear problem definition at its heart and requires us to reassess our basic assumptions, and commit to collaboration, learning and the generation of evidence.
We are driven by a set of principles and ethical guidelines, which inform our approach at all levels. These principles include a commitment to involve users and crisis-affected populations in the design, development and delivery of new products and services, and to develop appropriate, rigorous and actionable evidence to inform decision making. We also aim to bring together the complementary expertise of people who don’t normally work with each other in order to inspire new thinking.
The humanitarian sector has always relied on the determination and ingenuity of those on the front line working to deliver life-saving aid to communities affected by conflict or natural disaster. But while reactive innovation has always been central to humanitarian action, the proactive application of innovation is relatively recent. By having a common platform to discuss problems, collaborate on solutions, and generate collective action, we aim to generate lessons for the systematic application, study and implementation of innovation for humanitarian action in the Philippines.