The World Food Programme (WFP), one of the largest humanitarian agencies in the larger UN system, has recently finished development of an integrated communications platform called Emergency Preparedness Integration Centre (EPIC). In an exclusive interview with CNME, Ernesto Baca, CIO and director of IT and management services divisions at WFP said that the agency’s Dubai labs contributed heavily to the research and development of the platform.
“In the aftermath of humanitarian disasters, the ability to communicate is crucial to providing relief and ultimately saving lives. Without communication, aid workers cannot organise effective rescue missions, food distribution or medical care. We have to assume that during the emergency, the telecom infrastructure has been completely demolished and so we have to build the infrastructure from the ground up, telecommunications specialists must then be the first to arrive on the scene to establish steady communication links. This situation demands the most specialised and self propelled people, capable of interacting with a multitude of other players on the ground often operating under the toughest conditions. Considering this scenario, a platform like EPIC can prove to be of immense benefit,” said Baca.
Started in 2009 and developed by a team based in both Dubai and Rome, EPIC is based on another UN initiative called ONE UN IT that is aimed at maximising the use of the combined resources of all its agencies operating at the same emergency site.
EPIC helps to integrate the different communications equipment and requirements of various humanitarian agencies in a particular geographic area, and mounts it on a single communications platform to enable steady interaction and coordination between all the workers operating on the ground.
“Lets take the examples of Tanzania or Mozambique. You will find at least 17-18 different agencies already operating there, with their own workers, equipment and other resources which lead to a duplication of efforts and resultant waste of resources. EPIC tries to address this and remedy the situation to everybody’s advantage,” stated Baca.
According to Baca, huge portions of the EPIC platform were developed in WFP’s Dubai labs, where the team worked on both researching and putting together the elements of the system. Home base to WFP since 2003, Dubai houses an established team of 22 engineers and support staff working on some of WFP’s largest IT.. Dubai also plays host to WFP’s FITTEST team, a group of IT, telecom and electrical specifialists, who are equipped to react to emergencies in the shortest span of time. “Dubai has not only provided WFP, a much safer location to operate from but has aided our operations by making sure that we are given the necessary logistics requirements and support, ” added Baca.
EPIC has already completed a successful pilots in occupied territories of Palestine and Dubai with a third pilot scehduled in Pakistan later this year. With the platform complete, Baca believes that now it is only a question of building and integrating apps on top of the platform to make it field-ready. “I would like to see EPIC being used from tomorrow, if possible,” said an enthusiastic Baca.
As a part of the EPIC project, the team is also working on creating an online portal, which will allow users access to a multitude of collaboration tools, like file sharing and online real-time chat, that will help in avoiding delays and confusion in communication. – where people can create events in real time and avoid delays and confusion, for instance notifying players of the location of a road block, plugging it on the map and asking people to re route, among others. “ Lets assume that in an emergency situation, two different agencies are working a few miles from each other, and there has been a sudden road block. With the portal, the agency aware of the road block can immediately plug it on a location map and ask people to re-route. This portal will be available not only for WFP members but it will also be made available to our partners, other NGOs and agencies as we are try to collect information from different sources to create this single integrated system,” said Luis Alvarado, IT officer-EPIC.
The WFP is the largest humanitarian agency in the UN system dealing with food delivery. The team at WFP considers IT as an absolutely crucial element to its functions and a backend support system for ensuring smooth and safe operations on the ground.
“Our focus in the next 12 months is to implement unified communications. I think an organisation that is deployed worldwide can benefit a lot from unified communications. Today we can communicate only over the phone with our own network, called food link, or email each other. But we cannot have a chat or video conferencing, or share docs through a central repository. With UC we believe we will be able to address these needs,” concluded Baca.
