Emergency Response & Recovery

PIN is planning to set up and operationalize a 2-way communication channel for EWS1294, in view of reinforcing community engagement in disaster management and accountability to the affected populations. This innovation would allow PIN and national partners to listen to and act on people’s needs, suggested solutions, feedback and complaints, and people receiving assistance to have a say in and face gender inequality by developing a gender action plan to guide the implementation of the project. Incorporating local/community risk information and knowledge into the EWS1294 will result in a more participatory system.  

The action builds on PIN’s existing experience with Disaster Management programming in Cambodia and the lessons learned from ongoing and past projects. This includes the first EWS project tailored to urban settings (Battambang city). In line with the programme priorities of UNDP, PIN will facilitate an integrated water resources management in 2 targeted provinces of Kratié and Stung Treng. The action builds a community-based inclusive preparedness and early action and sets the ground for a transboundary EWS in the Cambodia-Lao border region.

The overall objective of the project is to increase the resilience of Cambodian communities to disaster risks. The specific objective of the project is to increase the reach of Cambodia's early warning system through the development of an innovative dissemination channel, SMS Broadcasting.

PIN proposes to develop, test, and pilot the innovation in 4 target provinces highly affected by flood risks and particularly involved in the EWS1294 system. This new dissemination tool will significantly increase EWS1294 reach in the target areas. If the pilot is successful in 2023, as demonstrated by rigorous testing and compilation of performance data, PIN will expand the SMS broadcasting modality to the entire country in 2024, following a roadmap for national scale-up.

A sponsorship agreement has been signed between PIN and the telecommunications company Smart Axiata to increase the reach of EWS1294 alert messages to the Cambodian population. As part of this collaboration, EWS1294 SMS broadcasting will be developed and will allow all Smart sim card users in at-risk areas to receive a flood alert from EWS1294. Moving beyond the subscription model required by the current IVR system, SMS broadcasting will significantly increase the reach of alerts, allowing some of the 8 million smart sim card users in flood-prone areas to receive EWS1294 alerts in the form of SMS.

The aim of this project is to contribute to the overall resilience of Cambodian communities to multiple hazards by ensuring an effective and sustainable handover of EWS1294 to the Royal Government of Cambodia. EWS1294 is Cambodia’s national early warning system, operating in the entire country and disseminating life-saving alerts regarding floods and other climate and pandemic-related risks. This project draws on the achievements of the two previous projects funded by the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs and aims to close the gaps identified in order to ensure the sustainability of EWS1294 in the hands of the National Committee for Disaster Management (NCDM). 

 

This Third Phase of the MFA-funded intervention aims to: 

• Strengthen the sustainability of the handover of EWS1294 to the Royal Government of Cambodia by building PCDMs’ capacities in basic maintenance of the Tepmacha sensors. 

• Procure new sensors for the NCDM. 

• Maintain inactive sensors to ensure proper operation of the system and innovate to enhance sensor operation in areas with low mobile connectivity. 

• Ensure greater usability and security of the dissemination dashboard in the hands of the NCDM and PCDM. 

• Strengthen emergency preparedness and response capacity with the sub-national disaster management committees in Prey Veng, Kandal and Pursat provinces. 

The main aim of this project is to address the flood mitigation challenge, by producing evidence-based recommendations for the Royal Government of Cambodia and reduce the vulnerability of urban populations to climate change impacts through an innovative and effective urban Early Warning System. 

A common obstacle for urban flood disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaption (CCA) projects in developing regions is a lack of high-resolution topographic data, without which it is difficult to scientifically predict the spatial distribution of impacts caused by natural hazards. Growing availability of Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) enables the widespread application of catastrophe modelling, allowing the user to simulate geophysical hazards at varying magnitudes. This powerful disaster management tool empowers local authorities to predict the spatial variability of impacts caused during these events, producing outputs that provide valuable information as an evidence base for flood DRR and to inform urban planning. 

In line with the national priorities provided in Cambodia’s Climate Change Strategic Plan (CCCSP), the project aims to address the flood mitigation challenge, by producing evidence-based recommendations for the Royal Government of Cambodia, mainly with the National Committee for Disaster Management (NCDM) to reduce the vulnerability of urban populations to climate change impacts, by facilitating access to an innovative and effective urban Early Warning System (EWS).  

To achieve these results, People In Needis using an innovative approach to elevation data collection, facilitating the use of urban flood modelling for the City of Battambang, as well as exploring additional last-mile communication channels for the implementation of a new urban EWS.EWS1294 currently operates across 24 provinces and is capable of disseminating warning messages to hundreds of thousands[] of Cambodians - reducing their vulnerability to floods, primarily targeted towards rural populations.

The Urban Resilience project, funded by the European Union, is a 36-month project that covers a range of sectors, such as WASH, gender-based violence prevention and children protection, livelihoods and social protection, housing rights, financial literacy, indebtedness and behavioral change communication.  

With this multisectoral project, it aims to help more than 20,000 economically disadvantaged people living in urban poor areas of Phnom Penh, 404 union representatives from the informal sector, garment and retail industry, more than 350 women in urban poor communities, 5,000 recently laid off workers, 250 small business owners and 275 local authorities and commune stakeholders. Overall, the project will target 255 communities in the 14 districts of Phnom Penh. 

The overall objective of the project is to contribute to strengthened social protection, economic recovery and COVID-19 adaptation of poor urban communities in Phnom Penh.   

Outcome 1 will be focused on poor urban communities, particularly vulnerable women and children, who will gain improved access to WASH facilities, psychosocial support and social protection services.  

• COVID-19 awareness campaign and construction of handwashing facilities. Supported by activities educating communities about COVID-19 and proper hygiene practices and prevention methods.  

• Support access to existing social protection schemes for vulnerable communities.  

• Provide psychosocial support and protection services to women and children at risk of gender-based violence.  

Outcome 2 will be focused on improving the economic situation of families of recently laid-off workers and small businesses at risk of closing.   

• Support economic recovery efforts for recently laid off workers from the informal sector, through diversifying their skillsets and re-join the employment market.  

• Support businesses affected by the pandemic through financial literacy trainings, consulting services and supporting access to fair loans. 

EWS1294 now provides full national coverage, operated by the provincial government when they wish to disseminate an alert to the population and the system is linked to National Committee for Disaster Management´s (NCDM) website who recognise the system as the national EWS for Cambodia. PIN Cambodia’s Disaster Management (DM) team continue to find innovative ways of developing the system, most recently through the implementation of the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), an international standardisation for the dissemination of early warning messages. This approach was the first step in moving the system towards multi-channel dissemination and has been quickly followed by the creation of the EWS1294 Facebook page; accumulating 110,000 followers within 5 months. PIN’s technology team plan to use this social media presence to enable the dissemination of warning messages through Facebook messenger, for which a Chatbots program has been developed and is awaiting approval.  

Through essential support from its donors; previously including, UNDP, SDC, Czech MFA, ECHO and WFP, PIN now intends to begin phasing out of EWS1294 and complete the handover of the system to the national government.

The project aims to increase access to EWS1294 by enabling broadcasting dissemination and further technical developments, to improve the capacities of NCDM to ensure that the Royal Government of Cambodia can operate and maintain the system and to complete the handover of EWS1294 to NCDM.