ENGINEER’S SUPPORTING HUMANITARIAN OUTCOMES IN THE ACUTE PHASE OF INTERNATIONAL DISASTERS.

“INTEGRATING THE ENGINEERING EFFORT INTO

DISASTER MANAGEMENT IN SOUTH WEST PACIFIC”.

PRESENTED TO

ENGINEERS AUSTRALIA CHATSWOOD WORKSHOP, 20 OCTOBER 2011

PRESENTED AND FACILITATED BY

Mr. PRATARP SINGH, B.E, F.F.I.E

PRESIDENT, THE FIJI INSTITUTION OF ENGINEERS

AND

Dr. ANDREW CLELAND, CEO, IPENZ

Definitions

• Disaster Risk Management (DRM) is defined as “the systematic process of using administrative

directives, organisations, and operational skills and capacities to implement strategies, policies and improved coping capacities in order to lessen the adverse impacts of hazards and possibility of disaster”. From 2009 UNISDR (United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction) Terminology on Disaster Risk Reduction.

Definitions (Cont.) • “The shared aim of Disaster Risk Management,

Climate Change Adaptation and Management (DRM & CCAM) is to reduce the vulnerability of societies to hazards by improving the ability to better anticipate, resist, prepare for, respond to and recover from their impacts”.

Background • The Pacific Island Countries (PIC’s) experience

high exposure to adverse effects of climate change and natural hazards.

• The tendency for common natural hazards such as tropical cyclones, floods, landslides, storm surges, droughts, tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions to cause disasters can result in serious setbacks in PIC’s economy, human development, the physical environment and development plans.

Background (Cont.) • Since 1950 approximately 9.2million people have

been affected in the Pacific region causing 9,811 reported deaths. The cost to the PIC’s is believed to be USD$3.2billion.

• The September 2009 tsunami in Samoa caused 2.5% (5,300) of the population to be homeless. The cost to the nation was expected to be USD$120milliom i.e 22% of GDP.

• January 2009 floods in Fiji, expected cost was USD$160million, 7% of GDP

Understanding Engineering in the South Pacific

• Papua New Guinea (6.2million) • Fiji (840,000) • Samoa, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu

(100,000-560,000) • Cook Islands (25,000) • Niue (1,700)

Papua New Guinea

• Established Institution of Engineers PNG • 2000 engineering registrants • BE education at Unitech in Lae, technician

education in several locations • Major LNG project • Infrastructural companies staffed by local

engineers (mostly locally trained) • Some local consultancies

Fiji

• Established, the Fiji Institution of Engineers (FIE) about 45 years ago (Approx.100 members)

• Engineering registration - Engineers Registration Act 1978, (ERB) in abeyance

• FIE leading the Cabinet approved proposed Chartered Professional Engineers Act Fiji (CPEAF)

• BEngTech/BE education at the University of South Pacific and Diploma/BE education at Fiji National University in Suva

Fiji (Cont.) • Infrastructural companies staffed by local

(PNG/Aust/NZ trained) and few expatriate (SL/Asia) engineers

• Some local consultancies • FIE leading the revision of the Fiji National

Building Code

Vanuatu

• Discussing the formation of Institution of Engineers

• No registration or education • Infrastructural companies often staffed by

PNG-trained engineers • Little local consultancy

Samoa

• Most people on two major islands • Established Institution of Professional

Engineers Samoa (150 members) • 100 engineering registrants • Trades education only • Infrastructural companies staffed by NZ and

or Australian educated engineers • Some local consultancies

Tonga

• People distributed across three island groups • Prone to sea level rise (7m) • Developing the formation of Institution of

Professional Engineers Tonga (25 members) • No registration or engineering education • Infrastructural companies staffed by NZ and

or Australian trained engineers • Some local consultancies

Cook Islands

• Most people on main island or one other • Developing the formation of Institution of

Engineers CI (20 members) • No registration or engineering education • Infrastructural companies staffed by NZ and

or Australian trained engineers • Little local consultancy

In summary

The Pacific island nations have a relatively unique problem caused by: • Small populations – no economy of scale • Wide geographic distribution • Susceptibility to natural disaster • The economic circumstances of the nations

South Pacific Island Engineering Workshop – October 2007

Fiji – the Fiji Institution of Engineers (FIE) Samoa – Institution of Professional Engineers Samoa (IPES) Tonga Vanuatu Cook Islands

Typical Issues • Historic reliance on aid from developed

nations (especially Australia, NZ, EU, JICA) and soft loans from ADB and WB for infrastructure projects – brought good engineering standards with it

• Local capital increasing via tourism • Capital from Asia increasing • Engineering standards no longer intrinsically

packaged with aid money

Typical Issues (cont.) • Cyclones, floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, fire all

lead to substantial structural damage • Construction/reconstruction standards variable –

inappropriate supervision and materials • Waste water treatment – lagoon pollution,

ineffective systems • Water treatment variable • Roading variable quality • Electricity supply unreliable – diesel dominant • Telecommunications improving

Capability, education and professional development

• Aid-funded projects are not developing adequate and appropriate local capability or capacity.

• Construction capability is low to very low (technical and trades), and there is poor supervision – the clerk of works role is poorly performed.

• Training of construction workers is inadequate and many practices are unsafe.

Capability, education and professional development

(Cont.) • Access to codes of practices and relevant

standards is reasonable to poor – new engineering knowledge and knowledge of methods for handling new materials which will inevitably arrive is lacking.

• The engineering workforce is ageing, and there are issues in attracting young people into engineering education.

• Migration to NZ and Australia very common

Technical standards • Materials quality and variability of materials is

an ongoing issue. • Poor capability to test materials and quality

assure their reliability • Lack of a systematic building code which is

practical for a number of nations. • Cyclones, floods, storm surge, tsunamis and

earthquakes sometimes not well dealt with in design of public infrastructure and private sector construction projects.

Technical standards (Cont.) • Asset degradation due to harsh tropical

conditions and poor maintenance • Much investment bypasses Australian or New

Zealand technical standards, especially if the source of capital is private or from Asia.

• Access to technical standards by engineers in the islands is difficult.

• Some technology brought in from overseas is inappropriate for the service conditions in the islands.

Professional identity for engineers • Qualification recognition, especially for those

educated in Fiji and Papua New Guinea is an issue,

• Lack of a peer body for creating status and standing for engineers, and as a means to attract focus to engineering issues,

• Lack of specialist engineers in some disciplines, especially those in high demand globally,

Professional identity for engineers (Cont.)

• Enforcement of disciplinary actions against

poor performers is difficult, • Achievement of robust competence

assessments is difficult. • Lack of interest, apathy

Suggestions for Improvement

• A good regulatory body (long term). • Development of a South Pacific Building

Code, and regular updating of this document. • Development of suitable compliance

documents e.g. standards – this might involve Australia/New Zealand standards becoming South Pacific in coverage as well.

• Development of means to ensure reliable and accurate construction materials testing in all nations

Suggestions for Improvement (cont.)

• Consistent restriction of professional engineering work to competent engineers.

• Internationally-benchmarked competence standards for recognising engineers competent to practice in South Pacific conditions.

• Benchmarking of Fijian and PNG qualifications in relation to the competence standards.

Suggestions for improvement (cont.) • Creation of professional identity for engineers, e.g.

through an association • Improved access to professional development,

perhaps facilitated by IPENZ. • Competent regulators – competence developed by

productive relationships with leading Building Consent Authorities in New Zealand.

• Improved engineering trades training throughout the South Pacific – IPENZ might act as an advocate for funding for this capability-raising need.

South Pacific Engineers Association (SPEA)

Competence and standards: • Technical standard setting e.g. building code,

technical standards, codes of practice. • Competence and qualification standard

setting. • Good engineering office practice guideline

establishment.

South Pacific Engineers Association (SPEA) (Cont.)

• Competence assessment processing. • Accrediting/qualification recognition actions. • Disciplinary actions and complaints

processing. • Handling of appeals.

South Pacific Engineers Association (SPEA) (cont.)

Professional development: • Broker of professional development opportunities

(incl; Ethics) delivered locally, both to engineers and to associated occupations e.g. construction personnel.

• Networking opportunities for engineers. • Mentoring of young engineers. • Improved access to engineering knowledge,

possibly including access to technical standards.

July 2008 Workshop

• Desire to involve Papua New Guinea – involvement of IEPNG

• Initial focus on support of people and competence standards – SPEA and associated competence registers

• Need to establish a credible body before funding is sought for technical standards

What SPEA cannot do

• Create instantaneous recognition of non-Accord qualifications

• Carry out its functions and meet its goals without strong Membership growth and commitment to pay subscriptions

• Easily obtain Aid money for standards development until it is shown to be robust, but FIE succeeded with AusAID.

Reasonable expectations – international benchmarking of

standards • Mentoring of qualification providers towards

eventual accreditation to Accord standards (USP/FNU/Unitech)

• Launch of and then ongoing improvement of competence assessments towards international best practice

• These could well be 5-10 year journeys

Aid Donors in the Pacific AusAID • The role of donors and in particular AusAID, and

consistent with AusAIDs Humanitarian Action Policy, is to support local capacity to respond to a disaster.

• AusAIDs agreement (2010) with The FIE is an example of such an activity.

Aid Donors in the Pacific (Cont.) • The unique aspect of AusAIDs agreement

with The FIE is the potential rapid mobilization of independent expertise for pre and post disaster assessments.

• A similar arrangement has been set up for Fiji between AusAID and the Pacific Disability Forum, UNICEF and the NDMO (for awareness raising).

Aid Donors in the Pacific (Cont.) • Also, under the FRANZ arrangement (France,

Australia and NZ) these countries work together to share information and military assets to support partner governments to respond to a disaster.

Aid Donors in the Pacific (Cont.) • Recent examples in the Pacific where FRANZ has

been activated include Fiji Floods in 2009 and TC Tomas in 2010, Vanuatu TC Vania in 2010, and Tuvalu drought 2011. FRANZ is a quadrilateral arrangement with the host country (Pacific countries) and works complimentary to regional response mechanisms like the PHT.

Aid Donors in the Pacific (Cont.)

• Other major donors are EU, NZAid, JICA &

KOICA. Financing from ADB, WB and lately Exim Bank (China & Malaysia)

Aid Donors in the Pacific

• Pratarp to complete – use as many slides as needed

What is Capacity Building?

“The building of human, institutional, and infrastructure capacity to help societies develop secure, stable, and sustainable economies, governments, and other institutions through mentoring, training, education, physical projects, the infusion of financial and other resources, and, most importantly, the motivation and inspiration of people to improve their lives.”

What is Capacity Building?

“Capacity building is the process of assisting people to develop the technical and decision making skills to address their own needs for improving the living standards and prosperity of their own people, and building an environmentally sustainable society.

Six Pillars

• Individual – to ensure the needs of individual technical practitioners are met

• Institutional – to ensure there are educational, professional, technical and statutory institutions in place

• Technical – to ensure there are technical standards, technical literature and guidance material to underpin and support good engineering and technological practices.

Six Pillars (Cont.) • Decision-making – to ensure decision makers have sufficient information or access to knowledge and skills to make logical and rational decisions.

• Business –to ensure there are stable and responsible business, commercial enterprises and financial institutions.

• Resources and supplies – to ensure that there is access to appropriate, affordable and suitable materials to use in building and maintaining of infrastructure.

Challenges in Top-down Capacity Building

• Researching needs & desires in participating nations

• Defining and influencing public policy • Education, training and developing skills • Participation • Building networks and support systems, • Technical and business standards • Project execution throughout the lifecycle • Gaining and using external funding

How does this relate to volunteer-driven projects?

Bottom-up approaches can suffer from: • Lack of attention to capacity building principles • Lack of durability and resilience of project • Inadequate buy-in to local communities and

networks • Inadvertent displacement of local technical

people

How Pacific Island Nations Governments Work

• Public ownership of infrastructure (public works department, sometimes govt; commercial or statutotry companies)

• Centralised regulator, • Role of regulator and aid recipient rarely

disconnected • Dominance of economists over technical • Relationship power is strong

SPEA Policy Papers • The role of engineering in sustainable economic

development in the South Pacific • Resilient infrastructure and disaster management • The needs for engineering education in the South

Pacific • Development and enforcement of technical

standards • Principles for planning and approval processes

for sustainable development

Increasing Resilience • Identifying a suitable worst-case load condition that

must be tolerated • Select a technical design standard suitable for

meeting the worst-case load condition • Enforce the requirements rigidly during construction • Inspect and maintain the asset regularly • Where the infrastructural assets are publicly owned,

initiate and maintain an asset management plan

Technical standards • Develop a regional standards organisation, with

its governance free of national governments with the authority to both establish and withdraw standards

• Form between this organisation and equivalent organisations in Australia and New Zealand a suitable cooperation arrangement.

• Develop a measurement laboratory or laboratories able to undertake accurate scientific measurements across a range of fields.

Technical standards (Cont.) • Use regional standards as a primary means to

give effect to national legislation on technical matters.

• Set standards, and regulations using standards, in line with the standards used by reputable aid agencies.

• Take a strong approach to measurement and third party certification of the quality of materials and goods at the border.

Technical standards (cont.)

• Separate the roles of government as a procurer or supplier of materials, goods and services; as the provider of measurement services; and as a regulator and enforcement agency.

• Develop training and support mechanisms to support the staff in both the measurement and standards organisations – having mentors and buddies on Australian and New Zealand equivalent organisations may be a viable means.

Technical standards (cont.) • Regularly (e.g. 3 to 5 yearly) procure independent

review of the measurement and standards organisations

• Train regulators and border agents in the use of standards as a regulatory and enforcement tool

• In areas in which national or regional standards do not exist, develop a mechanism to obtain expert advice from the relevant professional community

Planning Approvals Because of the different ways in which resources such as land, water and air have been managed over many generations in different cultures, and between different communities, there is no one right model • May not be worthwhile to document or attempt to

change traditional resource use patterns in rural communities.

• Establish the thresholds below which no permissions need be obtained, or which can be decided informally using existing traditional protocols

Disaster Risk Management in Fiji

• Management of Disasters in Fiji is regulated by Ministry of Provisional Development. Within the Ministry of Provisional Development (MPD) exists National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) which looks after the Governments interest regarding disasters.

• Within the NDMO exists the National Emergency Operation Centre (NEOC).

Disaster Risk Management in Fiji (Cont.)

• The Permanent Secretary of MPD is the National Controller.

• After an incident the office of NEOC coordinates the collection of information through the Commissioners at district level, District Officers and Community Leaders.

Disaster Risk Management in Fiji (Cont.)

• The NEOC office then presents this information to the National Disaster Council of which the Prime Minister is the Chairperson and the Permanent Secretary is the member of the council.

• The Prime Minister on the recommendation of the NEOC declares a state of emergency under the National Disaster Management Act 1998. State of emergency is then gazetted.

Disaster Risk Management in Fiji (Cont.)

• The National Controller of the Provisional Developments than activates all the government resources to undertake the assessment under the Act.

• The National Controller has the powers to commandeer the private sectors or whoever he sees appropriate.

SUMMARY Key Focus Areas

(modern/unconventional engineering)

• Leadership and Partnership • In Country Political Position • Joint Action Plans and Policies – Goal Priorities • Planning, Development, Budget/Finance • Economics of Effective Prevention

Key Focus Areas (modern/unconventional

engineering) (Cont.) • International Disaster Response Law – Legal

Preparedness to Regulate and Receive Foreign Disaster Response – Food, Medication, Technical Assistance, Inappropriate Relief Items, etc

• Post Disaster Financing – Establish Trust Fund • Under strength at Local Staffing of NDMO • Resource Opportunities for the Pacific – Accessing

Financial Support

Key Focus Areas

(modern/unconventional engineering) (Cont.)

• Knowledge, Training & Education – Building Capabilities, Creating Competent Professionals, Professional Development, Capacity Development Beyond the Classroom

• Humanitarian Cluster Coordination – Health & Nutrition, Logistics (Shelter), Food; Security & Agriculture, Education, WASH

Key Focus Areas (modern/unconventional

engineering) (Cont.) • Operational Priorities – 1. rescue, casualties,

shelter 2. recovery, welfare 3. community wellbeing, economic recovery, recovery planning

• Situational Awareness – CRITICAL, media coverage & management, community resilience, leadership at ALL levels

Key Focus Areas (modern/unconventional

engineering) (Cont.) • Risk Trends, Drought : the Hidden Risk,

Global Efforts : the HFA effects (Gender & Public Awareness), Revealing Risk, Redefining Development, Reforming Risk Governance.

Engineers need to be proactive • Engineers need to better understand disaster

management and climate change and take leading role in the assessment of risks.

• Engineers need to engage with governments (Planning, Development & Budgeting/Finance), NGO’s, policy makers, donors, teaching institutions, development partners, banks/funding agencies, risk underwriters/insurance industry, developers, etc to improve preparation, response and recovery from disasters.

Engineers need to be proactive (cont.)

• Engineers need to understand the international, regional and local documents like the: Hyogo Framework for Action 2005 – 2015 (Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters), Global Assessment Report on DRR by the UNISDR, the Pacific Disaster Risk Reduction and Disaster Management Framework for Action 2005 – 2015,. the Pacific Islands Framework for Action on Climate Change 2006 – 2015 (PIFACC), etc.

Engineers need to be proactive (cont.)

• Others include the Millennium Development Goals (UN), Pacific Catastrophe Risk Assessment and Financing Initiative (PCRAFI), Global and Pacific Platforms, various Communiqués (e.g. current droughts in Tuvalu and Tokelau)

Engineers need to be proactive (cont.)

• Engineers need to contribute to National Action Plan/Joint Action Plans & Policies

• Engineers need to offer in state of emergencies e.g. PS offer - Cyclone Yasi, Queensland, September 2010 and February 2011 Christchurch earthquakes, Tuvalu and Tokelau droughts.

Engineers need to be proactive (cont.)

• Engineers need to seek assistance from NGOs e.g. RedR to Fiji 2009.

• SERIOUS professional support from regional and international professional engineering organisations.

Work in Groups – 3 challenges (each group to tackle all 3)

1. How can Australian engineers assist to build resilience into engineered systems in the Pacific and generally increase preparedness for natural disasters and climate change and vice versa?

2. In the event of a disaster how should engineers mobilise from Australia and vice versa?

3. What do Australian engineers need to know about working in small systems and vice versa?