Enhancing regional digital preparedness on natural hazards to safeguard business resilience in the Asia-Pacific

Abstract

In March 2015, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) enforced during the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction. The SFDRR does not just succeed spirits and values of the Hyogo Framework for Action, but also leads the world entering a new phase of disaster risk reduction through stakeholders at national, regional and global levels. Among all regions around the world, the Asia-Pacific is the most vulnerable to natural hazards and climate changes. Disaster risk reduction (DRR) is critical concerned in terms of national security, economic quality growth, environmental sustainability and people’s livelihoods. For regional consideration, a large-scale disaster could direct and indirect impact more than one countries due to the damaged or interrupted supply chain. Therefore, regional efforts on DRR have been a focal issue. After the 2011 Great Japan Earthquakes and Tsunami, an emergent global trend of developing strategy to strengthen global value chain or supply chain resilience via business continuity planning (BCP) approach engages the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and the multinational or international corps to limit interruption and enhance cross border manufacturing, trade and investments. Base on the practical DRR project implementations and experiences over the years, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) identifies several key factors to promote disaster resilience in business sectors. The SFDRR also encourages innovation, science and technology DRR approaches i.e. big data and open day can help sharing the value-added information on enhancing capacity building of SMEs’ disaster resilient capacity via decent risk communication tools for raising the risk awareness and level of digital preparedness. This paper describes to what extend the business sectors involved in and how to safeguard the cross-border trade and investments with safer and smarter regional strategies in the digital age with large-scale disasters.