Holistic Digital Resilience Ecosystem for Disaster and Emergency Preparedness, Mitigation and Response: Frameworks, Toolkits and Guidelines

Digital resilience has recently been elevated as a global priority for governments, development agencies, institutions, businesses, and society at large due to the vital and versatile role technology is playing to support the COVID-19 pandemic’s response, recovery, and rebuilding efforts.

This Industry Connections program focuses on the development of a framework that enables communities, villages, cities, regions, and countries to deploy architectures and select standardized technologies so they may address immediate and urgent needs during a crisis without sacrificing the long-term wellbeing and rights of people (their citizens, customers, and users) as a result of selecting a technology that will have negative impacts on privacy or agency. This important program resulted from the Building Digital Resilience for COVID-19 Pandemic Response and Recovery Webinar Series that IEEE SA hosted in collaboration with eWorldwide Group.

These efforts will help bridge the digital divide across and among countries at all levels to ensure that vulnerable communities with special needs are not left behind in a progressively digital world, where services and support are increasingly based on digital awareness, literacy, and access.

It leverages our collective portfolio and expertise to assess the current situation, identify gaps, and develop a targeted and implementable set of deliverables based on a foundational white paper, and including digital resilience profiles, ecosystem mapping, multidimensional roadmaps and standards, architectures to support adoption, while respecting principles of human rights, dignity, agency, and wellbeing in critical areas.

The main outcomes will be implementable deliverables, consisting of e.g., concrete information, frameworks, profiles roadmaps, architectures, and toolkits that, we expect, can be applied in cities or countries in both developing and developed nations. They will provide access to implementable knowledge and the ability to uplift villages’, cities’, regions’, and countries’ digital resilience across multiple aspects including holistically supporting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and economic resilience without requiring reinventing the wheel and the major investments associated with that. In addition, the entire IEEE SA will benefit from this program, as it resonates strongly with DIITA, ECPAIS, the Global Initiative, the IEEE P70xx series, Healthcare and Life Sciences Practice, Digital skills activities, and other related technical IEEE standards projects.

Ultimately, we see this as a concrete mechanism to advance technology for humanity by providing a suite of deliverables from the general frameworks to the implementable toolkits that is intended to enhance governments’ and organizations’ ability to provide services to their constituencies and customers through challenging circumstances (and by building resilience for crises, we also expect improvements for everyday).

To learn more about the program and how to join the Holistic Digital Resilience Ecosystem for Disaster and Emergency Preparedness, Mitigation and Response: Frameworks, Toolkits and Guidelines activity, please express your interest by sending an inquiry to the activity chair whose information can be found in the Contacts section.