Extreme climate events
Latin America is bearing the full brunt of climate change. Extreme events such as heavy rainfall, mega-droughts, intense heat waves, massive deforestation and rapid glacier melt are all cause for concern and call for global awareness and meaningful action. The World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) 2021 State of the Climate Report for Latin America and the Caribbean reveals deforestation rates in 2021 to be the highest since 2009, that Andean glaciers have lost more than 30% of their surface area in less than 50 years, and Chile’s mega-drought is entering its 13th consecutive year, the longest recorded in at least 1,000 years.[1] The figures are alarming and the consequences already visible: damaged infrastructure, displacement of the population, loss of human life, and a 2.6% drop in the cereal harvest for the period 2020-2021 in the region compared to the previous season. Extreme rainfall in 2021 in north-eastern Brazil resulted in landslides that killed hundreds, destroyed tens of thousands of homes and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. The economic damage associated with these events in Brazil is estimated at US$ 3.1 billion.[2]
[1]https://public.wmo.int/fr/medias/communiqu%C3%A9s-de-presse/un-nouveau-rapport-r%C3%A9v%C3%A8le-les-impacts-du-changement-climatique-et-des
[2]https://public.wmo.int/fr/medias/communiqu%C3%A9s-de-presse/publication-du-rapport-de-l%E2%80%99omm-sur-l%E2%80%99%C3%A9tat-du-climat-en-am%C3%A9rique-latine
Populations: the first victims
The first victims of climate change are the populations who find themselves in a critical humanitarian situation. The depletion of resources is an aggravating factor. In 2020, out of a population of approximately 590 million, 209 million people will be living in poverty. In addition to the effects of COVID-19, 88% of the 175 disasters recorded by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction during the period 2020-2022 were climate-related. They were responsible for 40% of the deaths. The populations of Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua were plunged into unprecedented food insecurity after the passage of hurricanes Eta and Iota in late 2020. In 2021, 25.5% of the population of these three states lacked food on a daily basis. Implementing measures for environmental sustainability and disaster risk management is now vital.
These include intelligence solutions. The Brazilian Federal Police, as well as some civil police in the states of São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro, constantly need to adapt to the strategies of criminal organisations. The safety forces are therefore interested in COMINT, OSINT and digital solutions.
The SISFRON (Integrated Border Supervision System) programme, designed to effectively monitor Brazil’s 16,000 km of land borders, uses digital, space and electronic warfare resources to control illegal flows between Brazil’s territory and that of its neighbours. Although ambitious, the project has so far received only R$2 billion of the R$12 billion needed to finance it, due to a lack of support in the federal Senate.[3]
The São Paulo Military Police Air Command (CAvPM) has medium-term interest in suits, helmets, winches and rescue equipment, and longer-term interest in an optronic globe and control tools for helicopter maintenance.
[3] « Monitoramento de fronteiras ainda é frágil por falta de verbas, aponta debate », Senado Noticias, 4 July 2019.
The role of safer, smarter cities
Action by cities is all the more essential as they are responsible for 6% of energy consumption, 70% of greenhouse gas emissions and 70% of waste generation. The UCLG (United Cities and Local Governments) has therefore called for the strengthening of the “Cities for Coexistence and Peace” initiative, in order to reduce crime rates and promote coexistence and social inclusion in the region’s cities. Along with emergency management and post-disaster resilience, UCLG calls for increased investment in urban development to create smart cities.[1] Faced with a continuous flow of Latin American citizens – by 2050, 85% of the Latin American population is expected to live in these urban centres – and the problems that accompany it (transport, waste, energy, insecurity, etc.), many cities on the continent have in fact embraced the smart and safe city over the last twenty years: the creation of the Ministry of City Modernisation in 2011 in Buenos Aires, the listing of Bogotá and Montevideo in the Top 10 global smart cities in 2015, a 56% reduction in crime in Mexico City thanks to a partnership with Thales, the installation of more than 1,800 video surveillance cameras in Vicente Lopez, a city of 24,000 inhabitants (by way of comparison, Paris has twice as many cameras, but for 2 million inhabitants), and the spectacular transformation of Medellín. Long considered one of the most sensitive cities in terms of security, the city has changed its face to the point of being recognised as “the most innovative city” by the Wall Street Journal in 2013. Now an international model of urban resilience, it owes its ‘reconversion’ to a relevant transposition of the fundamentals of the smart city to those of a safe city: improved transport to open up dangerous areas (light rail), social urbanism with the establishment of cultural centres in disadvantaged neighbourhoods by involving residents (e.g. Parque Explora), and emphasis on the knowledge economy with the creation of Ruta N, an incubator for local and foreign start-ups. While Latin American safe cities focus their efforts, like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, on visual technologies (video surveillance), their specificity is the significant integration of audio, used as a valuable complement and even an alternative to cameras or other IoT sensors. The city of Concón in Chile has thus set up a network of high-quality cameras and other sensors with integrated analysis and loudspeakers to detect emergencies and send warnings to its population in the event of earthquakes and tsunamis, thus helping the authorities to organise emergency evacuations quickly and efficiently. Similarly, in Mexico City, 10,000 loudspeakers can provide pre-recorded evacuation notification of severe earthquakes within 30 seconds of a crisis occurring. Between now and 2024, Latin America is expected to invest 660 billion dollars[4] in this area.
[4] https://www.uclg.org/sites/default/files/02_fr_cordial_document_dorientation_politique_1.pdf
[5] « Smart City : quels sont les besoins croissants de l’Amérique Latine ? », octobre 2020
NGO involvement
Environmental protection and the consequences of natural disasters on populations have led international and local NGOs to take up this issue. Many initiatives have been implemented over the past few years to mitigate the effects of climate change on the population. The NGO ActionAid is involved in peach tree protection projects in Bolivia. Droughts and frosts are hitting the plantations and harvests, which are increasingly scarce, jeopardising the food security of many families. The NGO wants to make peaches more resistant to climate change by proposing a more sustainable cultivation strategy. ActionAid has also restored 5,000 hectares of mangrove forest in El Salvador, an initiative that is almost indispensable because of the usefulness of these plants, which store a significant amount of CO2 but are under great threat.
Technologies to anticipate
The Japanese company Synspective, in partnership with the Japan International Cooperation Agency, has developed a project to use the company’s satellites to analyse changes in the Earth’s surface and reduce the risk of disaster. The SAR satellites’ ability to map areas, even at night or during bad weather, has led to the discovery of three hot spots in Guatemala that had never before been identified by local authorities. Some areas of Latin America are prone to earthquakes, such as Guatemala, Peru and Mexico. In Guatemala, a new warning system has recently been deployed. Quake Alert is capable of early detection and automatic notification of earthquakes originating from a 360° radius and whose epicentre may be several hundred kilometres away from the location where the sensor was installed. Since the first sensor was installed, Quake Alert has detected and reported 100% of the earthquakes in the Guatemalan capital. Peru, Mexico and all other countries with a high seismic risk could learn from this promising technology.
Reacting in an emergency
An autonomous turboprop platform that can be used to evacuate an injured person quickly, especially if they are in a difficult-to-reach area, is available from the company Zapata. The safety features of this platform allow it to move over steep terrain, in strong and turbulent winds. Its carrying capacity is 130 kg and its speed can reach 400km/h. COMROD France’s Tactical Communication Tool (TCT) offers dynamic planning that can quickly adapt to changing operational circumstances, while its sophisticated radio propagation analysis ensures accurate simulation of each communication link. A powerful map engine supports a wide range of geospatial formats, including vector road maps as well as several formats for raster maps and satellite imagery.
Guaranteeing food subsistence
Technic Export has developed a mobile field bakery, a solution developed to meet the needs of populations in emergency situations, regardless of the geography of the place and the climate. Mos Nutrition is developing foodstuffs adapted to extreme conditions and already labelled “Used by the French armed forces”. The foodstuffs are designed to feed people anytime and anywhere. They do not melt, freeze, crumble or cause thirst and can be kept for 18 months.
Emergency treatment
Airbus Defence and Space offers a complete operational medical chain that provides the best possible care anywhere and anytime, dedicated to external operations (during conflicts, humanitarian and development missions, peace restoration and peacekeeping). This solution comprises a set of medical telemedicine solutions based on Acetiam’s Nexus software. It enables multiple actors to exchange teleconsultation and medical imaging data reliably and securely. CTM thus avoids unnecessary medical evacuations where resources are scarce in the field.
“The death and devastation caused by hurricanes Eta and Iota in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, and the intense drought and unusual fire season in the Pantanal region of Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina, once again underscore the need for regional and international cooperation, since hydro-meteorological and climate-related hazards know no borders,” argues the head of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).