IGF 2023 - Day 0 - Event #203 Building Resilient Infrastructure

>> KEN KATAYAMA: Again, for those sitting on the outside, you're more than welcome to sit in here. Also, because we want to ask questions, it's easier for me to see you as well, too.  Thank you.  Now let us start this session. Let's get started on time. As I mentioned, for those who are on the outside, you're more than welcome to sit with us. 

So, I will be moderating ­­ wait, I don't know, I don't have to translate for myself, right? Okay.  So, for the benefit of non­Japanese speakers, welcome to Kyoto and welcome to the Building Resilient Infrastructure session. My name is Ken Katayama. I will be moderating in my role as the Keio University Global Research Institute role. My day job is I work for Toyota Motor Corporation, a mobility company, but today I'll be speaking in my role with Keio University. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be able to moderate this session.

We'd like to keep this session on schedule. I've asked my speakers to keep to eight minutes each. The Japanese delegation of Otsuka­san and Otani­san will be speaking 15 minutes, and on my right, will be speaking 8 minutes and then we have a speaker from Australia also speaking eight minutes. So, we wanted to provide opportunity for each of our speakers to be able to recomment on some of the other things that they've heard, and also especially give the audience an opportunity to comment.

So, if I may, Seth, are you ready to speak? While you're getting ready to speak ­­ and are you online, Seth?

>> SETH AYERS: (Off microphone)

>> KEN KATAYAMA: Can everybody hear Seth? Seth? Great. I think also we have to get your slide on the screen. We can hear your voice, but ­­ so, can you put up the slide of the first speaker, Seth, on the screen? Again, on my right here is Eric, Mr. Otsuka from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. He's on my right. And Otani­san from KDDI is on my left and Morita­san is over there. We have the slides up? We're trying to use some time.  So, it doesn't seem like the slides are up. I'm still going to use some more time. The reason why I asked my former colleague ­­ do you know her? She's really super sharp. She used to work at NISC, which is our cybersecurity agency, and also, she did privacy work at MIC before that as well, too. So, I know that she's probably in a right position to make a comment, because we want a comment.

So, Seth ­­ okay, Seth, why don't you start talking and we'll figure out the slides as we go along? Please.  Okay. 

>> SETH AYERS: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for this opportunity to participate in this discussion. And I'm sorry that I can't be there in person with all of you in Kyoto, but very happy to have the opportunity to participate virtually. My name is Seth Ayers. I lead Business Line in the World Bank that focuses on the nexus between digital technologies and climate change. And for the presentation today, I'll talk a bit about how we think about these issues, the overlapping issues of digital and climate change and resilient infrastructure in particular, as part of addressing the connectivity challenges that we're facing globally. And I see, it looks like my first slide, at least the cover slide is up. And actually, if you could please go to the next slide? Great.

So, I wanted to begin the presentation just by giving a bit of context with a couple of key statistics on issues about climate change that many people may be aware of. Certainly, climate change is impacting all countries globally, but for developing countries, the impact is far greater. And estimates that up to 130 million people will be pushed into poverty who currently are not in poverty, so they're above the poverty line at the moment, but because of these severe weather events, whether it's flooding or droughts, are going to be pushed into a poverty situation, and then we're going to also, the predictions are for massive migration patterns. So, significant changes to people's economic and social situations as a result of climate change. 

These challenges are particularly acute for Small Island Developing States, for reasons that many people would likely be aware. Because of their low­lying nature, they're particularly susceptible to a number of severe events, such as rising sea levels and intensified cyclones and hurricanes and storm events.

And on the positive side, the work that we've done has identified that if you do make an investment into making your digital infrastructure, or any sort of infrastructure in general, more resilient, that there's a massive benefit for doing so. For every dollar that's invested into making infrastructure more resilient, you actually get a $4 return. So, significant upside to making your infrastructure more resilient. Next slide, please. 

Okay. So, the other thing I wanted to flag was that many developing countries are recognising the significant potential of digital technologies. So, when we talk about digital technologies, it's telecom infrastructure, data infrastructure, as well as being able to use these technologies through digital skills. So, developing countries are recognising that digital technologies are going to be fundamental to both addressing our climate challenges as well as making sure that countries are able to adapt to these new dynamics and so, we did a review of the national determined contributions of developing countries, and you can see on the mitigation side that nearly 50% of the countries look at digital technologies as a key driver. And in the case of adaptation ­­ so, helping countries adopt to climate change ­­ nearly 75% of countries are putting digital technologies as a key driver.  Next slide, please. 

So, if we recognise that digital technologies are critical to tackling climate change and that we know we need to make this infrastructure more resilient, what are some of the challenges that we face in building this infrastructure globally? So, as we went through the pandemic and we were reliant on doing more virtual activities, in countries in which digital technologies existed, they were able to deliver services to their citizens at a rate of three times ­­ they were able to get services to three times the number of individuals than countries that did not have these digital technologies. So, whether you're dealing with a pandemic or severe climate event, having digital infrastructure is essential for service delivery.

Yet, there's about 3 billion people globally who do not have access to the Internet, so about a third of the world's population is not online, so that's a huge challenge, is if we recognise the power of digital, both for not just ensuring service delivery and helping people adapt to climate change, but also as a tool for helping high­emitting sectors like transport and energy, reduce emissions, we've got to address this connectivity gap and to do so in a sustainable and green way.  Next slide, please. 

Okay, so, at the World Bank, we're tackling this issue on two fronts. We have what we call Greening Digital, so ways in which we look at the sector itself. And this is ­­ I'm going to dive a bit deeper into some of the work we do here on resilient infrastructure. So, when we talk about greening digital, it's greening the digital infrastructure, both from a resilient standpoint on the adaptation side, and then also from a mitigation perspective.

So, the digital sector emits about the same amount of GHG emissions as the airline industry, so it's somewhere between 1.5% to 4% of global emissions come from the digital sector, so it's not a nominal amount, so it is important also as we talk about resilience today, also to see the sector as also a generator of GHG and how to tackle that issue as well.

And then, the other piece that we look at is Greening with Digital, and this is ways in which digital technology can help countries adapt to climate change, develop new tools, early warning systems, et cetera, that can make countries be better prepared to climate events. And then also to use digital technologies to reduce emissions in other key sectors, such as energy, transport, agriculture, these sectors that are very high emitters. How can digital technologies help to reduce those emissions? Next slide, please. 

>> KEN KATAYAMA: One more minute. Thank you.

>> SETH AYERS: Okay. So, I'll go through ­­ actually, if I could go to the next slide? All right. And actually, I'll jump into the country example, to Kenya, please. Next slide. This was just identifying some of the issues that telecom infrastructure faces, which are amplified as a result of climate change. So, next slide, please.  Okay, very good.

So, in the case of Kenya, so, Kenya has quite good telecom coverage. Nearly 100% of the population has some sort of connectivity to the mobile network, and it has a decent fibre network as well. It is particularly susceptible to floods and storms, and you can see from these pictures how it was impacted in 2022 as well as in 2023. Next slide. 

Okay.  So, what we've been doing with the Kenyan government is using GIS to be able to map all of the mobile network sites, particularly the base stations, and to overlay that data using flood prediction and to be able to then determine which base stations are likely to be impacted or could be impacted by floods, and then to be able to make assessments on what the potential costs could be in order to then make adjustments and to improve the resiliency of that mobile infrastructure. Next slide, please.

All right. And so, then, not just looking at it at the country level, but more broadly. This gives you a sense of at different stages of the telecom infrastructure, whether it's looking at international connectivity and submarine cables, steps that can be taken in order to reduce the potential threat or risk of climate events on this infrastructure, and this is where redundancy comes into particular play. And then next slide, then I'll wrap up. This just shows you a bit more on the details with the other aspects of the telecom infrastructure.

But maybe four quick things to wrap up on ­­ that developing countries are particularly vulnerable to climate change and severe weather events, so resiliency is key for telecom infrastructure as a driver for economic and social development.

Two, there's a high return on investment. $1 of resilient infrastructure investment returns $4. There's generally uneven implementation. Urban areas, high populated areas, tend to have better resilient infrastructure, but more work needs to be done on rural areas. And in order to do this well, you need to do proper risk assessments and then make sure that redundancy and diversification are part of your plans going forward.  Thank you very much. 

>> KEN KATAYAMA: All right, thank you, Seth. Again, I'll give you time afterwards also to reiterate some of your points, but I appreciate the global view as well as the explanation on Kenya.

So, from Kenya, we'd like to go to Japan for our three speakers from Japan, starting with Mr. Otsuka from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Otsuka­san. Five minutes, please.

>> YASUHIRO OTSUKA: Thank you for following my intervention. Good morning, everybody. My name is Yasuhiro Otsuka of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. I'm in charge of policies related to today's topic of how to make ­­ how to deal with increasing risks of natural disasters and keeping people connected. So now let me start my presentation. 

Seth­san just explained the risk due to climate change and Japan is a country prone to such disasters. Next slide, please.  Sorry.  Earthquakes and typhoons are typical examples of natural disasters that affect the communication services in Japan. About 20% of earthquakes with magnitude 6 or greater occur around Japan. Later, Morita­san will explain the effects of the earthquakes and efforts to recover from the damage. The typhoon may be related to the presentation of Eric's, but typhoons often cause heavy rain, flooding, and landslides and have huge impacts on communication services in Japan as well.  Next slide, please.

Here is an example of typhoon number 15 in September 2019. Very strong winds with the maximum instantaneous velocity caused a collapse of transmission towers and utility poles and triggered largescale power outages of up to 930,000 households in the total metropolitan area. Restoration of power took a long time, and as a result, many mobile base stations ran out of batteries and stopped operation. 

During the worst period of damage, as shown in the map, more than 2,000 base stations or mobile operators combined stopped operation. In Chiba prefecture, this is the total. Next slide, please.

As our daily lives and economic activities depend much more on communication services, the demand for continuous provision of communication services is getting even higher. So, MIC, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, is working closely with operators to ensure stable provision of communication services. The role of MIC is to set the framework to realize resilient networks, and operators are expected to build and operate resilient networks based on such frameworks. As you can see, the dotted line explains three examples of such frameworks. Next slide, please. 

So, first example, the first example is to set technical requirements of networks in the form of regulations or guidelines. In the event of the typhoon in 2019, which I mentioned earlier, prolonged power outages caused many mobile base stations to suspend their operations. In respect, MIC revised the technical standards and distributed that they should be able to operate for longer period, specifically as shown in the slide. Base stations covering local government offices are required to satisfy operation time of 24 hours or longer, and base stations covering prefectural offices are recommended to satisfy operation time of 72 hours or longer.

Based on the standards, 9,000 mobile base stations satisfy operation time of 24 hours or longer nationwide. And in addition, some 4,000 mobile power supply vehicles and portable generators are deployed.

>> KEN KATAYAMA: One more minute. 

>> YASUHIRO OTSUKA: And the next slide, please. The second example, cooperation of related parties ­­ that includes MIC operators as a government agency and local municipal authorities, and as a public utility operator's essential to deal with the natural disasters. So, MIC set up platforms to such cooperations.

Cooperations on electricity power, fuel, and cooperation on restoration of obstacles blocking roads are being implemented. For example, the information on the prospect of power restoration, communication operators can manage their mobile power supply vehicles more effectively to avoid suspension of operation. The next slide, please.

This is a final slide of my presentation. Studies are being conducted at MIC to realize impact of roaming in the event of natural disasters and network events. It is expected that users of carrier A, who have stopped operation, will be rescued by the network mobile phone carrier B. Studies are under way to realize inter­carrier roaming by end of 2025.

I explained three examples of the role of MIC to set frameworks to realize resilient networks. Now I will give the floor to Morita­san and Otani­san of KDDI, talking about what they have done in the past and present to make their networks resilient and also to recover from the damages promptly. Thank you for your attention. 

>> KEN KATAYAMA: Thank you, Otsuka­san. They will be speaking in Japanese. So, Morita­san.

>> MASAYOSHI MORITA: I'd like to speak in Japanese. I'm from NTT. So, I'm in charge of disaster control at NTT Group, and I'd like to talk about past disaster response and what we are doing to strengthen our disaster response capability at the NTT. Next slide, please.  This is today's agenda.  And this is one example of how we responded to a past disaster. And I'd like to talk about the new disaster response capability.

As Otsuka­san introduced, Japan is very much prone to natural disasters.  And today in Japan, we experience the largest ever earthquake, greatest Japan earthquake, and I'd like to take this as an example to explain what we are doing. So, this cross shows the magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit this area with this epicenter on March 11, 2011. Then, after the earthquake, we had a huge tsunami hitting the area, causing a lot of damage. Next slide, please. 

So, this is looking at communication infrastructure and how it's been damaged. So, because of tsunami, there was a power outage and 385 NTT buildings were damaged due to power failure. And then, 16 such buildings also were impacted by the tsunami. And telephone poles, 28,000 of them were damaged, and 1.5 million fixed lines were also affected by the disaster.

Next. So, this is about the recovery of damaged buildings. So, up until two days after the disaster hit, the batteries and also generators were used to maintain the power supply. But then, at the fuel cells, those which powered those things could not be supplied or procured any longer. Therefore, we still have 385 being affected on March 13th. But at around day 50, we were able to recover the function of almost all of these buildings. 

And now I'd like to talk about how we provided services to the affected people. So, we used portable satellite station or moveable base station vehicle for mobile services, and we were able to supply services to the affected people in the affected areas. And we also ensure communications so that people can check up on each other, whether they are safe or not.

So, we had 122,000 units of public telephones, which were open for people's use, free of charge. And also, we installed temporary public telephones, 4,000 of them. And then, the commercial power was not supplied any longer, so we set up batteries, and also we had generators to supply power to power devices. And we had also power supply vehicles in order to secure the communication.

So, this is looking at the recovery of transmission lines. They were buried under ground. But as you can see from the photos, together with the railway line, they were swept away by the tsunami. And therefore, we established 11 electric poles in order to recover the transmission lines.

So, now I'd like to talk about how we are trying to strengthen our disaster control capability. Next slide, please. 

So, first, about relocating NTT buildings. So, we confirmed where they are, and those areas which may be hit by tsunami or flooding, we relocate those NTT buildings to the higher ground. So, that's what's been done.  And another one is ­­

>> KEN KATAYAMA: One minute more. 

>> MASAYOSHI MORITA: Another is transmission cables, wherever they are in the tsunami­prone areas, they are relocated to inland routes. If they are attached to bridges, they can be swept away from the flood, therefore, they are now buried under ground.

Now about the drones. Different types of drones are being used, small and big. And then the big ones are used for laying tow cables or doing investigation from the air. The small ones are checking cables under bridges where spaces are narrow and small.  And we use a variety of tools. On the left­hand side, we use the weather forecast information. So, we have weather forecast. And in those areas which may be hit by disasters, we dispatch people in advance in order to have early recovery from the disaster. On the right­hand side, we have centralized system for digitalizing power outages so that we can have efficient running of the recovery work.  And this is my last slide.

And this is about disaster control training.  Day by day, we are having simulation on the table, or we have hands­on training, or we have joint training together with the Self­Defense Forces, so that in the event of a disaster, we will be able to have the recovery work quickly. So, as I have already explained, under the disaster situation, we'd like to secure the communication services for the people. And for the early recovery from the disaster, we are making efforts. Thank you. That's all from me. Thank you very much.

>> KEN KATAYAMA: Thank you for your detailed explanation.

>> TOMOHIRO OTANI: This is Tomohiro Otani from KDDI Corporation. Let me explain to you our connectivity in the case of disasters. Please go to the next slide. 

So, in order to prepare for disaster and maintaining the access environment, we have prepared for this locally and globally. In terms of the local operation in Japan, we have 12 network centres all over Japan. Our main centre is Tokyo, in Tokyo and Osaka, and it's dual operations for residencies.  In the case of global operation, we have Tokyo, Asian part and European part, the time difference from day to day.

And today, we would like to introduce our recovery mechanism for in the case of disaster to pinpoint, to handle the situation and get people on site.  We are equipped with a very brand­new gears from ICT sense, and this is the disaster recovery tool, which indicates how we monitor current situation and how we assign the people who do the network failures.  And also, we have a dashboard for disaster countermeasures, collecting from various data. And we can easily assign people to onsite, considering the current situation of the affected environment. 

And also, we have a disaster management system based on big data as well. We collected a bunch of data from network resource ­­ network equipment, traffic, operators, and so forth. And we can easily understand what is going on and what will go on in an environment. 

And also, operator on site will utilize smartphone, like iPad types of gear, but in case of disaster, the communication and services is also out of services. So, before going to the site, they download various information to their devices, and they can still utilize the information even on site, where the communication service is no more available.

>> KEN KATAYAMA: One more minute, please.

>> TOMOHIRO OTANI: And also, we have a drone to monitor remotely. We can get the information to even movies so we can effectively manage/understand what happened in the areas. And we can send the people who fix the network failure from land, sea, sky, as well as space.  Basically, we introduced starting brand­new Starlink technology to be available in case of disaster, so this is new information.

And lastly, we keep training ourselves, thanks to other public sectors and municipalities locally, even internal. So, we hope we can provide relief from connection and make you smile. This is the end. Thank you very much.

>> KEN KATAYAMA: Thank you so much, Otani­san. Thank you. Let me give the clicker to Eric. So, Eric from Philippines. Thank you. 

>> Eric SANTIAGO: All right. Konnichiwa, everyone. My name is Eric Santiago from PLDT and Smart. So, before I start, I wanted to ask if you are familiar about the Philippines having 7,107 islands? And that depends if it's high tide or low tide. So, aside from that, we are also typhoon­prone country. There is approximately 20 typhoons entering our area of responsibility every year.  So, just saying that, it is crucial, it is critical for us to have resiliency embedded in the design of our network.

And because of that, I wanted to share one of these awards. Smart is the wireless arm of the LDD. LDD is the Philippines Leading Integrated Telco company. So, this was MWC, where we were awarded the Philippines' Fastest and Best Mobile Network. Having the best mobile network not only includes this, but the resiliency of the network during the time of calamity.

We are doing various things to help with the tooling –-

energy­efficient solutions to further enhance the customer experience and also to promote sustainability. So, we have deployed a lot of solar on these sites, to be able to reduce power consumption and also help the environment.

We have accelerated our rollout, not only on the macro sites or outdoor sites, but also on buildings to further enhance our services. But one thing to note is that really the disaster resilience.  We have been supporting the United Nations Office of Humanitarian Affairs mandate on how to support subscribers, especially during time of disasters. By doing so, we have promoted some of these products, particularly, the Emergency Cell Broadcast System. This is the first one that we deployed first in the Philippines to ensure that we will provide prompt alerts to all the subscribers prior to any disasters.  We have been providing some of the Smart Satellite.  Just like my colleagues here, we also provide resiliency through satellite backhaul during time of calamity, especially when the terrestrial sites are damaged, are not functional. 

We provided a lot of text broadcasting and a lot of support during time of calamities. In that way, it is important for us that during and after the time of the disaster, we will be providing some hotlines, smartphones, SIM cards, and all of those free communication access to our subscribers.

We have recently deployed this, and it became very popular. It's a one­stop emergency comms kit that will include a solar panel, smartphone, satellite phone, Wi­Fi, a megaphone, a whistle, a flashlight, and a lot of emergency comms training. This one here really saved a lot of lives. 

Aside from that, Maging Laging Handa is a word for always being prepared. So, we have caravan teaching around the nation on how to be able to be prepared in times of calamities and what's the first thing to do. As I mentioned, we have to reiterate, building a resilient network in embedded in our design. We have transport network that only, not only in the Philippines, but also submarine cables that we have resiliency, so in time of fibre cuts, that we will have other routes to be able to continuously provide connectivity. We are expanding them to almost 1.1 kilometres right now of the fibre network. 

Our Emergency Operations Centre is always ready to be able to provide services during time of calamity. The last one that we got, by the Super Typhoon Rai in December 2021. It was around Christmastime where we had deployed a lot of our supports by land, by air, and by sea, just to be able to provide connection during that time. 

With that said, I would like to highlight this one. This is an outstanding award from our National Response Cluster, highlighting that it's truly been a partner during time of disaster by utilizing a resilient network, that no Filipino will be left behind during this time.

And with that said, I also would like to show you this video to summarize everything that I said. Thank you. 

(Music)

>> ERIC SANTIAGO: Thank you so much for the opportunity to present and share with you some of the initiatives we're doing to deliver the resilient network to our fellow Filipinos in the Philippines. Thank you.

>> KEN KATAYAMA: Thank you, Eric. Good presentation also. I think we have Dr. Tara Konarzewski online. I don't believe we'll be able to do our briefing. I was asking our speakers from the World Bank and the Philippines and yourself for eight minutes each, then to provide an opportunity for the audience and also some of the speakers to recomment as well. So, if I could ask you kindly to wrap up by about 12:48, our time, 12:49, I think if you're in Australia, I guess that's about 2:48? So, I give the floor to you, Dr. Konarzewski. Thank you.

>> TARA KONARZEWSKI: Great! Thank you very much. There we go! Is that working? Can everyone see my screen?

>> KEN KATAYAMA: Yes, we can see your screen.

>> TARA KONARZEWSKI: Great! Thank you very much. And thank you for having me here at the Forum today. All right! In the interest of time, I'll get started.  As in many parts of the world, Australia has experienced its fair share of extreme weather events in recent years, and the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has noted in recent reports that this warming is likely to continue.

The effects of this warming, in particular, were demonstrated during the Australia 2019­2020 summer, when large parts of the country were severely affected by bush fires. These bush fires resulted in tens of billions of hectares of land being destroyed, destruction of thousands of properties. Tragically, 33 lives were lost as well, including the death or displacement of an estimated 3 billion animals.

Since then, the succession of La Nina weather events has caused significant flooding, impacting many communities across Australia over 2022, and flooding has affected the everyday lives of many Australians with many parts of the country, such as Sydney, experiencing its wettest year on record.

I'll just quickly go through these slides. So, obviously, everyone in the room is aware of the impact of telecommunications from these disasters, such as fires and floods. And I'm sure everyone in the room is also well aware of the impacts on communities. So, in the interest of time, we'll just pass through.

Before I cover the key actions that the Australian government is taking to improve the resilience of telecommunications against disasters, I thought I'd just provide a general overview as to what the government's role is when it comes to telecommunications disaster resiliency. So, under Australia's federal government structure, the Australian government is responsible for telecommunications. This includes responsibility for managing policy and regulatory settings for the sector, as well as providing grant funding to encourage certain activities, such as expanding mobile coverage in regional and remote areas.

However, in Australia, it's our state and territory governments, of which there are eight, that are primarily responsible for responding to disasters. Australia's telecommunications carriers are likewise responsible for the direct operation and maintenance of their networks. This means that when a disaster occurs, telecommunications companies will typically work directly with the relevant state or territory government, in accordance with the emergency management arrangements within that jurisdiction.

The Australian government's main role in this context is, therefore, to help prepare the sector to respond and assist with recovery from disasters. Now, this is just a general overview, and in practice, the state and territory governments will often work with the sector to help prepare them for disasters, such as by involving them in emergency planning.

Likewise, the Australian government, more broadly, provides assistance to telecommunications companies on occasion, when it's necessary. So, for example, the image up on the screen there is during a severe flooding event that impacted the northwest coast in January 2023, where floodwaters destroyed a major arterial bridge, which contained fiber­optic cables. This caused major outages. And in response, assistance was provided by the Australian government in the form of the military aircraft to be able to get those technicians across the bridge. 

So, in terms of what the Australian government has been doing to help prepare the sector for disasters, there are a range of actions that have been taken. Recognising the serious impact of the 2019­2020 bush fires on Australia's telecommunications network, the government has been implementing resiliency improvement initiatives through four core missions, which I'll go through now.

The first is the Mobile Network Hardening Programme Round 2, which is delivering around 1,000 mobile network resiliency upgrade projects across regional and remote Australia. So, Stage 1 provided $13.2 million to upgrade battery backup power to a minimum of 12 hours at 467 base stations. Stage 2 provided $10.9 million for 532 resiliency upgrades. Over 461 of these upgrades have been completed so far, and they've included the installation of permanent power generators, increased battery reserves, transmission resiliency upgrades to protect against outages, and site hardening measures, such as protective screening to protect sites from the potential sites from the impact of embers radiational flames.

The second is the satellite programme that has fixed centres and fire service depots across Australia. While many of the facilities already had fixed line connections, this way, we can keep our emergency personnel connected and focused on the emergency response. 

The third element is the temporary infrastructure deployment programme, which is expanding the availability of portable assets, such as cells on wheels and portable satellite kits, which provide temporary coverage for any disaster. 

The final element is our communications programme, which has been involved in developing communications material and other resources for stakeholders to use in an effort to improve general community awareness and preparedness for outages during disasters.  All of these projects have had a real impact in improving the availability of telecommunications during natural disasters to date and simple messages can help communities and tourists prepare and know how to get information and get help, such as our radio broadcasting services. 

For example, during the March 2022 floods, temporary facilities were able to be deployed to evacuation centres in flood­affected areas across the state of New South Wales, which provided critical connectivity for evacuated residents in their time of need. 

Another example of this was during major flooding in the State of Victoria, when the communities of Bemm River and Marlo were isolated both geographically and in their connectivity with both communities being able to access the Internet through satellite services, which were installed in the months prior. So, while these examples have made a material difference, it is clear from more recent disasters that the threat posed is ongoing and that more needs to be done to improve the readiness of Australia's telecommunications infrastructure. 

In acknowledgment of this, the Australian government recently announced the Better Connectivity Plan for Regional and Rural Australia last year. The plan forms part of the Australian government's Telecommunications Agenda, and is providing more than $1.1 billion to rural and regional communities in Australia.  The plan includes $656 million over five years to improve mobile broadband connectivity and resilience in rural and regional Australia. And as part of this, the Better Connectivity Plan includes $100 million in funding for additional measures aimed at further strengthening resilience against natural disasters. 

>> KEN KATAYAMA: One more minute, please.

>> TARA KONARZEWSKI: Thank you.  So, of that $100 million, there's two programmes that are included in that. So, the first one here is our Mobile Network Hardening Programme Round 2, and our second one is the Telecommunications Disaster Resilience Innovation Programme. And if anyone would like any more information on either of those two initiatives, my contact details are up there on the screen. And thank you very much for your time today. I really appreciate it.  Thank you. 

>> KEN KATAYAMA: Well, you had 30 more seconds, I think, doctor, but I appreciate you wrapping up. Thank you so much. I appreciate all of my speakers keeping to time. As promised, I left ten minutes for questions, also maybe for some follow­up. I do recognise, since Tara and Seth are online, in the audience I have some colleagues, Ms. (?) from the National Institute for Communications and Technology, as well as Dr. Komiyama from JPCERT. I'm sure they have good questions and comments. But before I point out them, Seth, do you have something that you wanted to add that you weren't able to cover in your presentation?

>> SETH AYERS: No, I'm good. I think I'm able to cover everything I needed and look forward to the questions. 

>> KEN KATAYAMA: Great.

>> SETH AYERS: Thank you.

>> KEN KATAYAMA: Thank you. 

>> I thank you very much. I will speak in Japanese. So, I would like to wait for questions. 

>> KEN KATAYAMA: What about you, Morita­san and Otani­San?

>> Yes, I will be waiting for questions as well. Thank you for the opportunity. No further comments.

>> KEN KATAYAMA: Right, okay. So, what about you? Was there anything you wanted to add before, because you still have 30 seconds left?

>> TARA KONARZEWSKI: No further comments from me. Thank you.

>> KEN KATAYAMA: Okay. Great. Thank you.  What about you, Sugimoto­san?

>> Thank you for the impressive presentations. I'm from NICT. I work with development regarding cybersecurity, and we always use (?) with disaster prevention and disaster control when emphasizing the importance of cybersecurity and incident handling. 

So, I have a question for Tara­san about Australian measures for disaster control. Do you have any training or exercise mechanism with operators for the disaster control? Because I always feel it's difficult to, you know, raise awareness and prepare beforehand, when nothing has happened. So, thank you.

>> TARA KONARZEWSKI: Thank you for the question! Yes. Unfortunately, the way that the government is structured, with the federal government having a very separate role to our states and territories, the way that we engage with our telecommunications industry is probably a little bit different to some other countries around the world, but we do engage on a case­by­case basis when events do happen. Obviously, there is engagement between the governments or the jurisdictions in Australia that are affected and the telecommunications industry. But it's my understanding that there is some planning that does go into certain events that we can predict. Obviously, Australia as a nation, we do suffer from bush fires and floods, and they do happen at particular times of year, as experienced by many countries in the world. But if you would like to send me an email, I might be able to follow up with a few more specific projects. Thank you. 

>> Thank you so much.

>> KEN KATAYAMA: Thank you, Tara. Thank you for the question. If you have a microphone, if you could identify yourself.

>> AUDIENCE: Hello. I thank you all for your talks and presentations. My name is Jerrell James and I represent Koala and Internet Alliance. I have a question for Seth. You mentioned $1 in investment would do $4 in return, but it was a little quick and unclear as to kind of the metrics behind that. Then my next question is for the kind gentleman from the Philippines, if you could just speak to how you educated the population on the importance of communications resiliency. These would be very valuable. Thank you. 

>> KEN KATAYAMA: Thank you. Seth, would you like to take the first question?

>> SETH AYERS: Sure.  In regards, that data point comes from a report that the World Bank published. I believe it was 2019. It's called "The Lifeline Report."  I don't think I can put in the chat, but I can send. But if you were to search for "Lifeline World Bank Report," it was on all infrastructure, basically looking at a variety of critical infrastructure, then doing evaluations. There's also a number of really interesting country case studies on different types of infrastructure, in addition to telecom specifically. But the one in four is in reference to overall return on investment for resilient infrastructure.  Yeah, so, it's ­­ it's often referred to as "The Lifeline Report."  So, if you put in "Lifeline Reports World Bank," it should pop up in your search engine.

>> Jerrell James: A follow­up. Is this similar to the data used by Net Blocks to calculate particular regional shutdowns or Internet blackouts and how they would affect the economic situation on the ground? I don't know if you know Net Blocks, but netblocks.org is using a lot of open-source data, but I didn't know if some of it was coming from the World Bank.

>> SETH AYERS: That's a very good question. I'm not sure of those details. The map that I showed for Kenya is based on open-source data. So, we do do a lot of work in country with open-source applications in data in order to do some of the evaluations. I'm not sure specifically on that piece of it, but we do publish ­­ most of our data is available online at data.worldbank.org.

>> KEN KATAYAMA: Thank you. Eric?

>> Eric Santiago: All right. Thanks for the question. So, educating our constituent is a continuous journey, but let me divide it into three segments, right? Number one, online learning. So, we are developing short videos to clearly showcase how and what to do during time of disaster, and we distribute that through our channels online, our websites, and via text messages.

Second item is really, we use caravans to go through specific areas to do face­to­face learning, right? Because some people are not that tech savvy that you need to really show it to them and demonstrate, and that's very powerful.

And the third one is really informing the youth of today, in our country, to ensure, to encourage and teach their grandmas, grandparents, and parents in their family. In that way, it will be a continuous learning for everybody. Thank you. 

>> KEN KATAYAMA: So, are you satisfied with the two answers? Is that okay? All right.  I work for a company, called Just in Time, so, there's two more minutes left. So, if there's no other ­­ if I could ask you to keep your question within two minutes. So, please, I'll give you the microphone, if that's okay, to you. Is there a microphone over there? So, if you could quickly identify yourself. 

>> Japanese, right?

>> AUDIENCE: No, no. My name is (?) I'm from Kazakhstan, and I just have a question for the Japanese group. I'd like to know the current situation ­­ I mean, in common situation, the percent of coverage of Japan and average speed of Internet for common time, because your presentation was about emergency time, and I don't know about common time. 

>> Hello. Thank you very much for your questions. We are not sure the exact number or the percentage of coverage and the average speed of Internet access, since there is a difference between mobile and fixed services. And also, even between 4G and 5G, there are service quality difference.

Currently, Japanese operators are eager to construct 5G network for Japanese nationwide. I believe, recently, more than 90% are ready in terms of 5G, I believe, but MIC decides to find the exact amount there.

In terms of 4G, we believe that 99 point something, but the number is really a fraction depending on the time and the day and the year, so, please confirm the website. 

>> AUDIENCE: Okay, thank you. So, you have no problems resilience in common time?

>> KEN KATAYAMA: So, maybe if we could use that question after the session. I'm going to stop now. Thank you. So, thank you. So, it's 1:00. As promised, we are finishing on time. Seth and Tara, thank you very much for participating from overseas.  Thank you. And thank you, everybody.  So, if we can give all of us a hand of applause for participation. Thank you! Thank you.