UPDATES ON GDIN2004, March 26-29 2004
Venue: US Department of State, Washington, DC and the Hilton Hotel,
Mark Center, Alexandria, Virginia
Chairman: Mr. Larry Winter
Roeder, Jr., MS, Policy Adviser on Disaster Management, US
Department of State, IO/SHA.
Official Report
GLIDE
Disaster Identification Program (a GDIN initiative), is
announced.
Participants
Background
The Conference offered numerous plenary and parallel
sessions heavily emphasizing audience interaction to better
IDENTIFY and RESOLVE real disaster information management
issues.
Significant opportunities were provided for academia,
industry, government, private and voluntary organizations, and
UN/international organizations to exhibit wares and services.
A highlight was post-conference field trips to federal and
local disaster centers.
New topics were the Native American Disaster Network,
cosponsored by OECD, Paris and Animal Welfare, as a tool to
reduce poverty, hunger and disease in refugee situations in
the developing world.
The State of Virginia (the host State) donated the services
of five honor secondary public school students as
interns. The students were provided to help participants with
any legitimate need, take messages, help prepare papers, do
essential errands. Each of these students esd already been a
Page in the US Congress and is considered to be on of the top
students in the State of Virginia.
The George Washington University in Washington, DC
also provided a group of top Graduate level students to
act as note takers for each panel. These students were already
studying disaster management and were of enormous assistance
to panel Chairpersons in their efforts to develop professional
reports on conference accomplishments.
The Tampere Convention on the Provision of Emergency
Telecommunications figured strongly in the conference.
It is a legally binding international instrument aimed at
helping relief workers bring telecommunications equipment
across borders during and after an emergency, with a minimum
of difficulty, and then use the equipment with safety and
security during the crisis.
The Convention also recognizes the sovereign interests of
States Parties and the need to provide protections to host
governments against political and other potential
abuses. The Tampere Convention was unanimously adopted
by the delegations of the 60 States participating in the
Intergovernmental Conference on Emergency Telecommunications
(ICET-98), hosted by the Government of Finland in Tampere,
Finland, 16-18 June 1998.