 We're here at GET 2016 in Kuwait, and this is the second global forum on emergency telecommunications. I'm very pleased to be here with Mr Cosmos Zava Zava, who is chief of department of project support and knowledge management for the telecommunication development bureau of ITU. Cosmos, thanks so much indeed for taking time to be with us today. Thank you. This is the second global forum on emergency telecommunications. The first was in 2007. So, I wanted to ask you is quite a distance between the two in terms of time. Why now, why is this conference important? It is all about timing. We emerged out of the tsunami in 2004 and then went on in 2005 to hold the yoga framework, which is the United Nations conference on disaster risk reduction. We adopted certain outcomes that needed to be implemented, and you know each of the United Nations conference on disaster risk reduction lasts about 10 years. So, we have gone past that, and in between we had major, major catastrophes. Going back to the EIT earthquake, which was massive, the Chile earthquake, Cyclone Agis in Myanmar, the earthquake and the tsunami in Japan, the earthquake in New Zealand, and all over the world. So, it's about time for us to look back in the review mirror, and in fact, it so happens that last year we had the Sendai conference, which was the fourth United Nations conference on disaster risk reduction. We came up with measurable targets, and we think it's about time to go to this conference, and it does coincide also with the adoption last December 2015 with the sustainable development goals by the United Nations. Now, I know that you've attended a number of the places where disasters have happened, and you've seen the effects of disasters at first hand. I wanted to find out from you for people who really aren't aware of the key elements of emergency telecommunications. How do emergency telecommunications help when a disaster strikes? The sad thing is that most of the affected areas that experience devastation happen to be the poorest. So, the least developed countries bear the brunt. A case of a hit again, compared to Chile, because the disasters happened within two months, but the earlier disaster in the least developed country, which is Haiti, was seven on the retail scale, while the one in Chile was eight. But the number of deaths, the economic destruction, the displacements were less in Chile than in Haiti. So, that is the situation. Communications is critical. Connectivity is critical, but when disasters do strike, sometimes they destroy the capacity for people to communicate. So, we make sure that we take communication systems to those places, even those that were connected before. So, connectivity is very important for humanitarian actors to coordinate their actions on the ground for the government to make sure that the population is well informed for letting the population to evacuate and avoid deaths and also people being maimed. So, it is quite critical for particularly saving human lives. Now, this is a forum with a lot of stimulating discussion. I know that you were moderating a ministerial round table this morning on better preparedness and effective response for sustainable development. How can we be better prepared? How can countries be better prepared? I think we suffer also from this syndrome that if you put money in an insurance company, it's money which is going to waste. So, preparedness is like an insurance. You have to set aside money. You have to do business continuity plans. You have to set up warning systems. You have to do rehearsals, drills and exercises with the population. You have to make sure that you have a robust, redundant, resilient telecommunication network that can withstand external shocks, particularly natural disasters. Then you would have, of course, a backup system. If everything fails, you must have a way of communicating. That is critical. For us, in order to maximise and optimise the use of resources, we make sure that economic development takes into account disaster management. So that when disasters do strike, you use the same systems that you have invested in for development and immobilise those for reacting and responding to disasters. So it's quite critical for us. What, to you, is the most effective response for sustainable development? I think we are worried. We are all worried. The small and developing states are worried. We in the humanitarian sector are worried and in the technology sector because you can use technology to some extent, but you can't control nature completely. So we think using satellite communications, remote sensing, geographical information systems and other such systems, we should be able to monitor the environment. And we should, above all, preserve the environment because that is critical. This is why when we had a meeting in Paris on climate change, it was emphasised again and again that we have to preserve this planet. We only have one and we have to make sure that we preserve it. And then what we have to do is to make sure that we build the capacity of governments, government officials of the population, technology companies, humanitarian sectors, non-governmental and individuals and communities so that when disasters do come, they are not surprised. They know what to do, when, where to go, when and when to come back. What do you hope will be the key outcome or outcomes of this particular forum? This forum is critical for us because they are imaging technologies, particularly if you look at big data. We just concluded a project for West Africa on Ebola and then we are expanding it to the rest of the world because there are new epidemics that are imaging. And some epidemics are actually resistant to current medicines because of climate change and we think technology can actually help to educate the population but also to reduce transmissions of such diseases. So we can tell by using big data exactly where the trends are going and we can also tell the health authorities to curb the spread and transmission of such diseases. So we think that is critical but there is also another imaging trend of Internet of Things, the communication between machines. So we call it machine to machine communication. We have to understand, we have to let the population understand it. When a drone is up, it's not necessarily signaling warfare. It could be helping to access certain areas that have been affected by the disaster and where people are trapped. And you can hear why resolution photography which shows you exactly where the person is. And that is very important. As technology is the image, we have to embrace that technology. We have to put in place standard operating procedures that are related to that specific technology. And what good is technology if the population doesn't understand and know how to use it? So that's why we are here. And as you can see we have a huge exception and they are showcasing the latest technology. And what a way of sharing information. Cosmon Sabah Sabah, thank you very much indeed. Thank you for having me.