 Welcome to the Global Symposium for Regulators 2019 here in Port Villa, Vanuatu, where I'm very pleased to be joined in the studio today by Ria Sen, who is Preparedness Officer for the Emergency Telecommunications Cluster Technology Division of the World Food Programme. Ria, welcome to the studio. Thank you so much, Max. It's a pleasure to be here and in Vanuatu. Ria, perhaps we can start off with talking a little bit about the simulation exercise that you carried out here at the GSR. You carried out a similar one at another ITU event, GET in Mauritius. Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about it. Sure, Max. I would be happy to. So we had around 300 participants from all over the world with a sizable number of the regulatory community represented as well as national governments. And the objective of our simulation, which was run by the Emergency Telecommunication Cluster, the ETC of which I am a part, was to actually help regulators to understand the criticality of their role and also the value of regulatory frameworks and interventions in different phases of the disaster management cycle. So through that exercise, the objective was for regulators as well as the wider ICT community to determine what were the roles and functions in a disaster scenario and how they can actually improve their systems, frameworks and capacity to be able to meet the needs of disasters. Because regulators are not usually on the front line when it comes to an emergency. Absolutely. But their role is absolutely critical. And in terms of the exercise itself, how do you think it went? Well, we had a few chats with a couple of the participants post simulation but also we had some wonderful interventions during the simulation which lead us to believe that the participants were very much satisfied with the content but also had a lot of new directions to think in. And I think that the way that we structured the exercise following the preparedness, impact and response phase helped regulators and the ICT community to understand their role at each stage of the disaster. So pre-disaster at the preparedness level when the disaster actually strikes and then post-disaster in terms of what actions and impact it might have on the community at large and what they can do to mitigate this. Talk us a little bit through how the simulation exercise was devised. What steps did the participants take? I know there were QR codes that they needed to log into and things like that. Perhaps you could just give us a brief insight into that. Sure. So essentially the simulation was centered around a tropical cyclone, a fictitious cyclone that we call T.C. UTI and we devised a fictitious country around that called the Lovely Islands. And these countries have some kind of similar configuration to countries that might be in island nations that are very vulnerable. So I think that that might have had some resonance with a couple of the participants coming from vulnerable small island developing states. And also I think that the way that we decided to structure the exercise was in a little bit of an innovative way, noting that we had about just an hour to run the exercise. So the idea was to prepare a few regulatory themed scenarios to pose thinking questions oriented around different phases of disaster management. And we then suggested different options that the participants might choose and they could use their internet-enabled devices to be able to vote in real time. And it was a really fun activity as well because all the participants were using their devices to convey their views and no answer was right or wrong. Each answer is just a question of situational perspective and I guess regulatory priorities. And that's something which came out a lot in the result discussion following the app and the poll. And what do you hope people will take away from this exercise? Well I think that the exercise ultimately points at the fact that regulatory frameworks and systems cannot be developed in isolation with understanding the bigger disaster management ecosystem and then working across different sectors within the national government but also with the private sector to be able to also harness the potential that innovations in technology have to be able to meet disaster risk. Mr. Hemal, thank you very much for joining us in this studio and we look forward to catching up with you again in another simulation exercise. Thank you so much Max. Pleasure.