BlackBerry offers to help in climate crisis management
With a climate crisis battering the Philippines, paired with a booming yet fragile cyberspace, millions of Filipinos are in for a rough ride.
Heavy rains continue to trigger widespread floods across the country, coupled with strong winds causing structural damage, not to mention the highly controversial substandard or “ghost” flood water projects.
The scenario of typhoons after typhoons has been keeping the populace of several regions wide awake for months.
Based on last year’s World Risk Index, the country was still the most disaster-prone nation for the 16th consecutive year, as it continued to suffer from a series of natural events like typhoons, earthquakes and droughts.
Filipinos are seemingly stuck in a loop. Well, aside from ensuring quality infrastructure builds—what more should be done?
For Canada’s BlackBerry, a previous king in handsets now focused on software services, the hard blows can be softened if the government invests in crucial digital tools meant to beef up disaster preparedness and secure communications.
“Rapid digital growth, exposure to espionage, frequent typhoons, flooding and earthquakes create a unique set of challenges that strain services, displace communities and affect the economy,” Chris Ullah, Global Business Development lead for Emergency Services at BlackBerry, tells the Inquirer.
And Ullah says a common mistake across the world is “waiting until after a crisis to act.”
“The real value comes from being ready before the next incident,” he adds.
Zeroing in on disaster response
The official stresses that the first few hours in responding to a crisis, such as typhoons or even quakes, are crucial.
“[It] has to be fast, coordinated and secure. The real cost is not just economic. It is lives lost, families displaced and critical infrastructure damaged,” Ullah says.
“As the scale and intensity of extreme weather increase, so must the ability to respond.”
At times like this, immediate and clear communication can save lives.
When telecommunications infrastructure providing traditional services is affected, the government must explore other channels to ensure that communication remains intact.
Ullah shares that BlackBerry has a solution for this, dubbed AtHoc, which provides mass alerting with incident management.
“So decision makers can deploy teams quickly, receive live updates from the field and adjust plans as the situation changes,” he says.
“It remains active for the entire duration of an incident, helping all agencies work from the same information. That means you can protect people during the emergency and also speed up recovery so life gets back to normal faster,” Ullah says.
AtHoc can be linked with agencies tasked with meteorological and drainage systems for early warnings and forecasts; central disaster operations and control centers; rescue teams; welfare and health; law enforcement; and public works for infrastructure assessment.
The crisis solution can also be integrated with drones for real-time aerial intelligence, automatically sharing images and video with responders, hospitals and government departments.
“In a time of increasing digital disinformation, trusted technology and trusted sources must be at the heart of how we anticipate, communicate and coordinate in a crisis,” he says.
Ullah says that BlackBerry AtHoc has already been tapped by the United States Fema (Federal Emergency Management Agency) Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, Canada’s National Alerting System and Malaysia’s National Disaster Agency for such purposes.
The other threat
Beyond typhoons, the government also needs to brace for a silent danger brought by criminals hiding in the dark corners of the digital space.
In April, the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency reported that there were 234 data breaches in “high-level” government agencies this year. A number of sensitive information were also exposed to the dark web.
The official says that BlackBerry has been in touch with the government, which has shown “strong interest” in its solution.
The company’s AtHoc has the capacity to protect even the most sensitive controlled unclassified information to support government operations and data, Ullah notes.
Its presence in Malaysia has been vital for the government there as BlackBerry solutions have been used “extensively for national and international cyber threat intelligence sharing,” including police response and high-stakes communications, he narrates.
“As Malaysia hands the baton to the Philippines to lead Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) in 2026, there is a strong opportunity for best practice sharing across the region,” he says.
“This is especially important when hosting world leaders during high-profile events like the Asean Summit,” Ullah adds.
While storms continue to brew—whether natural or digital, solutions exist to lessen the impact on Filipinos.
“Lessons are often learned after each disaster, but afterthought can only achieve so much as risks rise. Whether it is extreme weather, major outages or cyber attacks, critical event management and secure communications cannot be left to chance,” Ullah says.
