This document discusses how smart villages that utilize decentralized infrastructure, ICT, and community engagement can help build resilience against shocks like natural disasters. It provides examples of how smart village approaches helped communities in Nepal, West Africa, Tuvalu, and Pondicherry recover from disasters and stresses the importance of maintaining infrastructure, integrating policymaking, and accounting for unintended consequences of new technologies. The document suggests a smart decentralized approach to rural development and disaster recovery could be lower cost and increase self-sustainability and resilience compared to centralized models.

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SMART VILLAGES & RESILIENCE
Nov 2016
Bernie Jones

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SMART VILLAGE
■Decentralised
infrastructure
■ICT & networking
■Innovative remote
service provision
■Community
engagement
■Economic & social
development

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SHOCKS
■Natural disasters
■Economic
■Conflict
■Health
■Infrastructure
failure

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NEPAL
■Infrastructure
failure
■Social capital
■Traditional
knowledge
■Everyday resilience
■Build back better

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WEST AFRICA
■2014-16 Ebola
■Lack of comms/
access to expertise
■Delayed response
■>11,000 lives
■>22,000 orphans
■>$2.2bn

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TUVALU
■Stretched supply
chains
■Infrastructure
damage
■Appropriate
technology
■Capacity building
■“Hardening”
solutions

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PONDICHERRY
■Swaminathan Village
Knowledge Centres
■ICT/networking
■Peer-to-peer &
external knowledge
■Collateral benefits
■>90 lives saved

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SINGAPORE WORKSHOP FINDINGS
■ Build social capital
■ Capacity building
■ Information
■ Accumulated assets
■ Environmental stewardship & indigenous knowledge
■ Physical infrastructure
■ Decentralised energy
■ Innovative access to services
■ Communication: early warning & recovery
■ Health & lighting

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SINGAPORE WORKSHOP FINDINGS…
■ Maintenance of infrastructure, not just construction
■ Resilience part of everyday discourse
■ Consider wider context
■ Unintended consequences
■ New risks inherent from new technologies
■ Integrated policymaking approach
■ Little “real-world” experience and evidence

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POLICY SUGGESTIONS
■ Providing centralised rural infrastructure & services is
■ Expensive, slow & often low priority
■ Rural disaster recovery has similar challenges
■ Disasters, natural or manmade, are inevitable
■ Smart decentralised approach can be
■ Lower cost, self-sustaining, technology-leapfrogging
■ Also increases resilience
■ Strategic priority?

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 Rural disadvantage
 Disaster prevalence
 Energy-dependence
 High costs
 Rural development
 Energy security &
independence
 Community resilience
 Regional approach
IN THIS REGION

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Thank you for your attention
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