Please give a warm Georgia Tech Welcome
to our guests Mr Becker

thank you.

Good afternoon.

To everyone thank you what a wonderful
turnout I especially want to

extend my thanks to the sponsors of.

This afternoon and the wonderful
invitation to be here today which

originated at a talk that I gave up
in Boston recently last year and

it was just terrific to be able to
come along so thanks to the Center for

Health and humanitarian systems especially
enjoyed lunch today with P.R. and

Julie and the Institute for leadership and
entrepreneurship as well as the others so

it's wonderful to be here
today what I'm going to.

Teach or does the same.

Way it worked OK I guess I'll end it that
way so today what I'm going to do for

the next you know forty five minutes or
so and make sure there's time for

questions is to talk about a bit
of background on disasters and

resilience from my perspective and I'll
explain a little bit more about what my

perspective is I'll talk a little bit
about how government governments and

companies respond to disaster but
in particular I.B.M..

And I'll give you a few examples of
disasters what we've done over the years

and then maybe punt have
paid a bit on what's ahead.

So.

Disasters what to say you know they're
not very pleasant things I don't

know how many of you might have been
affected by a disaster certainly I grew up

in California and there were a couple of
small earthquakes along the way I managed

to escape the large events but you know
they they affect so much the disasters

that are occurring these days run
the spectrum from climate based disaster.

In fact I'm going to refer to my my notes
to make sure I get the statistics right.

Eighty seven percent of
disasters in two thousand and

fourteen were related to climate but
there are disasters that are manmade there

are there is terrorism there are fires
which may or may not be related to climate

there are earthquakes which are certainly
the sign of the earth the active

earth that we live on there
are cyber disasters and

so the field of disaster response is
getting more and more complex and

the impact of these disasters
is beyond comprehension.

So we're all dealing
with this I think that

we're all aware of the more extreme
weather that's happening and

the fact that that is producing
situations that are incalculable.

So you know there are a couple of charts
here there's some good data that comes out

of a database called and
which comes out of Belgium and so

I'll give you three sort of snapshots
of the the particular scenarios

that you know that that have existed
over the last fifty five years in terms

of deaths disasters damage and so
forth so the number of deaths from

disasters in fact I feel like maybe
I missed a slide here yes there we go

sorry I pressed too hard to total number
of disasters that's quite a trend line

you may not be able to see the legend but
the bottom green is Africa

the Middle dark blue is America's Asia is
the yellow Europe is the light blue and

Oceana is the pink that's the that's
you can see that this is really a.

Something that is being faced worldwide
and is quite quite challenging the total

number of deaths now actually I'm going to
give you two slides on this because that

outlier in one nine hundred sixty four
relates to a significant drought.

In India that killed
millions of people and so

it's hard to see the actual scale
as a result of that one outlier but

now if we get rid of that you can
see that in other years the number

of deaths to disaster is
quite significant there is a.

Two thousand and four is the Asian
tsunami two thousand and ten is

the Haiti earthquake two thousand and
eight is the CCE one earthquake in China.

One nine hundred sixty I think that
this was a drought in Africa so

there's a lot of impact out there.

There we go total cost of disasters you
would expect this trend to be to be as it

is and you know the cost is borne by
countries that can't that are low and

and lower income countries so for instance
I will say that the loss of human life

is shown by realizing that
eighty percent of people killed

in natural disasters are from low and
middle income countries.

The top five countries for
disasters are the U.S..

China India Philippines and Indonesia.

Now separate three of those countries
are fairly large an area so

maybe there would be more disasters and
in a larger country

two of those countries obviously are very
small the Philippines and Indonesia and

yet they are among the top to the top
five you know these countries

are on the ring of fire they are they
are Philippines in particular has seven

thousand disasters a year they are right
in the path of typhoons that build

in the Southern Pacific and head had to
the west so countries that you know these

countries have to get used to something
that's pretty hard to get used to and yet

they you know they deal the Philippines I
have a great deal of respect for how the.

They do their disaster response
a couple of other things to point out.

How they.

As the population grows on the planet
people have always settled where there's

water so
coastlines rivers lakes that's normal

as cut the population grows
the populations in those areas continue

to increase as well and yet flooding
is accounting for more than half of

the natural disasters that's because these
areas where the populations are growing

are experiencing stressors in
terms of how the water can.

Exist in that space especially if there's
engineering that attempts to change

the flow of water of rivers or
or or dams you know in

some ways that eliminate some of
the natural buffer zone that would

at one time have been able to absorb
some of the water that that is coming in

in fact two of the recent disasters we've
been that we've dealt with Typhoon Haiyan

in the Philippines and Superstorm Sandy in
the U.S. One of the things that's kind of

interesting about them a comparison is
that they both were massive total storms

that happened to funnel right
into land formations on

the coast of that that acted like a a
funnel from which the water then could not

leave in the case of Typhoon Haiyan
it hit the area of talk low bond and

a you know the water surged in flooded
the area and then could not leave and

it was it was it was as if you were you
know shooting from a massive hose at

the highest possible volume the force of
the water that came into that area just by

virtue of where the storm hit so
as flooding occurs more and more.

You know the stressors on those
populated areas are increasing the last

thing I will say is that especially
in terms of cost of disasters.

Countries.

Could invest eight billion
dollars a year annually and

save as a result about three
hundred billion dollars annually so

this is the cost of risk management this

is the cost of preparedness and
the payoff is in the form of response but

countries globally are having to
reserve three hundred billion dollars

in order to deal with the effects
of disasters that will occur so

it's very hard to to understand the scale
and the scope of what we're dealing with.

So I've been dealing with disasters for
a very long time kind of

watching my brother's
you know mix you know.

Where I came from how I got here I grew
up in California as I said I got a degree

from the University of California at Santa
Barbara and history degree history isn't

really a degree that you think of as one
that will catapult you to success and

I didn't catapult me but I owe a lot
along the way I was able to use what I

learned with my history degree in terms of
how I think how I research how I analyze

how I communicate I like to think
that really we're all thinkers and

we're all writers no matter what we
do in our professions that's how we

present ourselves that's how we that's
the impression that people formed

from us our ability to communicate our
ability to write our ability to think so

certainly I gain that
from my my background.

As a with a history degree I
worked at the Smithsonian for

several years certainly ten more than
ten gentle to my history degree but

then I kind of moved away into what
I guess I would call production.

In a software environment I went to spend
across software a small home market

one of the early home market software
companies and it up at Lotus.

And from Lotus I was developing
training materials and

I started volunteering at night to teach
nonprofits how to use Lotus one two

three software which they were getting for
free from the new philanthropy program at

Lotus Development Corp several of us
banded together to invite nonprofit

staff members who were getting this free
software and who didn't know how to use it

to come to Lowe's facilities get a bunch
of volunteers who maybe weren't very good

trainers maybe we had Xerox copies of
training materials maybe we funded what

fumbled our way through sonar use and
sample spreadsheets but they loved it and

over a couple of years we trained
several hundred nonprofits and

then the director of plantar P who
had just been hired came to me and

he said Well I think we need to bring
this in-house we need to make this

a real program so he hired me to do
what I've been doing Isabelle and

here so you know that's a cat's
kind of a cool story I think.

I like the story and my story and
from there I started.

I taught myself to program in Lotus Notes
because that was the platform we were

using for all of our enterprise
solutions I created applications

that manage volunteers I created
an application that allowed employees to

participate in our workplace campaign
I created an application that allows

employees to get work release time for
volunteering and these were all you know

enterprise applications that people could
could go into notes and use and tied to

back and system so I was self-taught when
it came to that kind of programming so

when Lotus was bought by I.B.M. I had
enough technical skills to be able to.

Move into this culture from a company
of six thousand to a company

at the time maybe three
hundred seventy five thousand.

Quite quite stunning but it worked so

I got into disaster response about ten
years ago because we were focusing on

integrating philanthropy with
the business and integrating.

Business with philanthropy we were saying
to ourselves as corporate citizenship and

corporate affairs we were saying what is
it that we are doing in our grant making

with nonprofit partners and governments
that the business could leverage can

the business in selling to customers
interest to the customers and

the fact that I.B.M. has a corporate
social responsibility history and

a corporate social responsibility set of
values and practices that actually sounds

a lot about us as a company and
then what can we as citizenship do with

the solutions that the business is already
selling can our nonprofit to use those

can we make can we make them available
as grants to our non-profits we decided

a long time ago that we don't want to give
cash and we sold the laptop business so

we didn't have laptops to give so
we really began to focus in on how to give

our core capabilities our technology
our expertise our services our

offerings to our nonprofits that is
the foundation of the citizenship work and

grant making we we have we bolster
that with volunteerism and

then disaster response became
something that that really grew.

So our view of disaster response and
resilience by resilience

it is how to have improved
the ability of a city to adapt and

this city any city any population is
going to experience two things chronic

stressors and acute events and
resiliency is the ability to

withstand that now think about yourselves
you know who had a cold last week.

That's an acute event but who has you know
who doesn't sleep very well over time

that's a chronic stress or every human
being experiences these two things

every city every organism every country
resiliency is our individual ability and

collectively our abilities to withstand
to adapt to stressors So you know.

Militancy of course relates to
disaster because you have an event

you know there is there is
a big thing that happens and

after the event there
is the response phase.

Response is also to go into these little
bit more about you know responses so

how do we how do we meet the immediate
urgent critical needs and

how do we begin to come back to some kind
of level of functioning recovery is how

do we restore services and get livelihoods
back and get infrastructure back and

get housing back and then mitigation
is how do we do it better so

that the next time the disaster
happens we have new standards in

place we have prepared we have allowed
ourselves to become more resilient so

that it won't be as bad next time that
takes investment obviously and that's

that's that's tough and that preparation
is how do we make sure that people

are aware enough of the kinds of disasters
that could occur and in some way or

another are able to be ready more ready
than they might have been before.

So a couple of thoughts on those cuts
are corporations get involved in in these

phases and I'll talk more about how I.B.M.
gets involved in a bit

you know corporations lot of corporations
give their core competencies so.

U.P.S. they give plane
flights to get tense

to a flooded area their people
are on those planes their people

load the planes their people load the you
know get get the materials from supply you

know from from other corporations who want
to donate so that's what U.P.S. does they

do that really well as a business and they
do that really well in disaster response.

So after and companies they will give
bottled water or bottled water companies.

Home Depot will give construction
supplies OK So I.B.M.

Well we are a cognitive computing and
cloud platform.

Company.

Why do we give Well this
is what's evolved over

ten years over twenty years we've actually
done fifty two disaster responses

in thirty three countries
since two thousand and one and

those have been small disasters like
a mudslide where the local citizenship

manager might mobilize some people some
volunteers to go help run a shelter or

the big disaster response is
like the typhoon and the.

And the earthquakes so

fifty two of those and we give our core
competencies we give our technology and

our solutions and we have a certain way we
do that I also want to just mention one

thing about cities and how they're looking
hard at resilience this fascinates me

I live in Boston outside Boston there
is a program you may have heard

of from the Rockefeller Foundation called
one hundred resilience cities has anybody

heard of this few people yeah it's
a program that is designed to

help cities selected cities one hundred of
them across the world focus on resiliency

in a new way the funding includes
hiring a chief resilience officer

in Boston the chief resilience officer
is Dr Atiya Martin she has done

something really interesting and maybe
this is being done in other cities but

I do I haven't heard of it she's
focusing on how resiliency relates to

social factors that make it very
difficult for an individual

to be resilient when individuals can't be
resilient communities can be resilient and

a lot of those social factors
elderly disabled people of color

poor people people who
can't access services.

Those turnout those are obviously civil
rights issues to what she is saying

is that in order for resiliency to be
able to advance in Boston the Congress.

Sation about race has to be opened up so
she is for

creating a framework in
which raise as an underlying

issue an underlying conversation
an underlying factor must be surface and

addressed head on in order for communities
to begin to recognize where opportunity

is it needs to be improved for the for the
populations are affected by these social

factors once that begins to happen
once these civil rights and

these opportunities and
these divisions are looked at and

begun to be corrected then resiliency
in a more classic sense can grow

I think that's terrific work and
bears watching and

is definitely a part of the you know
as resiliency you know grows so.

If only preparation were easier you
know so there was a flood predicted

this guy built in our you know he put a
lot of animals on it that's a nice example

of a pair of preparation but
it's pretty it's it's not

something we can count on so
the stages of disaster.

Preparations at the bottom you know
preparation in the bottom on this chart

it's preparation is about using what we
learned before using data using analytics

using modeling to understand what might
happen and what the effect will be.

Predictive tools.

And that's that's core to
what we like to do but

it's very hard to do as much of it as we
would want to go back up to the top so

relieve the response phase during and
immediately after it's where's my

family where my friends where am I where
do I get food where do I get shelter where

about where my pets you
know how do I find my how

do I get my prescription filled if I've
lost my medical documents these are the.

Aspects of response which have to
be addressed by first responders.

And you know as an example after the tough
hope who earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

I.B.M. tried to work with we did work with
a couple of the prefectures the states

within this trick within Japan where
refugee camps are being set up

looking at how to help
the elderly populations.

Ensure better health outcomes elderly
people have a horrible time in

refugee camps their health that
the health declines are so dramatic for

elderly people in refugee camps
that it's very it's very sad

the what we tried to do what we created
wasn't a wellness center that allowed for

race as a system that allowed for
information about elderly people in camps

to be tracked by doctors so they could
specifically target elderly people and

try to improve health outcomes so
that was a good example of During

immediately after an earthquake
part of sorry the earthquake and

tsunami about our response recovery
is restoration of infrastructure and

social systems after Hurricane Sandy
we worked with the New York City

small business services which is
the administration that supports small and

medium enterprises and we conducted
a series of workshops using our S.M.B.

tool kit which is a compendium of
information about for small small and

medium business that are small and medium
enterprises to help them develop and

grow their businesses so those workshops
were made available to hundreds of

small business owners over time by
the New York City small business services.

Mitigation as I said you know
restructuring how you do things so

that you do a better we gave a grant
recently to an organization in

England called
Building Resource Exchange that

organization was trying to
establish new standards for real.

Building housing because when you have
a major disaster and the housing goes away

what do you do you put it right back
up using the same materials and

same codes the same standard sometimes
it's even worse because you're so

anxious to get something built so how so
this group was trying to establish

new standards that could be applied
after a disaster and also in

Christchurch New Zealand the earthquake a
few years ago was so devastating because.

The city was built on unstable ground and
liquefaction occurred and

basically it all turned to quicksand and
the so what they're trying to do in

rebuilding is to establish better
building practices that allow for

foundations to be stronger for the entire
foundation of the city to improve.

So.

The U.S.
government is encouraging resilience.

Fema.

The National Science Foundation that
Institute of Standards and Technology I

also found.

This example of resilience I
was looking around online and

look what I saw Georgia Tech defined
as resilience I thought well that's

you know that's that I read
the story was amazing so

resilience comes in all forms right so
what we do at I.B.M.

we practice innovation that matters for
the world this is one of our three

corporate values innovation that
matters for our company and the world.

In the end what we do is focus on certain
societal issues so I've been talking about

disaster response that is one of several
societal issues that we try to address

in our grant making in our volunteerism
in our pro bono service projects

in all of our programs so those issue
areas you see there in the on the on

the left Education Workforce
Development Environment Health social

service veterans.

Stem pipeline you thought your
printer ship and employment women

are imbedded throughout all of this we are
looking at all sorts of opportunities for

women entrepreneurship so these are the
issue areas we care about we take our core

capabilities analytics cloud
consulting mobile social Watson and

then we come up with solutions such as you
see on the right there I will mention P.

Tech is a wonderful
program that stands for

pathways in technology early
college it is a grade nine through

fourteen model that adds two years
to a high school program but

that two years produces allows the student
to graduate not only with a high

school degree but
with an A as in a technology field and

that program comes with not only
the high school classes and

the community college level classes but

work experience mentoring it's
a partnership between I.B.M.

community colleges and K. twelve.

So.

That's that fall.

But P. tech started in New York State
New York City and it has expanding and

by the end of this year we will have sixty
schools using this nine to fourteen model

in New York state Rhode Island Connecticut
Maryland Colorado Australia so

this is a model that is expanding
That's why I mention P.

Tech because as an education as a company
that cares about education this is this is

a a program that is really
making a difference so.

Our humanitarian work really does exist
across all four phases I think that where

we really shine is in response and
recovery.

And so I'll give you let me give
you four examples in response.

After the net Paul earthquake
a team of I.B.M. arose from I.B.M.

India went with the Government of
India with the representatives

from the government to Kathmandu to work
closely with the government there in

identifying missing missing persons
especially Indian citizens who

were affected by the border
regions where the quake occurred.

To duplicate data to cleanse data so
that people could be found and

we also immediately helped deploy
an open source software package called

Sana has anybody heard of
Sana here that's great so

hot it is an open source disaster
management application it was

created right after the two thousand and
four Indian Ocean the South Asian

tsunami which killed two hundred eighty
thousand people right after the tsunami we

sent a team of I.B.M. or to various
countries in the affected regions and

ensure along there was a group
of developers coders opensource.

Aficionados some of whom had been
with I.B.M. they got together and

they said the devastation is so bad in
Sri Lanka there are so many thousands of

people missing we don't have any idea
how to manage the situation nobody does

the government does the government does
not N.G.O.s everybody was paralyzed

this group of developers concocted
a disaster management application

that they called so Honna which is
the sin how these word for relief and

it contained a missing person registry a
shelter registry a volunteer registry and

N.-G. O. registry and
they put it together in two weeks and

we were there we contributed to
the requirements and cents then we have

helped deploy Saana as a free and
open source product owned by

the SATA Software Foundation not by I.B.M.
we have helped deploy Zaha to using I.B.M.

volunteers and probably a dozen or
more disasters.

Sense probably more like twenty so that's
what we do in response we have I.B.M.

technology that we deploy as well but

I want to give you that
one example recovery.

We have after hurricane

after the typhoon in the Philippines we
gave a major solution to help them with

recovery I mentioned that show you
a slide on that in a little bit.

Mitigation.

I've mentioned a couple
of examples already of.

The kind of work strategic thinking that
really has to happen around mitigation

including the building
Resource Exchange and.

I know I gave you another example and
it slipped my mind but and

preparation is a little tough so people
have said to me Well why don't you just

deploy these solutions around
the world you know and

have them ready Well that's
a little pricey you know

how do we peg we could pick this city in
the disaster would be over there then it's

kind of like all that was pretty helpful
and we you know we are strategic grant

making our grant making is you know we
have a budget we need to give grants or

strategically work with partners that
we have good relationships with and

that we know are ready to receive
the grants that we offer so

we can't just sort of cover the world with
our solutions that's just not practical So

the way we do preparation is
through a grant offerings in our

impact grants portfolio that focus on

training nonprofits in how to prepare for
disaster and

focus on helping cities do an assessment
of their resilience so there is a a.

A U.N. initiative called
the international strategy for

Disaster Risk Reduction I and our and

it how it has produced many
you know much thought leader.

Ship and convening ziran resilience
as part of that they have something

called the ten essential centrals of
resilience and you can you can look it up

on the web there was ten in ten pillars
of how of how to find resilience I.B.M.

and a company called eight created a.

So resilient scorecard it's free and
open source and

any city can use this scorecard
to map their own resilience and

to understand where they need to focus in
order to become more resilient across all

cities systems and processes excuse me.

So we have taken that scorecard and

produced a consulting services Grant
out of it we sent a team of I.B.M.

was down to Puerto Montt Chile and
since the southern part of Chile.

Excuse me.

It's a port city it's right against
the mountains Chile of course has many

earthquakes tsunamis so
they asked us to give them this and

gauge where we would go through a very
rigorous process with them to measure

their resilience across those ten
essential six we can gauge meant.

Lots of workshops lots of
engagement was city people and

at the end they had they were
amazed at how we were able to help

them overcome the political boundaries
that often exist between city agencies and

bring people together so that they can
start to collaborate around resiliency so

that's that's a critical part of
what we do what we're trying to do.

So our strategy our activities
in our portfolio for

disaster response you know some of our
major events since two thousand and

ten are there on the left maybe kind of
hard to see but it's the Haiti earthquake

the Chile quake the Japan quake
the Superstorm Sandy the Tunku quake.

And the able a crisis in
the Nepal quakes and sense that.

We've been dealing with the migrant crisis
in Europe and we're now dealing with

the flooding in Chennai India
which occurred in November and

December I want to point your attention
call your attention to three things

impact Grant offerings and custom grants
strategic partners and influencers and

I.B.M. volunteers so.

Impact Grant offerings and custom
grants are I B M impact grant program.

Is how we make grants to the world we
made four hundred fifty grants last year

where the market value of about fifteen
million dollars to non-profits schools and

governments around the world these grants
range from Project Management workshops

all the way up to strategic plans website.

Assessments the urban disaster
resiliency assessment that I mentioned.

And technology roadmaps lots of different
offerings plus custom grants so

in the case of disaster
one of our custom grants

recently was a mobile application for
and in Italy

that is dealing with the migrants that are
coming on the shores in southern Italy so

our grants are how we deliver
those core competencies and

services including cloud hosting some are
called solutions strategic partners and

influencers are who we work with
we don't go to a government and

say well this is what we think you need
because that would be that's a little

paternalistic we are we
go to those N.G.O.s and

governments just like we go to our clients
and say how can we help what do you need

what is what are your pain points what
are you experiencing and of course

after disaster who has time to have a long
conversation like that because everybody

who's involved with disaster in a in an
area is off responding to the disaster so

it's a circuitous route to get to those
influencers and those government people

and those NGO leaders and those thought
leaders and those people who would know.

We can help but we were pretty persistent
and it may take us a couple of weeks or

a couple months you know depending upon
the situation to really figure out how we

can help but we but we are devoted
to that finally I.B.M. volunteers.

So when the migrant crisis was really
exploding last year I heard from a woman

at I.B.M. She said Well my family is a
refugee family I've been working at I.B.M.

for years I'm from Syria I'm passionate
about this issue I've done research I've

spoken at the UN I know this
stuff I have to somehow

networked with about one hundred other
I.B.M. or as who are also refugees and

migrants or have families in that
status and we want to help and

I have no idea what to do I got these
hundred people and now they're saying well

how can we help and I don't want to do so
so will you come to the right place so

we figured out how to engage these hundred
people and we haven't used them all

they haven't all been involved in our
projects but they have gotten involved in

creating voluntary activity in their own
communities to support incoming refugees

and migrants that's the that's the focus
of what I.B.M. does in supporting

voluntourism our ongoing community
initiative allows people to volunteer

the way that they are passionate in
areas that they care about we offer

lots of volunteer opportunities
that we organize as well but

it's really up to the I.B.M.
are to figure out what do I care about and

how do I volunteer and
that's how we support them.

This reinforces what I've been saying I'm
not going to go into great detail here but

you can see there is there are a lot
of extra help partners and

influencers these are the people
we worked with in.

A crisis and Superstorm Sandy and

these are some of the capabilities that
we brought to the table as well and.

So now I'm going to tell you about
a few solutions that we have

that we have delivered and so
these are some of the case studies and

then you notice that this is.

Scuse me and then we'll stop for questions
and I'll get my little boys a rest.

So after Typhoon Haiyan we.

As I mentioned on that whole middle
part of the north part of the country

was completely devastated and in fact
what's so hard to realize is that excuse

me.

So the Philippines was good at disaster
response they know how to do it when they

saw the storm coming they created
depots of supplies throughout

the area that was going to be affected by
the storm with food and water and shelter.

And then the storm hit and
the flood the storm surge was so

much greater than expected and
the where it hit that land mass and

got caught everything flooded all their
depots were basically washed away so

they're sort of like well you know what do
we do now because the whole area is under

water and we can't even get in supplies so
a few things.

Happened we immediately started talking
with them we had great relationships with

the with the government in Manila and
we decided that what we could offer and

they wanted was an intelligent operation
center for emergency management an I.B.M.

solution it contains
It's basically a Imagine

a dashboard fad that by data sources.

Public data sources data
on hospitals data on.

On roads data on police data on.

Schools data on traffic data on
water the more the water supply

the electrical grid this is all data that
can be represented in a in a dashboard and

imagine that dashboard is a map OK So
mapping us that's pretty typical these

days but what the intelligence operations
center for emergency management or

IO C.E.M. offers is a way for
that data to come in on the map.

Displayed in different layers and
then be used in a what if scenario so

you can predict it before
a disaster comes you can.

Manipulate the assets that you
already have in the system and

put in various what if scenarios what if
the flooding is one meter deep What if

the flooding is two meters deep What
if the what if the storm hits here and

not here how do you know how do we deal
with this population of people how do

we get them out what are they so
the what if scenarios the inside

can be gained from analytics is what
makes the I.O.C. I'm really powerful so

all of this this solution is
what we delivered to them and.

We were able to incorporate into it
some communications technology so

that right after the disaster they were
able to get out into the field and

use a and marry together
the disparate radio and various

types of communication channels that were
all kind of going past each other and

competing there were able to basically
marry them into one user interface so

that kind of communications technology
right off the bat and then the I.O.C.

for I.O.C..

For them for later response and
recovery was really a powerful solution.

And fact now I'd like to
show you a brief video so

we could put on the first
video that would be

great.

We're just.

Going.

To be.

There are people just running
out enormous after a car.

Or hope you are.

Going to.

Talk.

To them whether.

You tell me their work or

what we think.

We're When it comes to business or.

To have a heart.

To heart.

For our sister or.

We're.

Just asters over the actual business or.

In collaboration with our other.

Operations that very.

Few.

That are or.

Are.

You getting laid off or
not will be here by.

Your butt or
look at it up in a couple of hours

available to you very for that.

Very sharing.

Your move to.

Restore.

Thank you.

So.

What.

And we go back to.

The Spencer So let me just give
you a couple of other examples and

number stop we'll stop for questions so

that was the I.O.C..

Disaster.

OK So this is where I want to be.

Thank you.

So for it Paula we.

Worked with two we had two
major grant approaches

actually three one is we worked in
Nigeria we gave MacLeod solution to allow

their health problems health professionals
to collaborate on ensuring that that

the disease did not spread in Nigeria
we worked with the UN mission for

emergency response or
one mare to provide them with some data

strategy planning because they
were struggling to understand

data that was available in the three
affected countries and then finally.

In Sierra Leone a bunch of researchers
in Africa worked on a solution

that allowed people to in Sierra Leone
in the rural areas to use S.M.S.

to communicate and
also a health helpline to S.M.S.

to communicate with officials
about their experience with a bola

We then ran analytics on the data
that was coming in through S.M.S.

and we were able to then do two
things One is we were able to.

Notice trends in the information
that was that people were

expressing their beliefs about a blow
up much of which was incorrect their

their experience the you know the impact
on them and then community leaders and

officials authorities were able to then
construct better communications to try to

inform the population about Ebola in
a way that reflected what what was being

heard from that we also ran an open
data jam to try to identify all publicly

available data on the web about about
the three most affected countries

data which it turned out that leaders in
those countries did not know existed so

this open data jam we actually had
occurred over several several events in

several cities volunteers open people
open government open data enthusiasm.

Found data and
then put it up on a website and

then that data was made available
to city to country leaders.

In Nepal we.

Mentioned that you know we already helped
the Government of India in Katmandu

we also have been working and will
continue to work with an NGO called Nepal

rise or rise and I Paul I can't I
can never remember which of those

very mobilize community members and
especially use.

To serve the communities
this is an affiliate of

the Global Peace Foundation which
actually had just held a glow.

Global Conference of youth in Katmandu
the week before the earthquake hit

they had already mobilized many youth and
they then came to us and said OK we want

to now train youth to be project managers
to help build shelters to help build.

Structures and out in the outlying
areas so we then offered workshops and

strategy planning and deployment of Sana
to help the youth to track the progress

that they were making towards building
their required number of shelters.

And finally I mention in the European
my European crisis migrant crisis

we did a custom grant of
a mobile app to help interest

saw us register incoming migrants on
the south the southern shores of Italy and

this is an app that is now being granted
regretted to another NGO that saw it and

said That's exactly what we need so
we're customizing it for them and we also

helped deploy Sana for the German Red
Cross to help them set up a shelter.

Our ongoing work and where I think
humanitarian response is going certainly

improve coordination is necessary across
the organizations that are responsible to

their citizens to to deal with relief and
recovery and

you know that coordination is very
tough to achieve that is where there

really needs to be some focus improvements
and data availability access and

accuracy data is it data
is available through so

many sources but it's again
siloed it's hard for N.G.O.s and

governments to share data with each other
you don't get a complete picture unless

data can somehow be aggregated and
understood and insights can be gained.

There are lots of wonderful emerging
technologies like three D. printing and

drowns and
crowdsourcing centers wearables.

Excuse me.

So this.

A complex system of system problem that
I'm sure you can all appreciate knowing

and knowing what you do so let me stop for
questions I know we're getting a little

short of time but I'd love to
entertain any questions you like and

I know we have a couple people with
Mikes who are going to go around.

Thank

you.

But I just a request I was curious about
one thing and many things actually but

when you have a natural so you have
a court which is what expected and that

is a major problem as some I like
abio actually get involved and

I mean how have all these various pieces
kind of come together become Korda it

would seem to me that we have all
these different organizations

different companies or new flood and give
assistance but who actually controls us

in court cases actively So
there actually fisherman are and so

you're asking who who coordinates and
controls his activities so

they don't evaluate how do you show up
with an idea how Peter's not going to help

our senators or some sort of coordinating
body that you work through to actually

launch your petition or spots when
you have these type of disaster.

That's a good question so
who's the coronating body well so

that I guess are two lenses for
that and for an answer and just to

make sure I understand your question one
is there is no global cordoning body for

all of disaster response
that doesn't exist yet.

When we go into what it is so
say you know that say the.

Flooding in Chennai India has just
occurred and we have in India

we have a team of I.B.M. or is actually
many thousands of I.B.M. are based in

Chennai India our corporate citizenship
manager in India we have a team.

Of corporate citizenship managers in
major markets around the world I work in

the corporate staff and these citizenship
managers each have responsibilities for

a country multiple countries maybe a few
states maybe a state you know they

have a territory that they are responsible
for for citizenship work if the disaster

happens in their territory they
are the lead along with an I.B.M.

executive along with maybe.

Government programs along with a sales
lead you know whoever has the best

relationships with the N.G.O.s or the
governments that we feel we need to work

with those are the people who then try to
contact those people you know establish

the communication around how every I.B.M.
can help and then bring in you know start

those conversations so we you know I the
corporate team in corporate citizenship or

corporate affairs is fairly small
my my team consists of me and

a consultant and another full time
person who does and we all do a lot of

a lot of different things as you heard in
my bio I'm not just disaster response but

also a center of excellence and
incubate new offerings so

but I have relationships across the
company and so I borrow people from other

parts of the company to work with me on
solutions on response so right now for

India I have several people from
India I have a couple people

from the United States who are involved
who have expertise in a solution that

we're planning to deploy so I'm pulling in
all of those team members virtually and

in a matrix way to work with us so

you get your responses from these
local corporate citizenship.

Directors the robber.

Yes corporate citizens IT managers from
I.B.M. who are in those local territories

who give us their due they're
getting in the G two you know and

feeding it to corporate and corporate is
feeding them opportunities that might be

able to be offered to those governments or
N.G.O.s like you welcome.

Alexander got it thank you for
your presentation I have a question

there it relates to domestic issues so.

That your presentation really focused
on international issues do you work

here domestically with cities
maybe smaller cities that have.

Disasters sort of be maybe smaller
disasters I'm thinking specifically of our

snowmageddon here in
Atlanta a few years ago so

what qualifies as a disaster
where you are and

do you work domestically with
smaller cities great question and

you know your question really gets at how
do we choose where we make grants and

that is so yes we have responded
to disasters in the U.S.

So Hurricane Sandy was one example and

the some other disasters Well Katrina
we did a great deal after Katrina and

as I had said earlier the spectrum
of our response runs from

small grants maybe for Strategic Planning
to an NGO that needs to be prepared for

disaster or volunteerism after a disaster
all the way up to these very large

responses in the U.S. The U.S.
has such strong infrastructure and

preparedness already the U.S.
doesn't really need I.B.M.'s help.

You know cities cities in the U.S.
generally speaking are doing pretty fine

on their own in the case of Sandy it was
so overwhelming that we really did step in

and contribute where we could so in some
ways that's why a lot of my examples were

from emerging markets countries poor
countries countries that are you know

that are under resourced compared to other
countries in the world that's not you know

there are many different factors that go
into how we decide what the right level of

grant support is for any given
situation and then to your question.

Right over here first and then you.

So my question is based on the idea
that you talked about how eighty percent

of the disasters are in either
mid to low income countries so

a lot of I.B.M. solutions I guess long

term solutions especially are technical
based How do you implement a sustainable

change in a country where
technology itself is a challenge.

How do you go about that
yeah good good question so

let's take a let's do a little
comparison Well the for

the short answer question is appropriate
technology is is fundamental it's right

you know that is absolutely question we
are not in any way and we we will we will

not dump a solution in a place
where it could not be used.

Grants have to have a term you know
we can't you know if we put a cloud

based solution or software as a service
solution and somewhere you know it for

a government to use we always put an end
date on it and we say you know for

two years you can use the solution
will provide you with support for

two years will upgrade the software you
know we give you training right up front

we'll help you optimize it for two years
you get to use it in the end of two years

you can decide if you want to continue and
if you want to continue you do need to

you know it'll be you know your cost
we would get the business involved

if that were the case and they would
continue so we are completely upfront

about that when when we make the grant
we choose our partners and we choose

the solutions based on the the partners
readiness to work with us their desire to

work with us the clear need that they have
expressed where they say yes what you're

telling us you can offer is what we
need you know true mutual agreement and

then we do the best we can to help
them use it and and optimize it so

that it's effective and

at the end then you know if they want
to continue that that's terrific and

if they don't they don't so
a lot of thought goes into it and.

That's in some ways why it's so you know.

There's so much to say about the situation
because every situation is unique.

There's no cookie cutter
approach disaster response.

So my question is dealing
with Nippon Actually

maybe you don't hear live in D.C..

What I had learned was that you know
all the relief was coming in in that

scenario and the planes were actually
being done away because they were there

was not it's a do coordination in venues
to do things need to be deployed and

all that yeah so where does I.B.M.
come in I've almost feel like you know

that every country can probably
make use of some kind of.

Preparedness of course and

maybe you can highlight on what will be
the next what are the lessons learned and

where would you want to school and
you were to go because you have U.B.S.

like you mentioned you have all these
different entities really want to help and

corporations being you know richer than
many of the countries around the world

you know you can look up to the
corporations to make a difference yeah so

there does this go next to they.

Had some very good question I don't
I don't really have an answer to that

question I think.

You know there's always a debate about
what government should be responsible for

what corporations should be you know what
the third sector the NGO sector ship it

should do and we want to carve off what
is appropriate for a company like I.B.M.

to do and we also want to.

Serve areas where
strategically makes sense for

us to be there as well you know we
are a corporation we have shareholders

we need to be able to justify everything
that we do whether it's business or

philanthropy to our shareholders and
make it viable and

in fact one of the reasons in my view why
our disaster response work is sustainable

is because it is integrated with our
company's strategy there is no differ.

It's between what we try to do in
philanthropy with our solutions to solve

the world's problems and

what the business is trying to do with our
solutions to solve the world's problems so

in that sense we have to
be very strategic and and.

You know make the right choices about
where to make grants we cannot solve all

the word world's problems we
try to in the case of Nepal for

instance we can and we can't solve
the problems of an airport that is turning

in fact with a bureaucracy thing it
was there were there were bureaucrats

at the border who were turning away relief
supplies because they had not gotten

permission from somebody upstairs in their
chain to to accept those goods even though

the goods were relief goods it was just
insane and incredibly frustrating we can't

solve those problems you know we
can only solve problems that are.

You know where where a clear problem
statement can be articulated and

a solution can be offered and
accepted so you know that means there

are a lot of things that are undone and
that's the challenge that the world faces

in terms of how to try to help you know
and sometimes I like to say that these

solutions are having
an impact far beyond the you

know the immediate scenario because they
are teaching cultural changes the high end

of the Philippines solution taught those
government agencies to collaborate in

an entirely different way taught them
to think about data in a different way.

And that's a cultural change that will
only pay dividends down the road so

every bit that we do if we do it
right will have a positive effect and

you know and even though we don't
give cash we feel like what we give

you know in lieu of cash in
the way of solutions has impact

incalculable beyond what cash would be so.

Thank you for your question.

What you think is the reason why I.B.M.

engages in such outstanding global and

local corporate citizenship and.

While so
many other company companies do not and

does I.B.M.
do anything to encourage increased.

Responsibility among the corporations.

Well I've been gauges in this
because it's core to our values and

we have we passed one hundredth
anniversary in two thousand and eleven and

we that year we the way we celebrated it
was with a celebration of service we had

volunteer service across the globe all
year long that was one way that we

expressed our values our
corporate social responsibility.

Accolades are clear we have been you know
corporate social responsibility C.S.R.

and consisting of you know government
governance ethics employee

wellbeing supply chain
environment citizenship we

focus hard on those things and
we have been groundbreakers pioneers sense

the beginning of our company in terms of
how we conduct ourselves as a business so

I think that when we sold
the laptop business and

we began to realize that we wanted to have
more Strategic philanthropy that really

leveraged our solutions in
the world I think that's when we.

Really kind of change the equation
around what citizenship and

philanthropy could be it's not checkbook
philanthropy and I don't think that sound

bite philanthropy either and so how you
know I don't know that we encourage but

we you know we're part of the C.S.R. world
and in our interactions with corporations

we certainly you know share from Asian and
respect what other corporations do I mean.

Even when they give cash cash is still
important it's not what we do but it's but

what we respect what they do we last
year we were awarded by the U.S.

Chamber of Commerce
foundation the best corporate

citizenship steward award of the year and
that was.

And two years before that we we
accepted the best disaster response and

resiliency program of and for the U.S.
Chamber foundation so you know I

think that we are trying to we're trying
to live out what we believe is right and

if it's you know hopefully it's
something that is noticed.

Thank you Rebecca thanks for coming to
Georgia Tech today thank you very much

thank you thank you.