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Emergency.lu: the fastest way to restore communications in disaster zones
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| From left to right: Mr. Alan Kuresevic, Vice President in charge of engineering at SES TechCom, Mr. Marc Thill, Ambassador, Mrs. Nicole Bintner-Bakshian, Minister Counsellor and Deputy Head of Mission, Mrs Marianne Donven, Humanitarian Affairs Coordinator at the Luxembourg Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Mr Brian Douglass of GATR Technologies |
On February 1, 2013, the Luxembourg Embassy presented emergency.lu , a satellite based telecommunication platform to be deployed in emergency situations worldwide, where communication infrastructure has been destroyed or is non-existant.
emergency.lu has been developed as a public private partnership by the Luxembourg government which has offered it as a free global public good to the international humanitarian community.
emergency.lu is airborne two hours after an alert and once delivered to a disaster zone, it takes less than an hour to hook up the system to a satellite and establish much needed communication capacity for voice, data and image transmission. Since its inception early last year, the system has been deployed in South Sudan, Mali, Nepal and Venezuela.
The platform has been developed and deployed with the commitment and the professional skills of three Luxembourg based companies - HITEC Luxembourg, SES and Luxembourg Air Ambulance. The World Food Programme and the technical partners Ericsson and Skype have provided their practical insight and expertise. The system won the prize for 'most innovative product' at the recent Aid and International Development Forum in Bangkok .
The presentation by Ms Marianne Donven, the humanitarian affairs coordinator at the Luxembourg Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Mr Alan Kuresevic, Vice President in charge of engineering at SES TechCom, drew a wide audience from the Thai emergency coordination departments, the international humanitarian community, embassies and the press.
Luxembourg has a very active development cooperation policy and is one of the few countries in the world dedicating 1% of its GNI (gross national income) to ODA (official development assistance). Despite the global financial and economic crisis, the Luxembourg authorities have consistently maintained ODA at this level.