The National Disaster Management officials from 12 Pacific Island countries completed the three days Regional Information Management workshop yesterday.

The workshop provided them insights into innovative solutions established to improve gathering and managing of information during natural disasters and how it can help in making quick decisions for the National Disaster Management Office and relevant agencies.

Co-hosted by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Pacific (UN OCHA Pacific) with the support of Red R Australia, the workshop was a success with participants learning different tools and skills of gathering information during natural disasters.

Acting Director of the National Disaster Management Office, Sunia Ratulevu said that the workshop provided an opportunity for the participants to have in-depth technical discussions on the entire information management cycle for disaster preparedness.

Workshop participant, Divisional Planning Officer Northern, Uraia Rainima said that he was fortunate to be part of the workshop to learn the new tool called KoBo which can be used to collect detailed information.

UNOCHA Head of Office, Anne Colquhoun says that they want to build a community of great information management officers that can support their countries to get messages out to their communities, their families and to the international community’s about disasters when they strike.

Some of the outcomes of the workshop has encouraged national disaster management officials to have regular discussions with Inter-Cluster Coordination, cluster IMOs, government focal points and the need to determine the crucial meetings for emergency and attend with the purpose of looking for the problems that IM can solve.

The building of relationships will result in increased collaboration, data sharing, and a better understanding of the IM needs in an emergency while sharing of data and information will help other people in making decisions.