Luxembourg Pavilion presents a disaster rapid-response kit at the Expo 2020 Dubai

DUBAI: A humanitarian aid developed as a public-private partnership that is currently on display at the Luxembourg Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai is showing the world that to provide effective relief to natural disasters, nations need to work together to help each other.

Emergency. lu, a rapid-response kit that re-establishes communication via mobile satellite-based infrastructure during natural disasters, can be jetted into a disaster-hit country and set up within a matter of minutes.

Initially established as a Luxembourg project, over time it has become part of the emergency communication cluster within the United Nation’s World Food Programme.

Daniel Sahr, Director, Luxembourg Pavilion, said, “The programme started in 2012 after the Haiti earthquake, which began as a natural disaster, but turned into a humanitarian crisis because of the serious lack of communication systems in the country. After a disaster, the most important thing is to have communication systems up and running, in order to know what is going on the ground and which type of aid is needed: is it clean water, food, rescue gear? Emergency.lu is quintessential humanitarian aid.”

The device can also deploy a Wi-Fi system within the affected region, which can cover a small village or city, which Nathaniel McKinney, Host, Bahamas Pavilion, believes is the topmost priority during a catastrophe. Emergency.lu deployed rapid deployment kits to the area when it was affected by Hurricane Dorian in 2019.

Nathaniel McKinney said, “What we really need in a situation like a Category 5 storm is service. If you don’t have the technology to get the aid, it doesn’t come. If family members are missing, but there are no communication systems, you can’t get the message out there. A lot of families were devastated in the Bahamas: 200 people went missing and around 75 people died.”

Sahr believes that Expo 2020 Dubai is the perfect place to draw the world’s attention to this survival system: “It was important for us to have a model of emergency.lu in the Luxembourg Pavilion at Expo 2020 because it goes hand-in-hand with the theme of Expo 2020 Dubai, ‘Connecting Minds, Creating the Future’. We want to connect people together in order to secure the future, and this a way to showcase our DNA. We strongly believe in bringing people together from numerous countries in order to succeed.”

Similarly mirroring Expo 2020 Dubai’s mission to bring the world together, McKinney said countries have to pull together to help during disaster relief: “It can happen to anyone. We see global warming happening across the planet, so we all need to be our brother’s keepers.” 

Source: Expo 2020 Website