THE Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazards (Project Noah), the Department of Science and Technology’s flagship program for disaster risk reduction and mitigation, once again received an award when its mobile app Arko recently won in the World Summit Awards Mobile Content 2014 (WSA Mobile).
The Arko mobile app was chosen as one of five winners under the e-Inclusion and Empowerment category, besting hundreds of participants from all over the world.
This prestigious international award recognizes the best mobile-content solutions in the world, where it shows innovativeness, creativity and impact.
“Arko serves as a vehicle to deliver important information regarding floods to ensure the safety of our communities-at-risk and this app proves one thing: it shows that Filipino talent is world-class,” said Philippine Science Secretary Mario G. Montejo. Overall, Arko was one of 40 winners of WSA Mobile from a total of 456 projects submitted from 98 countries. “The creation of the Arko mobile app for Project Noah is one clear example of the innovativeness and ingenuity of our Filipino scientists and software engineers who developed a very important tool in disaster preparedness by providing information about floods that will enable our communities to prepare ahead of time,” Montejo said.
Other winners alongside the Philippines’s Arko are ColorADD, from Portugal; Braille Board, from Palestine, SnooCode, from Ghana ;and Livox, from Brazil.
The winners of WSA Mobile, which works in cooperation with the United Nations’ World Summit on the Information Society and in collaboration with United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, United Nations Industrial Development Organization and UN Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technologies and Development, will receive their awards in Abu Dhabi during ceremonies to coincide with the WSA Mobile Global Congress from February 1 to 3, 2015.
S&T Media Service