Dear Sir / Madame,
Greetings!
This is to formally invite your attention to our determination to hold the international conference on geohazard mapping and relevant environment issues. Our group decided to launch a campaign in 2009 for sustainable crisis hazards mapping and relevant environmental concerns after returning from Mindanao, Philippines following the end of the effort in ending the highly expensive hotel billeting by Juma’a Abu Sayyap of selected staff members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from Switzerland (Andreas Notter), Italy (Eugenio Vagni) and Philippines (Mary Jane Lacaba).
The purpose of the conference is to provide a fora within Southeast Asia for developed and developing countries, for consolidating databases, integrating and perfecting geohazard mapping and tagging - coordinates and all correlational information for disaster hot spot / safe spot zones, among others. When we began this effort, we noticed that mostly poor developing countries only, responded to our invitation. Understandably, nearly all or most of them required us to sponsor their travel and accommodations.
Our basic belief is in putting into action the requisites precluding taking of measures to prevent and mitigate both the risks of loss of lives and property and actual casualties during a disaster. Furthermore, to allow disasters to ravage our communities without prior mitigation measures becomes an extremely tedious issue due to the fact that certain quarters in the public sector are remiss in delivering aid to victims of calamities [e.g. recent super typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) here in the Philippines where it took more than one week for the government to respond].
Many of us agree to the principle shared by many of you that mitigation requires less expense and effort -
“than remediation or reconstruction actions. When mitigation and prevention are economically not feasible or when it is cheaper just to accept certain disasters (particularly those due to the most extreme events), the issue becomes an ethical one, where the decision is of how much we want to spend to avoid loss of lives.”
For this reason, we most sincerely invite your good self to participate as centers for leadership and influence, moderators or active participant-delegates in our planned conference.
We welcome your invitation to your colleagues and we hope that your respective organizations and state agencies can lend support for our undertaking in the Philippines. We fervently anticipate your most favorable reply soon.
Thank you so very much, with much privilege and honor we remain,
Faithfully yours,
Organizing Committee
Geo Hazards and Environment Summit 2014 Manila
Website: http://summit.hazmapping.org
Email: summit@hazmapping.org
