Our diplomatic ally, Belize, is located in the tropical coastal lowlands of Central America. In recent years, disasters such as hurricanes, floods, sudden rains, and droughts have frequently occurred, which has seriously affected the economic development of Belize and the safety of people’s lives. In order to improve disaster prevention and response capabilities and reduce the impact of people's lives and property, the International Cooperation and Development Fund (TaiwanICDF) implemented the Belize Urban Resilience and Disaster Prevention Project in 2019. The project has introduced Taiwan's disaster prevention technology to assist Belize to establish an early warning system (EWS), which was launched on June 15, 2020, and improve the government's disaster prevention and relief capabilities.

Drawing from Taiwan’s disaster prevention technology and experience, this project first integrated all existing climate, hydrological, geographic data and map data from different governmental agencies and made hydrological calculations to simulate the local flooding range. At the same time, the latest Internet of Things (IoT) real-time monitoring technology was introduced for regions with insufficient data, and hydrological and meteorological monitoring stations were set up in key areas. With the launch of the EWS, real-time monitoring data will be received by the database, and public service entities will be enhanced due to open data. It is expected that the disaster prevention methods and evacuation information will help the Belize government achieve the three disaster prevention goals of strengthening disaster warning, response, and recovery.

This project’s fundamental elements are open data collection and application. Through discussion and on-site investigations by experts from Taiwan and Belize, the EWS has been developed according to the local environment and Belize’s disaster prevention needs. In addition, the EWS’s reliability will be optimized by continuous simulations and demonstrations. This project will help transform the concept of Taiwan's disaster prevention community into an action plan for Belizean people to establish a safe and smart homeland, and to achieve the sustainable development goals.

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• Update: 2020/07/20
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