The global collaboration and preventative action currently being demonstrated by world authorities, national governments, multinationals, small businesses, communities, families and individuals to mitigate the rampant spread of COVID -19 through the global population, sets an example of large scale co-operation. In time the spread of the virus will be controlled, as appears to be the status of the outbreak in China, and society will be the wiser for the experience, the learnings of which will be codified in new health, and emergency response standards to support best practice.
Action on Human Health
According to Bruce Aylward, the World Health Organisation team leader, “rapid detection and contact tracing can help mitigate and break emerging infection chains where clusters emerge.”
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) which are based on Geospatial standards, provide capabilities to organize, present, and analyze spatial and geographic data to indicate the location and number of infections, as is demonstrated by a number of universities including the University of Washington. https://hgis.uw.edu/virus/
Action on Climate Change
The World Meteorological Organization and an extensive network of partners has produced and published the “WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2019”. In the report Forward UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, stated, “This report outlines the latest science and illustrates the urgency for far-reaching climate action.”
https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/multi-agency-report-highlights-increasing-signs-and-impacts-of-climate-change
Value of Standards
On a global scale, our ability and capacity for collective, rapid, action and response is evident. Can we apply this collective experience -the wisdom of hindsight- to prevent further harm to our ailing planet? I believe that we can!
Crisis presents not only a threat. It is also an extraordinary chance to improve our knowledge and response systems and to collectively learn and be more prepared for future emergencies.
Already, existing standards are being updated and new ones are being published. The International Standards Organisation (ISO) has a number of widely used standards, including ISO 14001 that support methods to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The Sendai Framework emphasizes the need for resilient health systems and the integration of disaster risk management into health care provision at all levels.
Both emergency scenarios, – the threat to global health and the threat to global climate - call for urgent responses to which we can all contribute.
Sparx Systems Support
For almost two decades, Sparx Systems has made Enterprise Architect available to the global standards development effort. The platform is used in multiple domains – Health, Utilities, Geospatial, Aviation, Transport, Meteorology, Land, Water etc, - to capture and codify industry best practice and enable developed standards from different domains to interoperate and facilitate cross domain knowledge sharing.
Standards development is a collaborative volunteer based activity and increased support for this effort across many domains including those mentioned above, requires more people to get involved.
If you are involved in the development of standards or you feel that you can contribute, please get in touch with us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Furthermore, if you are a Corporate or Government user of Enterprise Architect, please consider free deployment of the Pro Cloud Server to overcome the potential risk of lost productivity from employee self-isolation. Once again, contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
