How artificial intelligence is enabling a “culture of preparedness” in Peru

Based on years of working in emergency response, Juan Manuel Arribas, founder and CEO of Hombro a Hombro, a CBi Member Network, had a vision: he wanted Peru to be more resilient, and believed that the only way to achieve that was to foster a culture of preparedness.

To that end, Hombro a Hombro started offering Family Emergency Planning workshops, and expected 10% of participants to run their own workshops, amplifying the content for greater reach. The numbers weren't adding up, which meant achieving scale - and making the culture of preparedness a national mindset shift - wasn't happening.

Hombro a Hombro's next model worked much better: they partnered with Viva Valores and the Ministry of Education to train teachers so they could work with school children and make them the agents of change. In its third year alone, the on-going initiative reached 8,000 teachers and 318,000 school children, but is still focused only on the capital city of Lima. Too many people were still out of reach.

How could they make sure that everyone knew about imminent threats or extreme weather events, given that awareness is a central tenet of disaster preparedness?

That's when an old colleague, with whom Juan Manuel had briefly crossed paths almost a decade prior, reached out with an idea that would change everything.

The power - and challenge - of radio

Daniel Chappell, founder of Pi-Ar communications, led the Radio Guild in Peru for 27 years. He was always looking for ways to keep radio relevant and leverage its potential for the greater good. In 2016, he heard about how Japan designed an emergency warning broadcasting system of sorts for Tsunami alerts. It leveraged digital televisions to get messages into a maximum number of households. Unfortunately, that made adapting the idea difficult as televisions imported to Peru are made in Mexico and don't have the same setup.

Japan also had sirens in the streets, which would have been expensive and challenging to replicate in Peru, but Daniel thought "We can adapt that idea by using switchers and setting one up per radio dashboard, so just 75 units would cover most of Peru." Six months later, a phone-sized apparatus was designed to keep track of waves for Tsunami warnings. They were set up in Peru's main radio stations as well as the national emergency operations center, COEN. When the device was presented to other businessmen, the person making the pitch was none other than Juan Manuel. But the he and Daniel only connected in passing.

Fast forward to 2023. Daniel was working with geologists on a consultancy, and was impressed by the sheer amount of information they had available. When he asked what was done with it, the answer was simple: "It's online for anyone to consult!"

Except it wasn't in a format that was user friendly. At all. So, Daniel challenged two of his interns to find a way to leverage that information using artificial intelligence - and then he reached out to Juan Manuel to set up a meeting.

A joint solution that's changing how prepared Peruvians are

Juan Manuel and Daniel agree: There's a lot of official information out there. In the best of cases, reports get shared through WhatsApp groups. Unfortunately, "your finger has to move the equivalent of 90 meters across your phone screen, and the information is as good as illegible - it's not in the right format, and there's just too much of it," explains Juan Manuel.

Worse, when they started looking for the best official sources, the team realized that many referred to each other, creating loops of hard to verify information. Digging deeper, they identified four key pillars of information:

• Hydrography
• Meteorology
• Geology
• Roads, ports, and transport

To be relevant, the information first had to be processed by region rather than nationally, to reflect the diversity of the country and different conditions in different areas. Second, it had to be presented in a way so that moms would know if their children needed strong sunblock, fishermen understood the conditions they were about to sail out in, truck drivers knew where the roadblocks are, and families knew if the river nearby had flooded so the kids couldn't make it to school.

It was clear that if they could extract that information from the official sources and package them right, media outlets could use them. It would make radio - and television, and social media - relevant, tools to unlock better preparedness.

The Central Informativa: Groundbreaking, and constantly improving

After months of hard work and testing results with their networks, the Central Informativa was launched in May 2024.

The model is deceptively simple: At a given time every day, information is collected from official sources. It's processed into easy to understand visual and audio packages for radio, television, and social media, and disseminated both through the Central Informativa channels and to the growing list of 270 media outlets (70% radio, 26% TV, 4% digital platforms).

Packages are typically four minutes long, with three minutes of information about the day's situation and one minute on disaster preparedness more broadly. An estimated 3.0 million people are reached every day this way.

When the team presented an update on the project to Chichi Valencuela, the owner of Peru21 and a renown journalist, and thanked her for airing their TV package every other week, she clarified that "I don't just want this content, I need it - so don't thank me, because it is I who should be thanking you for providing content that I couldn't produce even if I wanted to, and for free!"

What's the vision for what comes next?

The indicators are very promising, but it's still only the beginning. The Central Informativa is in the process of expanding to more radios, televisions, and social media channels.

The team could also start doing updates more regularly - as often as every hour or even every 10 minutes in times of crisis.

Within six months of its launch, journalists started sending in live footage when they were on the ground witnessing a roadblock or a river flooding. This ability to become the hub of information - not just from official sources but from people on the ground, could be yet another gamechanger. Central Informativa has the potential to be a two-way bridge for the voices of those facing a disaster to communicate with the authorities and media in Lima; an information hub to make problems visible, to bring communities closer, to address the needs of the vulnerable in the face of major disasters.

It turns out what Hombro a Hombro and Pi-ar built isn't just a source of information; they are creating a communications network and a community of people invested in making Peru more resilient.