Thales Foundation and GeoHazards Society launch first-of-its-kind School Safety Mobile Application in India
New Delhi, June 06, 2017: Thales Foundation and GeoHazards Society (GHS) today announced the nationwide launch of a first-of-its-kind School Safety Mobile Application that will allow school administrators to ‘write’ a School Disaster Management Plan (SDMP). The Android-based app was launched by Mr Kamal Kishore, Member, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Prof Santosh Kumar, Executive Director, National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM), and Mr Christophe Humphry, Chief Operating Officer, Thales in India, and Mr Hari Kumar, President, GeoHazards Society, at NIDM headquarter in New Delhi.
Key Points
|
The pilot testing of the application took place in schools in Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh, Patna in Bihar and Aizwal in Mizoram before the formal launch.
This mobile application has been developed as part of the project undertaken by GHS with the support from the Thales Foundation – an initiative that aims to draw on Thales’s innovative flair and technological expertise to benefit society in the areas of education and humanitarian crises. The project led by GHS and Ms Charu Pandey – an employee volunteer from Thales in India – started in July 2016. It focused on various aspects of school safety in Himachal Pradesh’s Kangra district – one of the high risk and hazard prone regions of the country. GHS conducted staff preparedness training programmes, students training programmes, developed school disaster preparedness plans and tested these plans with preparedness drills. A large number of school administrators, teachers and students were mobilised through this project.
Mr Christophe Humphry, Chief Operating Officer, Thales in India, said, “We are proud to associate with GeoHazards Society and support this important project including the development of the School Safety Mobile Application. This resonates with our core mission of making the world a safer place through innovation and new technology.”
Mr Hari Kumar, President, GeoHazards Society, said, “We are thankful to Thales for their support in this project and in bringing out this app that seeks to make a difference in school disaster preparedness in the country. This application will help fill an important unmet need in schools and help them develop the School Disaster Management Plans systematically.”
The app has various modules including school profile, hazard profile of the school, falling hazards identification, formation of disaster management teams among others, with the user having a brief guidance on how to use each module to enter the required data. Once the data capture is complete, the user can generate and share the disaster preparedness plan with multiple users as a PDF file via email, Bluetooth, Whatsapp etc.
Over the years, Thales has been supporting various NGOs in India through local CSR initiatives and also group-level Foundation efforts. Some of them include Kutumbh Foundation, Jagriti, Protsahan, Samarpan Foundation, among others.
Present in India since 1953, Thales today has over 300 employees working with its wholly-owned Indian subsidiary, Thales India Pvt. Ltd. Headquartered in New Delhi, Thales has other operational offices and sites that are spread across Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Mumbai, among others. Since the beginning, Thales has been playing an essential role in India’s growth by sharing its technologies and expertise in Defence, Transport and Aerospace markets.
About Thales Foundation
The Thales Foundation is conceived as an incubator for social innovation and the engine of community engagement by the Group. Through its Foundation, Thales intends to draw on its expertise and technologies, and the community engagement of its employees, to help society to prepare for the future. In the field of education, the objective is to anticipate the major changes that flow down from disruptive technologies. In the field of humanitarian crises, the Foundation aims to focus on disaster preparedness to help humanitarian organisations respond effectively in emergency situations.
About GeoHazards Society (GHS)
GeoHazards Society is a not-for-profit organisation working towards making the country’s most vulnerable communities safer from natural and other hazards, through preparedness and mitigation. The organisation has been working in partnership with Government Organisations and Corporate Sectors in conducting programmes on Community Preparedness, School Safety, Hospital Safety, Engineers Training Programmes, Business Continuity Planning etc.
