Minister of State for Asia and the Pacific Mark Field is visiting Manila today (16 August) for a programme that will include a keynote speech on the rules-based international system (RBIS) and discussions on strengthening further bilateral relations with the Philippines.

During his visit, the Minister will meet governmental officials including Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano, Department of Trade and Industry Secretary Ramon Lopez, Defence Secretary Maj Gen Delfin Lorenzana, and Senator Loren Legarda.

In his speech, Mr Field will join Australian Ambassador Amanda Gorley to highlight the benefits the RBIS has brought to all countries.

Speaking ahead of his visit to the Philippines, Minister Mark Field said:

The rules-based international system has had a hugely positive impact on global security and prosperity, protecting people and countries, and helping them to achieve their potential. This is why the UK is working so hard to cherish and protect these rules.

Mr Field will also meet members of the finance and business communities, as well as green finance experts and trade officials to raise the UK’s profile in the Philippines.

The Minister’s visit to Manila is the second stop on a six-country Southeast Asia trip.

Further information

SS3 will take place across Oman in October and November. It is the UK armed forces’ lead exercise this year and the largest in 17 years. It is also the third UK-Oman joint exercise, with the previous two taking place in 1986 and 2001.

SS3 will showcase the UK and Oman’s ability to operate together in austere conditions through the deployment of a Coalition Joint Task Force.

Joint Forces Command’s (JFC) unique role in the exercise is in planning and enabling, demonstrating its world-leading ability to deploy internationally in challenging environments and run the vital functions of a successful exercise, such as logistics, command and control, and medical.

The Joint Medical Group will play a fundamental role in the safe delivery of the exercise. This week, as part of preparations for SS3, a Medical Emergency Response Team (MERT) were put to the test in the 40-degree heat of the Omani desert.

As part of this week’s training, a doctor, nurse and two paramedics from MERT field tested a new method to transport life-saving blood.

They experimented with transporting blood for up to 72 hours, vastly increasing their capability to successfully treat casualties in the field.

Captain Murphy said:

We now store the blood from its arrival in theatre and maintain the cold chain throughout. We then prepare the Golden Hour Box in order to transport blood to a casualty.

The Golden Hour Box refers to the 72-hour cold storage that maintains the blood between 2-6°C.

Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Boylan, the MERT Consultant, added:

It has to stay in a very specific temperature range, which is challenging in this sort of environment.

The Medics, who are part of 5 Medical Regiment, are based in Duqm, Oman in preparation for SS3. Located in such an isolated part of the country, they must be prepared to treat a wide range of casualties. The nearest trauma hospital is many hours drive and up to four hours flight from Duqm.

Medical training and preparation will continue in the lead up to the exercise, including the testing of equipment and processes to confirm that the medical chain can deal with challenges before the bulk of UK forces arrive.

A series of Mutual Medical Drills Training packages will also run at Shafa, where Omani field medical unit personnel will join UK Joint Medical Group counterparts inside the deployed British facilities to work through a series of clinical scenarios.

The Environment Agency’s Incident Management (IM) Portal has been awarded a ‘Special Achievement in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) Award’ at the 2018 International ESRI User Conference in recognition of its outstanding use of GIS technology.

Launched in October 2016 the IM Portal has already:

• Reduced the time between data capture and reporting during an incident
• Improved the Environment Agency’s ability to easily share mapping internally and externally during an incident ensuring consistency
• Simplified and standardised the tools used, and the process for capturing, storing, analysing and sharing data

Catherine Wright, Director for Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management said:

The Incident Management Portal is just one example of how the Environment Agency is working to improve incident response. The portal is a great example of how the Environment Agency is using technology to improve its response to environmental incidents – from everything to flooding and drought to tackling waste crime and improving biodiversity. It has revolutionised how we collect and use data during incidents by providing real-time data and images to our incident rooms across the country.

The portal has already proved invaluable during incidents and we are continuing to look at ways we can build on the system to maximise the longer term benefits from the data captured and use it to help inform future decision making. It is an honour to accept this international award on behalf of the team who have created this innovative system.

Stuart Bonthrone, Esri UK Managing Director, visited the Environment Agency office in Bristol where he presented the award.

The Incident Management Portal Team has put the Environment Agency at the forefront of this international audience.

At the conference in San Diego, Jack Dangermond, President and Founder of ESRI, said:

The work of the Environment Agency stood out from more than 100,000 other applicants and I would like to congratulate you on a job well done.

The Incident Management Portal was established following a review of the Environment Agency’s mapping capabilities after the floods of winter 2015/16. The review identified the need to improve how data is acquired, shared, and used during an incident.

The Incident Management Portal is just one example of how the Environment Agency is working to improve incident response. Since the flooding of 15/16, the Environment Agency has invested £12.5 million in new flood equipment including an additional 40km of temporary barriers, 500,000 sandbags and 250 pumps, including 12 ultra-high volume pumps. There are around 6,500 trained staff across the country, ready to respond to flooding, including 500 flood support officers and the Environment Agency have awarded a new Incident Management Logistics Contract to store and deploy the temporary flood defences.

More than 1.4 million people are signed up to the Environment Agency’s free flood warning service, which sends a message directly by voice message, text or email when a flood warning is issued. Over the last year the Environment Agency has partnered with mobile phone networks to automatically add thousands of mobile customers to the service and this work will continue throughout 2018.

School pupil Samuel Boardman had wowed decommissioning leaders with a letter detailing how he would empty the highly-hazardous ponds.

The 11-year-old, from North Wales, came up with a proposal, using similar techniques to those already being used.

So impressed was the head of the legacy ponds, Dorothy Gradden, she offered Samuel and his family the chance of a lifetime to come and see the Sellafield site for himself.

The visit saw Mrs Gradden and Steve Cottam, head of strategy and technical for the legacy ponds, give a personalised presentation to the Boardman family.

They were also shown the Thorp viewing gallery, National Nuclear Laboratory and the underwater test facility.

Dorothy Gradden, who was awarded an OBE last year for her services to the nuclear industry, added:

As a passionate supporter of education and training, I was hugely impressed by Samuel’s detailed letter.

I value the importance of nurturing nuclear interest in youngsters, and it was a pleasure to meet Samuel so I could talk to him about his proposals and show him exactly how we are dealing with the nuclear clean-up.

It’s important that the extremely challenging and complex work we already do is carried on by the next generation, so I wanted to extend the offer of a visit to Samuel, who continued to impress me with his knowledge when he came to Sellafield.

Samuel described himself as a ‘nuclear physics expert’ in his letter to Sellafield, and his dad Chris said:

It was a wonderful experience for Samuel and the whole family. We were amazed by complexity of the incredible work being done.

Samuel is really keen on the nuclear sector and learned an awful lot from his visit. We all did !

The effort that Sellafield put into making a little boy’s dream come true was greatly appreciated. We didn’t expect anything when Samuel wrote to Sellafield, so this was an incredible experience.

Adrian Bull, MBE, director of external relations for the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), said:

We are always keen to encourage bright, young people to make a contribution to society by suggesting ways things could be improved – whether through the development of new technology or through the creative application of existing techniques.

Samuel has shown tremendous talent and enthusiasm through sharing his suggestions with the industry and I was delighted the he was able to visit NNL’s facilities on the Sellafield site to see for himself some of the work we are doing.