As we continue to grapple with and find our way through the post-Melissa recovery and rebuilding effort, there are some lessons which, as a country, we cannot ignore, but of necessity must be integrated in our strategic path towards building a climate resilient digital infrastructure economy.

What is certain is that Hurricane Melissa left behind more than damaged homes, destroyed farms, and battered coastlines. It exposed deep vulnerabilities in Jamaica’s digital, scientific and technological systems — weaknesses that can no longer be dismissed as secondary to traditional disaster response. In a world where climate events are stronger, faster and more unpredictable, digital resilience is now national security.

Melissa’s first and most painful lesson is the fragility of Jamaica’s digital infrastructure. Entire communities were cut off from the outside world for days as telecoms networks collapsed. Indeed, many communities to this day, even outside of the most damaged areas in the west are still cut off from the outside world via telecoms. Downed fibre lines, damaged towers, and unstable broadband revealed a system still far too exposed to high winds and flooding.

The truth is, modern countries cannot function in the dark: emergency response, banking, commerce, policing and healthcare all depend on stable communication. As we go forward therefore, Jamaica must, with urgency, harden cell towers, bury more fibre where feasible, and ensure that every major town has even a basic independent network route to prevent total blackout during extreme weather.

The second lesson lies in data — or rather, the lack of it. During and particularly after Melissa, too many agencies were and are still relying on phone calls,
WhatsApp messages, and paper-based reports to coordinate national response. There should therefore be no debate that Jamaica needs a real-time national disaster data platform that integrates weather forecasts, shelter capacity, telecom outages, GIS-based flood maps, road blockages, and drone assessments.

This system should be accessible to the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, the police, the Jamaica Defence Force, municipal authorities, and legislators across the political divide. It is clear that much of the post-Melissa effort was “catching up” and hurriedly accessing and relying on external guidance and expertise on these areas. Decisions must be driven primarily by science and live information, and not by manual guesswork or officials seemingly figuring it out as they go along. What should also be an abundantly clear lesson is that Jamaica must fulsomely and readily move toward cloud-first, mobile-ready government systems that function even when physical offices cannot. Citizens should be able to report damage, access emergency information, and apply for relief online — securely and reliably — regardless of conditions on the ground.

Another crucial lesson is the need for universal digital payments in disaster relief. Cash distribution after Melissa was painfully non-existent in the west, generally slow in other places, inconsistent and vulnerable to bottlenecks absent electricity and broken telecomms. Resilience must perforce mean digital transfers through mobile wallets or direct bank payments which would offer faster, safer and more transparent support for affected residents. It was refreshing to note that the prime minister, in discovering the need to pivot from the manual modus operandi, announced the intention to move to food vouchers in the relief effort.

Within all this, and undeniably, technology must also play a larger role in assessing and responding to national emergencies. In that regard, Jamaica should establish a national drone unit in each parish to collect rapid, high-resolution images of agricultural damage, road blockages, and coastal erosion within hours — not weeks — after major storms. Combined with satellite data and AI-driven analysis, this approach would significantly strengthen post-disaster planning, recovery, and resource allocation.

Unmistakably too, Melissa highlighted the need to cultivate local innovation. Jamaica must, by purposeful design, empower its universities, HEART institutions, and tech hubs to develop affordable disaster technology — from flood sensors to resilient communication tools and solar-powered back-up systems tailored to rural communities.

Hurricane Melissa should be remembered not only for its destruction, but for the wake-up call it delivered. Jamaica must treat digital transformation and science not as optional upgrades, but as essential tools for national resilience in an era of escalating climate threats.

Christopher Brown is the Opposition spokesman on science, technology and digital transformation and Member of Parliament for St Mary South Eastern.