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Role of Information and Communication Technology in Natural Disaster Management in India

Disaster is an event which threatens society with unwant-ed consequences. It is associated with disruption of normal pattern of life, negative effects on human life

and social structure. It victimizes large number of people and cause social and economical losses. The International task group appointed by Department of Humanitarian Affairs of United Nations defines disaster as ‘a serious disruption of the functioning of a society, causing widespread human, material or environmental losses, which exceed the ability of affected society to cope using only its own resources’. Di-sasters are characterized by the scope of an emergency. An emergency becomes a disaster when it exceeds the capabil-ity of the local resources to manage it. Disasters often result in great damage, loss, or destruction. Natural disasters in-clude those unplanned events that occur as a result of nat-ural processes such as earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunami, freezes, blizzards, extreme heat or cold, drought, or insect infestation. Since times immemorial disasters have been occurring in various forms and places and posing threat to people, structure or economic assets. They have been man-kind’s constant though inconvenient companions and continue to occur and are increase in their magnitude, complexity, frequency and economic impact. The impact of natural di-sasters in terms of human and economic losses has risen in recent years, and society in general has become more vulnerable to natural disasters. In many parts of the world, disasters caused by natural hazards such as earthquakes, floods, land slides, drought, wildfires, tropical cyclones and associated storm surges, tsunami and volcanic eruptions have taken a heavy toll in terms of the loss of human lives and the destruction of economic and social infrastructure, not to mention the negative impact on already fragile ecosystems. Man-made disasters include chemical disasters, biological disasters and nuclear disasters. In simple terms we can define disaster as a hazard causing heavy loss to life, property and livelihood.

Usually most affected by natural and other disasters are the poor and socially disadvantaged groups in developing countries as they are least equipped to cope with the events. It is the communities and human settlements which need to be prepared as it is the communities who need to react first and it is the habitats, which need to be strengthened to

withstand the forces of hazards. Looking at disaster events of the last few years it is evident that by no means natural or man-made disasters can be fully prevented. Only the loss caused by these events can be prevented. In this paper the role of Information and Communication Technology (such as In-ternet, GIS and Remote Sensing, warning and forecasting system etc.) in minimizing the impact of disaster assisting in preparedness and management of natural disasters in India has been discussed.

Natural Disasters in India

India with its subcontinent size and wide range of climat-ic and topographic conditions is a country prone to various types of natural and manmade disasters in varying degrees. It has witnessed devastating natural disasters in recent past like earthquakes, floods, droughts, cyclones, landslides, etc. In the decade 1990-2000, an average of 4344 people lost their lives and about 30 million people were affected by disasters every year. Among all the natural disasters that country fac-es, river floods are the most frequent and often devastating. The shortfall in the rainfall cause droughts or drought like situ-ation in various parts of the country. India has faced some severe earthquakes causing widespread damage to the life and property. The country has a coastline of about 8000 km, which is prone to very severe cyclonic formations in the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal. Usually more cyclones form in the Bay of Bengal then in the Arabian Sea. Another major prob-lem faced by the country is in the form of landslides and ava-lanches [1]. During the last eighty years, India has lost 70,000 lives due to earthquakes or an average of about 900 lives per year. The corresponding average of the whole world is about 18,000 lives per year. Around 30,000 lives have perished in matter of seconds in an earthquake, as in Gujarat earthquake on 26th January 2001. Figure 1 shows the major disasters in India from 1980 to 2009.

The vulnerability of different areas of country to various natural disasters is given below:

1. About 50-60% of total area of the country is prone to seismic activities of varying intensities.

2. 16% of total area is drought prone and approximately 50

Dr. Mohammad Arif Kamal Dept. of Architecture, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh (INDIA)

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million people are annually affected by drought.3. India has a long coastline of 8041km., which is exposed

to the tropical cyclones arising from the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea.

4. Also in India river floods are the most frequent and often most devastating.

About Disaster Management

The disaster management is the range of activities to maintain control over disaster and provide a framework to help, avoid or recover from the impact of the disaster. Disaster management includes Prevention, Mitigation, Preparedness, Response, Recovery and Rehabilitation. Disaster management involves all levels of government. All government, nongov-ernmental and community-based organizations play a vital role in the process. Modern disaster management goes beyond post-disaster assistance. It now includes predisaster plan-

ning and preparedness activities, organizational planning, training, information management and public relations

The disaster management in any region is based on cyclic steps [2]. The disaster management cycle involves four key phases:

i. Mitigation - includes any activities that prevent a disaster, reduce the chance of a disaster happening, or reduce the damaging effects of unavoidable disasters.

ii. Preparedness - includes plans or preparations made to save lives or property, and to help the response and res-cue service operations.

iii. Response - includes actions taken to save lives and pre-vent property damage, and to preserve the environment during emergencies or disasters. The response phase is the implementation of action plans.

iv. Recovery - includes actions that assist a community to return to a sense of normalcy after a disaster. These four phases usually overlap.

Information and Communication Technology is being used in all the phases, but the usage is more apparent in some phases than in the others.

Communication And Media In Disaster Mitigation3

The disasters in India are mainly managed by the gov-ernment. The government at central level, state level, district level has various roles to play during the disaster situation. Now the voluntary sectors like non-government organizations are also becoming increasingly important because of the various functions they can perform [3]. Effective and reliable communication is vital for disaster reduction. Communication technologies, skills and media are essential for the various im-portant roles they perform in disaster management. Those roles are:

i. To Link scientists, disaster mitigation officials, and the public

ii. To educate the public about disaster preparednessiii. To check approaching hazardsiv. To alert authoritiesv. To warn the people most likely to be affectedvi. To assess damagevii. To collect information, supplies and other resourcesviii. To coordinate resource and relief activitiesix. To account for missing peoplex. To motivate public, political and institutional responses

Application of Information and Communication Technology in Natural Disaster Management

Information Technology is changing every aspect of hu-man life. It enhances the quality and effectiveness of trade, manufacturing, services, other aspects of human life such as education, research, culture, entertainment, communi-cation, national security, etc. Disaster management needs drastic improvements in its sources to decrease damage and save the life of people. To achieve this main object, disaster management has to face challenges for data collection, data

Figure 1: Major natural disasters in India from 1980 to 2009

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management, translation integration and communication. IT pays crucial role in this respect. The advanced techniques of information technology such as remote sensing, satellite communication, GIS, etc. can help in planning and imple-mentation of disaster management.

With an increase in the perception towards spreading a culture of prevention in the disaster management scenario, considerable emphasis is now being placed on research and development activities in the area of information technology for disaster preparedness and prevention. This has brought in a significant positive change even though the multitude and frequency of disasters in the country has increased [4]. In most critical phases of some major disasters like earth-quakes in Kobe, Japan; Northridge, California and turkey role of electronic communication has provided the most effective, and in some instances perhaps the only means of commu-nication with the outside world. The changing trends have opened up a large number of scientific and technological re-sources and skills to reduce disaster risk. The Information and Communication Technology tools are discussed below:

1. Internet

In the present era of electronic communication, the Internet provides a useful platform for disaster mitigation communications. The role of Internet is becoming increas-ingly important because of the following reasons:

a. It facilitates, the opportunities to enhance the capabilities of addressing hazard awareness and risk management prac-tices before, during, and following emergency events.

b. Internet sites providing an increasing array of information related to various hazards. . Internet Sites also provide more information about the growing number of organi-zations and professional disciplines addressing them.

c. It provides a new and potentially revolutionary option for the rapid, automatic, and global dissemination of disaster information. A number of individuals and groups, includ-ing several national meteorological services, are experi-menting with the Internet for real-time dissemination of weather observation, forecasts, satellite and other data.

d. Network equally provides the means of access to more reference and resource material to more people, in more ways.

e. The compilation, retrieval and redistribution of informa-tion by centers of interest, of the use by alternative forms

of media can expand the utility of the information at the local, national, regional and international levels of inter-est.

GIS and Remote Sensing

Geographic information technology tools like Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote sensing (RS) support all aspects of disaster management. GIS and RS are essen-tial as effective preparedness, communication and training tool for disaster management. Disaster planning can be very powerful when modeling is incorporated into GIS. Most po-tential disasters can be modeled. Modeling allows disaster managers to view the scope of a disaster, where the damage may be the greatest, what lives and property at highest risk, and what response resources are required and where GIS can play a very important role in this exercise. The specific GIS applications in the field of Risk the assessment are:

- Hazard Mapping- Threat Maps- Disaster Management- Records Management

Nevertheless satellites have several limitations in their application for response operations. The most obvious is that a number of satellites cannot see through clouds. Many large scale disasters such as cyclones and floods are generally associated with periods of heavy cloud cover, and conse-quently the ability to image the ground is greatly restricted. In addition a disaster event must coincide with the overpass of the satellite if it is to be imaged [5].

Some application of GIS and Remote Sensing in various disasters are as follows:-

Drought

GIS and Remote Sensing can be used in drought relief management such as early warnings of drought conditions will help to plan out the strategies to organise relief work. Satellite data may be used for to target potential ground wa-ter sites for taking up well-digging programmes.

Earthquake

GIS and Remote Sensing can be used for preparing seismic hazards maps in order to assess the exact nature of risks.

Floods

Satellite data can be effectively used for mapping and monitoring the flood inundated areas, flood damage assess-ment, flood hazard zoning and post-flood survey of rivers configuration and protection works.

Cyclone

A cyclone is a storm accompanied by high speed whis-tling and howling winds. It brings torrential rains. A cyclone causes heavy floods. It uproots electricity supply and tele-communication lines. Road and rail movements come to halt. Ships overturn Winds bends and plucks out trees and plants.‰ Houses collapse. There can be outbreak of diseas-

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es like Cholera, Jaundice or Viral fever. Advanced techniques like, GIS, remote sensing tools can be used to identify the vulnerable population with the single hazard component. These tools can be used to calculate state level population affected by different type of storms. But, calculating vulnera-bility by GIS with multiple hazards and coping capacity is not easy job for decision makers.

Landslides

Landslide zonation map comprise a map demarcating the stretches or area of varying degree of anticipated slope stability or instability. The map has an inbuilt element of forecasting and is hence of probabilistic nature. Depending upon the methodology adopted and the comprehensiveness of the input data used, a landslide hazard zonation map able to provide help concerning some or all of the following:-

- Location- Extent of the slope area likely to be affected and- Rate of mass movement of the slope mass

Search and Rescue

GIS cab be used in carrying out search and rescue op-erations in a more effective manner by identifying areas that are disasters prone and zoning them accordingly to risk magnitudes.

Warning and Forecasting System

An advance system of forecasting, monitoring and is-suing early warnings plays the most significant part in de-termining whether a natural hazard will assume disastrous proportions or not [6]. The country has the following forecasting systems:

Indian Meteorological Department (IMD)

Indian Meteorological Department provides cyclone warnings from the Area Cyclone Warning Centres (ACWCs) It has developed the necessary infrastructure to originate and disseminate the cyclone warnings at appropriate levels. It has made operational a satellite based communication system called Cyclone Warning Dissemination System for direct dis-semination of cyclone warnings to the cyclone prone coastal areas. IMD runs operationally a Limitedarea Analysis and Forecast System (LAFS), based on an Optimal Interpretation (OI) analysis and a limited area Primitive Equation (PE) mod-el, to provide numerical guidance.

National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA)

Long-term drought proofing programmes on the natural resources of the district have been greatly helped by the use of satellite data obtained by NRSA. Satellite data can be used very effectively for mapping and monitoring the flood-inun-dated areas, flood damage assessment, flood hazard zoning and past flood survey of river configuration and protection works.

Seismological Observations

Seismological observations in the country are made through national network of 36 seismic stations operated by

the IMD, which is the nodal agency. These stations have col-lected data over long periods of time.

Warning System for Drought

The National Agricultural Drought Assessment and Management System (NADAMS) has been developed by the Department of Space for the Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, and is primarily based on monitoring of vege-tation status through National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad-ministration (NOAA) Advanced Very High Resolution (AVHR) data. The drought assessment is based on a comparative evaluation of satellite observed green vegetation cover (both area and greenness) of a district in any specific time period, with that of any similar period in previous years.

Flood Forecasting

The Central Water Commission (CWC), Ministry of Water Resources, issues floods forecasts and warnings. These are used for alerting the public and for taking appropriate mea-sures by concerned administrative and state engineering agencies in the flood hazard mitigation. Information is gathered from the CWC’s vast network of Forecasting Stations on var-ious rivers in the country.

Cyclone Tracking

Information on cyclone warnings is furnished on a re-al-time basis to the control room set up in the Ministry of Ag-riculture, Government of India. High power Cyclone Detec-tion Radars (CDRs) that are installed along the coastal belt of India have proved to be a very useful tool to the cyclone warning work. These radars can locate and track approaching Trop-ical Cyclones within a range of 400 km. Satellite imagery re-ceived from weather satellite is extensively used in detecting the development and movement of Tropical Cyclones over oceanic regions, particularly when they are beyond the range of the coastal radars. The existing mode of dissemination of cyclone warnings to various government officials is through high priority telegrams, telephones, telex and fax.

Disaster alert through cell phones

The Ministry of Science and Technology of India has de-veloped the world’s first of its kind multilingual disaster alert system – National Disaster Information System (NDIS) – that will transmit Tsunami and cyclone warning through mobile phones in the form of SMS, within 30 seconds of a weather satellite or an earthquake observatory giving alert signals. The SMS alerts will be made in over 100 languages including 14 regional languages like Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Malayalam, Hindi and Oriya. The SMS alerts will be followed by voice alerts on the mobile phones as well as fixed phones. The NDIS server first receives the warning from the meteo-rological department alert system before converting it into an SMS in two seconds. In the next 19 seconds, the software translates the alert into multiple languages. The SMS reach-es the user in 30 seconds.

Satellite Radio Application

Satellite radio can play a key role during both the disas-ter warning and disaster recovery phases. Its key advantage

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is the ability to work even outside of areas not covered by normal radio channels. Satellite radio can also be of help when the transmission towers of the normal radio channels are damaged in a disaster [7].

Conclusion

Disaster management activities depend on large vol-umes of accurate, relevant, on-time geoinformation that various organizations systematically create and maintain. The advancement in Information and Communication Tech-nology in the form of Internet, GIS, Remote Sensing, Satellite communication, etc. can help a great deal in planning and implementation of hazards reduction schemes. For max-imum benefit, new technologies for public communication should be made use and natural disaster mitigation messages should be conveyed through these measures. GIS can improve the quality and power of analysis of natural hazards assess-ments, guide development activities and assist planners in the selection of mitigation measures and in the implemen-tation of emergency preparedness and response action. Re-mote Sensing, on the other hand, as a tool can very effec-tively contribute towards identification of hazardous areas, monitor the planet for its changes on a real time basis and give early warning to many impending disasters. Communi-cation satellites have become vital for providing emergency communication and timely relief measures. Integration of space technology inputs into natural disaster monitoring

and mitigation mechanisms is critical for hazard reduction. Awareness and training in Information technology in a much greater measure is required to develop human resources. There should be a greater emphasis on development of new technologies in disaster mitigation. The disaster prepared-ness and awareness is the only effective way of mitigating the impact of future disasters.

References

1. Government of India, ‘ Disaster management in India’, A status re-port, Ministry of Home Affairs, New Delhi, 2004

2. United Nations Development Program, ‘ICT in Disaster Manage-ment’, http://www.apdip.net/apdipenote/16.pdf, accessed on Sep-tember 20, 2014.

3. Joshi I., ‘Planning for earthquake Preparedness in Tehri Garwal Dis-trict’ (unpub. MURP thesis), Dept of Architecture and Planning, I.I.T Roorkee, 2002.

4. Gupta, A., 2000, ‘Information Technology and Natural Disaster Man-agement in India’, http://www.gisdevelopment.net/aars/acrs/2000/ts8/hami0001.html, accessed September 10, 2010.

5. Hodges A., ‘ Information Technology and Disaster Management: Issues for the next decade’, http://desastres.usac.edu.gt/documen-tos/pdf/eng/doc12092/doc12092-contenido.pdf, accessed Septem-ber 17, 2010.

6. Mandal, G. S., Forecasting and Warning Systems for Cyclones in In-dia, Shelter, 1999, pp. 24-26.

7. United Nations Development Program, ‘ICT in Disaster Manage-ment’, http://www.apdip.net/apdipenote/16.pdf, accessed on Sep-tember 20, 2014. w

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