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Talk by Rohan Samarajiva at the Sahana Conference 2009, Colombo. Sri Lanka. March 24-25 2009.
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Public Warning: Roles of policymakers, regulators, private sector & civil society
Rohan Samarajiva
Sahana 2009 Conference24 - 25 March 2009, Colombo
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Agenda
� The presence and absence of early warnings
� Organizational problems must be solved if the potential of early warning technologies is to be fully realized
� Overall division of labor
� Issuance of warning –Government
� Transmission of warning –Telecom operators
� Evacuation and response –First responders (government and other)
� Community preparedness –Community organizations
� Identification of specific tasks and responsibilities
� Comments on government role
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Cyclone Sidr
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Why declining deaths?
~138,000Category 4Gorky1970+21
~3,447Category 4Sidr1970+37
300-500,000Category 3Bhola1970
DeathsStrengthCycloneYear
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Completing the chain: Warning & training at the last mile
� Bangladesh reduced casualties (but not damage to property & livelihoods) through
� Communicating cyclone warnings to villages through HF radios and trained volunteers
� Easy-to-understand flag system at the last mile
� Cyclone shelters
� People who trust the warnings and evacuate
Deaths from Sidr would have been less, if not for false tsunami warning and evacuation one month earlier (September 12th, 2007)
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Cyclones & tsunamis
� Both effect the Bay of Bengal
� Tsunamigenic earthquakes in Sunda Trench every year since 2004 (except 2008)
� Difference is lead time
� 2-3 days for cyclones
� 90 mts to 6 hours for Bay of Bengal countries other than Indonesia
� Simply replicating Bangladesh is not enough
� Bangladesh model used 1990s communication technology
� Much has happened since (e.g. CB/SMS)
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Physical world wherehazards occur
Symbolic worldwhere actionoriginates
Mediatedinterpersonal
Physical and symbolic worlds, absent linking
technologies
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netPhysical world where
hazards occurSymbolic worldwhere actionoriginates
TV, Radio & Cell broadcasts
Mediatedinterpersonal
Warnings (telecom)
Warnings (telecom & media)
The physical, the symbolic & their linking through ICTs, simplified
More time to run; more lives saved
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Early warning chain (standard form)
CitizensNational early
warning center
First responders
Media & TelecomOperators
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Early warning chain (community based; applicable to Last-Mile HazInfo project)
ERP1
National early warning center
VillagersSCDMC
ERP4
ERP3
ERP2ICT GuardiansFrom domestic &
international sources
ERP1
National early warning center
VillagersSCDMC
ERP4
ERP3
ERP2ICT Guardians
SCDMC will never issue warnings; only alerts so that communities can be better prepared to receive the warning from government
Emergency Response Plan coordinator
MediaGovt 1st Responders
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CDMA Fixed Phone GSM Mobile Phone Remote Alarm Device
Addressable Radios for Emergency Alerts
Very Small Aperture Terminals
ICTs used in reaching communities
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Which work best?
� Eight modes (individual and combined) tested
� Reliability and effectiveness (composite measures)
� Complementary redundancy
Comparison of Reliability and Effectiveness of ICT as a Warning Technology in a LM-HWS
0.15
0.47
0.59
0.71
0.89
0.04
0.09
0.27
0.71
0.26
0.05
0.43
0.75
0.75
0.24
Control Group
VSAT
RAD
FXP
MOP
AREA
AREA+RAD
AREA+FXP
AREA+MOP
ICT
mo
des
Effectiveness
Reliability
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Community
� Forms of training that will work
� Levels of organizational strength
� Importance of emergency response plans
� Plan without simulation is no plan
� Simulation without plan cannot be done
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Telecom and e-media are important, but are only part of the solution
� Ability to move information at the speed of light can increase time to act to reduce risks of disasters
� Many organizational problems must be solved
� At level of community
� At level of first responders
� At national early warning center
� Among the carriers of alerts and warnings
� Effective warning must be complemented by preparedness plans, evacuation capabilities, etc.
� If we are to save livelihoods and property, in addition to lives, a lot more has to be done on risk reduction
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Early warning: who should do what?
� Early warning is a classic public good �
Government must supply
� Early warning is based on incomplete, probabilistic
information and judgment � Government must take the responsibility of issuing warning/alert
� 75% of tsunami warnings in the Pacific are false; false warnings can be dangerous
� Government gets hazard information from external or internal sources
� Regional warning cannot be simply transmitted
� Judgment must be applied before national warnings/alerts are issued for specific areas
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Early warning: who should do what?
� Operators of telecom networks and electronic media (public-sector and private-sector) must transmit the message to first responders and citizens
� Ground-level first responders must play the key role in evacuations and response
� Community preparedness is important if warnings
are to save lives � community-based organizations (e.g., Sarvodaya) are best at this
� Includes improving the ability of communities to receive warnings and alerts
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Responsibilities at warning center
and in communication to media, etc.
CitizensNational early
warning center
First responders
Media &TelecomOperators
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Early Warning Center � Media & Telcos
� Protocols for fast decision making re issuance of warnings/alerts [Internal to government]
� Procedure for issuing large number of warnings/alerts quickly and reliably using multiple media, including acknowledgements and redundancy [Decision is government’s; but best to use Common Alerting Protocol based single-input, multi-output, multi-language software solution]
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Media, telcos, first responders to public
� Procedures for verification and acknowledgement [jointly worked out with government]
� Standard formats, including rules on what is communicated in what form [jointly worked out with government]
� Rules for use of cell broadcasts [jointly worked out with government]
� Government first responders to public [procedures appropriate for different settings decided locally]
� Other first responders (e.g., Sarvodaya, hotels) to public [procedures appropriate for different settings decided locally]
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Prior planning essential
� Wide variety of procedures to be decided
� Important that they be formulated and tried out prior to a disaster
� Improvisation in the midst of a crisis is inappropriate
� Updating of procedures at regular intervals
� Drills and training of critical actors, also at regular intervals
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Lessons for the last mile
CitizensNational early
warning center
First responders
Media &TelecomOperators
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Community preparedness
� Each community is unique � emergency response plans cannot be the same
� Importance of emergency response plans
� Plan without simulation is no plan
� Simulation without plan cannot be done
� Plans need to be updated regularly
� Training and awareness raising needed
� Primarily for communities, though government may exercise oversight if it has adequate expertise and resources
� Communities can learn from each other if the environment is created
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A mild critique of government priorities
� Too often, government looks at the problem in terms of
� Laws and regulations, instead of ground-level action (that is then codified into practical legal frameworks)
� Sri Lanka Disaster Management Act passed after the tsunami has grandiose schemes of committees reporting to committees reporting to councils
� But the Act does not include provisions for funding from the Consolidated Fund � unable to do much without external help
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A mild critique of government priorities
� Too often government units get entangled in turf battles and lose sight of what the overall object is
� Disasters cross administrative boundaries� In Sri Lanka, geological expertise is at Geological
Survey and Mines Bureau; tsunami hazard information authority is Met Department; tide gauges are under National Aquatic Resources Authority; warning authority is Disaster Management Center; telecom operators are governed by Telecom Regulatory Commission; media are under Media Ministry
� Essential to develop non-territorial approaches to manage unavoidable turf issues� Disasters are too big for one government department,
let alone government as a whole � need to work with everyone to save lives, livelihoods and property
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A mild critique of government priorities
� There is too much emphasis on the international and not enough on the community level
� Community level work is hard; much harder than attending international workshops
� But that is the key to risk reduction
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Take aways
� Disasters are too big for any one entity �the problem is large enough for everyone to contribute
� Government must take the lead in creating the right environment for productive cooperation by all
� Responsibilities must be assigned based on core competencies
� Plans are not plans absent simulation
� We need to look at what works, not what is on paper
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Way forward
� Disseminate lessons to improve public warning systems
� More trials in specific contexts if needed
� Improve community based response� In Sri Lanka, 1,000 Sarvodaya villages � 15,000
Sarvodaya villages � 30,000 villages
� Develop sustainable public-private models of sustaining community training and dissemination of hazard information
� Improve multi-lingual, multi-modal Common Alerting Protocol (CAP)
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Our collaboration with Sahana
Risk Reduction
Recovery
Mitigation
Prevention
PreparednessResponse
Hazardous event Warning Key role for telecom& electronic mediaLIRNEasia space
Sahanaat inception
Sahana nowMoved into the “pre” & warning space
LIRNEasia
+ Sahana
work