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Another post in the Disaster management technologies series. Japanese mobile telephone users may soon be warned of an earthquake in their area just before it strikes. Japan’s two biggest operators, NTT DoCoMo and KDDI have announced that they are jointly developing a system to notify customers of an imminent earthquake. Now the first question I have is: What good will it do? What will YOU do if you find out that a big earthquake is coming in 5 seconds?

And the second question is: How will this work?  Read it here.

This post is a continuation of the Disaster management technologies series. The idea here is to present not just the commercial side of technology but also to showcase technical activities which can help save lives. This story is from Daily Yomiuri, a Japanese newspaper and it reports about plans to launch a satellite to create an emergency cell phone relay station in space by 2015. This is to solve 2 common issues (which Pakistan also faced in 2005) that after a disaster cell phones may be rendered useless due to damage to the local base station and due to the heavy call volume after the disaster which overloads remaining base stations.

The paper mentions how this effort will help:

Setting up a base station in space would ensure calls for help reach the relevant authorities in time, allow people to confirm loved ones’ safety without clogging regular mobile networks and relay calls to and from places that have lost connections.

The stationary orbital satellite with an antenna more than twice the size of any existing satellite antenna, would be used to secure mobile phone connections when ground base relay stations have been knocked out in an earthquake or other natural disasters.

Cell phones that use communications satellites are already in use, but the large size of the equipment for sending and receiving signals restricts it to users with special handsets.

Read the rest of this entry »

The earthquake of this week damaged the telecom and internet infrastructure, impacting many Asian countries. Banking services were severely hampered Wednesday but services had resumed Thursday after networks were reconfigured to detour around the broken cables. In June 2005 Pakistan’s only undersea fiber-optic cable link with the outside world at that time developed a serious fault, virtually crippling data feeds, including the Internet, for 11 days. See my previous post on Pakistan’s new undersea project.

This earthquake underscored the vulnerabilities of a system where huge amounts of data speed through the region in cables laid deep beneath the sea, noted Red Herring magazine.

The WALL STREET JOURNAL (12/29) reports that the slow but steady return of telecom services across Asia, after Tuesday’s earthquake damaged a critical nexus of cables off Taiwan, suggests that ‘workaround’ tactics and the quake’s holiday timing may limit its impact on business. Some telecom companies were working to reroute their service by other channels, including through Australia, the Indian Ocean or by satellite. Several ships were on their way Thursday to repair regional telecom cables broken by an earthquake off southern Taiwan, but officials warned that it could take several more days before Internet access across much of Asia returned to normal. One of the two cables that were broken is owned by a consortium that includes Singapore Telecom, France Telecom and Pakistan Telecommunication. The other is partly owned by China Unicom, StarHub and Telekom Malaysia.

An article in today’s BUSINESSWORLD (Philippines) reports that industry observers said that the chaos in Asia’s Internet service sparked by an undersea earthquake shows that the region’s cable network is too fragile and overly reliant on connections to the U.S. Undersea fiber-optic cables account for more than 95 percent of international telecommunications thanks to their strength, capacity and connection quality, according to South Korean provider KT Submarine Corp. These cables have been around for over 125 years. According to a report by policy think tank Rand Corporation the cables, which for the most part lie unprotected on the ocean floor can be dmanaged by ship anchors, fish nets that scrape the sea bottom and even in one case, sharks that gnawed on a line apparently due to its electromagnetic pulse.

One alternative would be satellites, which are costlier and do not provide as much capacity or quality of transmission as fiber-optic cables, analysts said. See my post to read more about use of satellite commuication for disaster management.

The Red Herring article notes that South Korea has 10 main undersea cables connecting it to the world and seven of them were damaged by the quake. India was highly vulnerable from damage to undersea cable links as well because it receives 80 percent to 90 percent of its bandwidth from the undersea network, industry officials said.

This incident has forced the global telecommunication industry to seriously consider resilience and business continuity. The world of today depends too much on communication technology to allow this to happen again. I expect to see many improvements in the coming months and years.

 Information and communication technologies (ICT) play an important role of lifeline in disaster management life cycle. The recent disasters in Asia and USA have highlighted the need for interoperable standards and technologies, and better planning and coordination to leverage telecommunication for disaster management. This post will describe various efforts around the world to improve the use of telecommunication technologies for disaster mitigation.  

As a case in example, after the earthquake in Pakistan Inmarsat-sponsored Télécoms Sans Frontières(TSF) responded immediately to the disaster. TSF created emergency mobile satellite telecoms centres - using Inmarsat equipment - for rescue teams, local authorities and other emergency relief efforts. After the quake cellular mobile operators in Pakistan were also allowed to offer their services in Kashmir. Even so, according to ITU, rescue and relief operations in Pakistan were drastically hampered because telecommunication infrastructure was severely damaged and distribution networks almost perished, .

Let us take a quick look at how telecommunication helps in disaster management lifecycle, who are the key stakeholders, what are the challenges and what are the new developments.

The disaster management lifecycle has 4 phases: Preparedness, Mitigation, Relief and Recovery.

The Stakeholders include:
Policy Makers- ITU, World Bank, United Nations, WSIS
Regulators- ITU, Country specific Agencies eg PTA, FCC
Operators - Service providers, Equipment Makers
Academia - Universities, Researchers
Civil Society- Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) e.g. IFRC

The challenge is to bring the stakeholders together so that synergies are realized and innovative solutions can be offered. For instance see the image below from a Japanese mobile phone which provides maps and instructions in case of a disaster.  I’ll summarize some of the important developments over the last few years.

Hyogo Framework for disaster reduction presents the results of global leaders to build the resilience against disasters. It was adopted at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Hyogo, Japna in Jan 2005. It addresses issues of digital divide and how to leverage ICT for disaster mitigation and presents detailed action and followoup plans.

Tampere Conventionis a resolution specific to emergency telecommunication. ITU is responsible for driving its content, ratification and adoption.  Tampere Convetion describes the procedures for request and provision of telecommunication assistance, legal and financial matters and the logistics. You can get full details about it here.  Pakistan is not one of the 35 countries who have ratified Tampere convention.

The challenges
To give you an idea of the challenges faced, I’ll share excerpts from a talk by Dr Ferrari of Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation :

The availability and use of interoperable and adequate telecommunication resources are indispensable tools for humanitarian relief and disaster mitigation. Public and private humanitarian relief agencies are often stunned to learn that hefty import duties must be paid for their telecommunications equipment, that they have serious problems to import and operate telecommunication equipment and that operators must obtain operating licenses before communicating within the area of disaster relief operations and with the outside word. The Tampere Convention is a targeted effort to facilitate the provision of timely and effective telecommunication resources and of rapid, efficient information flows for disaster prevention and response.

In another interesting development, a petition has been put forth in the USA to deal with emergency communication issues as faced by victims of Katrina hurricane. Read the full news article here , excerpts are below. The petition asks that carriers should be required to set up alternative communications service for customers affected by disaster-related outages. Carriers would be given a choice:

• They could activate a voice mail servicethat could be accessed by incoming callers dialing the customer’s phone number. This would enable customers who don’t have any outgoing phone service to receive incoming calls or record an outgoing voicemail message providing information about their status and location.
• Or, the carriers could provide expedited local number portabilityto customers whose service has been knocked out. This would enable customers to quickly port their phone numbers to alternative providers (including IP-based providers and providers outside the affected area) and thereby reestablish communications links with their families and friends.

The Pakistan earthquake of 2005 and the Tsunami of 2004 presents many learning opportunities. This post touched upon just one technical topic . However one post cannot do justice to this complex topic. I hope that you got a glimpse of how telecommunication can save lives.

Resources and Further Reading:

• ITU Site Pages on Emergency Telecom
• Emergency Telecommunication Working Group
• Reliefweb - Telecom
• LIRNE Asia, an organization for ICT, reports on a recent conference about ICT and disasters.
• Emergency Telecom Workshop in Bangladesh, March 2006.
• Papers - ICT UNSIDR Conference Report from Kobe/Hyogo Conference, Japan 2005.