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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