Later this year, T-Mobile plans to test a service that will allow its subscribers to switch seamlessly between connections to cellular towers and Wi-Fi hotspots, including those in homes and the more than 7,000 it controls in Starbucks outlets, airports and other locations, according to analysts with knowledge of the plans. The company hopes that moving mobile phone traffic off its network will allow it to offer cheaper service and steal customers from cell competitors and landline phone companies like AT&T.
“T-Mobile is interested in the replacement or displacement of landline minutes,” said Mark Bolger, director of marketing for T-Mobile. Wi-Fi calling “is one of the technologies that will help us deliver on that promise.”
Major phone manufacturers including Nokia, Samsung and Motorola are offering or plan…
Often a response is a result of a stimulus. Evacuation drills are stimulus-response models; the drill is activated by a siren and the people are expected to react by hurrying to safety zones, in most cases defined by the community’s response plan; i.e. activating an existing emergency response plan.Social Cognition is encoding, storing, and retrieving social information and applying the cognition to social situations. Consider the social situation of a disaster and the event of setting of sirens. The awareness programming in community risk reduction helps the community prepare for social situations. Cognitive representation of social information are schema.
Biological Psychology defines “Awareness” as a human or animal perception and cognitive reaction to a condition or event; awareness does not necessarily imply understanding.
A excerpt from my analysis of the Sri Lanka Disaster Management Act in Lanka Business Online:
Will we be ready the next time?
The sad answer is no.
The government has enacted framework legislation that falls short not only on basic criteria such as effective operation of a disaster authority, sustainable and stable funding and accountability, but even on clarity of drafting.
No attempt has been made in the design to insulate the authority from the weaknesses of existing government institutions, though the Act does succeed in insulating the authority from public funds.
The Road Map, reflecting an admirable commitment to action, is an excellent starting point for mapping priorities and achieving results.
But the realization of its potential depends on the strength of the human resources that can be mobilized…
The report presents a summary of the comments and observations made in the presentations and panel discussions on the 7 sessions of the Forum: Using ICTs for Effective Disaster Management. The Forum is an output of the CTO regional capacity building programs.
The comments and observations made in this report are based on the outline of the Forum’s program, CTO suggested disaster management matrix, from observations made, and conversations with stakeholders at a Forum held at the Heritance Hotel in Ahungalla, Sri Lanka, 26-29 June 2006.
The intent of this report is to identify issues for further consideration regarding the social scientific methodology of using ICTs in Disaster Management and to provide a set of notes that mention the various core activities of the participating stakeholders.
View copy…
The Sri Lanka Disaster Minister is quoted by the Sunday Times (23 July 2006, p. 2) as stating that “In the wake of last week’s earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Indonesia, the country was fully prepared within 23 minutes as an early warning reached the Met Department.”
According to the 17 July timeline.ppt, the PTWC and the Japanese Center issued the first bulletin within 17 minutes of the earthquake. The Minister indicates that the entire country was fully prepared within 6 minutes of receiving that bulletin. This may possibly be a world record.
If we assume the 23 minutes was counted from the time the warning was received, the country was ready 40 minutes after the earthquake. Even that is extraordinary. The Sri Lankan official who was…
Tags: Associated Press, Indonesia, Japanese Center, Met Department, PTWC, Sri Lanka, Sunday Times, the second anniversary of the disaster, The Times, tsunami, United Nations.
New Straits Times - Malaysia News Online
Unlike other natural calamities, the worst effects of the tsunami are now mostly avoidable. So following the catastrophe, countries around the ocean’s rim, helped by the United Nations and other partners, went about putting an early warning system into place.
None of the fancy equipment and good intentions made a difference last Monday when a 7.7-magnitude undersea quake south of Java triggered a tsunami that smashed into 200 kilometres of coastline around Pangandaran.
What ensued was a scaled-down reprise of December 2004: communities caught by surprise, the death toll mounting as bodies are uncovered and, most regretfully, alarm bells lost in transmission. To be fair, unlike its much bigger but slower rolling predecessor, the Java temblor gave the Indonesian Bureau of…
Nandan Jayasinghe –
We will start the event by lighting the traditional oil lamp. Next is a 2 minute meditation.
Nuwan Waidyanatha –
Welcome all partners including, Dr. Gordon Gow (University of Alberta), Dr. Dileeka Dias (Director Dialog Communication Research Lab), Prof Rohan Samarajiva (Director LIRNEasia), Mr. Nanadana Jayasinghe (Director Sarvodaya Disaster Management center), most importantly the Sarvodaya Participants (ICT Guardians).
Rohan Samarajiva –
We started the lat Mile HazInfo Program on January 23, 2006. The objective of my talk is to introduce you to the framework used in this project. The attendees are people who have faced the great tragedy that happened in December 26, 2004. Since then, 20 months later, we still have no solution in our nation.
Tags: Aburizal Bakrie, Addressable Satellite Radio, Alberta, alerting solution, All communication systems, Associated Press, Australia, Dialog Communication Research Lab, Dileeka Dias, early warning solution, earthquake, good information communication network, Gordon Gow, Indian Ocean, Indonesia, Java, link technologies, messages to multiple technologies, mobile phones, multi-media dissemination, Nanadana Jayasinghe, oil lamp, Open source protocol, point-to-multiple media, raw software code, Rohan Samarajiva, SMS, Sri Lanka, Thailand, tsunami, University of Alberta, WAP, web links, wireless networks, XML.
What will it take?
2004 December 26th
2005 March 28th
2006 July 17th
Three tsunamis within less than two years; and the clueless Indonesian government can’t still get its act together.
And faraway India is supposed to have issued a warning when there was no chance of a tsunami hitting India. CYA bureaucrat, I guess. A different error.
Sri Lanka radios are supposed to have carried the story within about 30 mts. If true, this is very good.
AP Report
Science and Technology Minister Kusmayanto Kadiman said Indonesia received the bulletins 45 minutes before the tsunami hit but did not announce them because they did not want to cause unnecessary alarm.
\”If it (the tsunami) did not occur, what would have happened?\” he told reporters in Jakarta, noting that there was no effective way…
Tags: ACEH, India, Indian Ocean, Indonesia, Indonesian government, Jakarta, Java, Jusuf Kalla, Kusmayanto Kadiman, Sri Lanka, Sumatra island, The Associated Press.
By Laura Smith-Spark
BBC News
Eighteen months after the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, hundreds have died after a giant wave struck the Indonesian island of Java.
Their deaths have raised questions about the failure of a promised Indian Ocean tsunami early warning system to sound an adequate alert.
More than 300 people died and about 140 were reported missing after the tsunami struck Java’s southern coast on Monday.
Witnesses have said people had little or no warning to flee the 2m-high wave triggered by an undersea earthquake.
Tags: ACEH, Bali, Batukaras, BBC, Charles McCreary, China, communications network, Elan Jayalani, Geophysics, Germany, Hawaii, Indian Ocean, Indonesia, Indonesia\'s Bureau of Meteorology and Geophysics, island of Java, Jakarta, Japan, Java, Java\'s coast, Laura Smith-Spark, mobile phones, Nias island, Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, public communication systems, SMS, United Nations.
Thursday Evening, 5:00PM
Sri Lanka Foundation Institute
100 Independence Square, Colombo
This lecture is free and open to the public. The lecture will address all-hazards warning and the use of the Common Alerting Protocol in disaster mitigation.
Gordon Gow is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Extensions at the University of Alberta, Canada. Co-author of the book: “Mobile and Wireless Communication: An Introduction” and most current book: “Policymaking for Critical Infrastructure”. Moreover, he is the communication systems consultant for “Evaluating a last-mile Hazard Dissemination: A Research Project” in Sri Lanka.
Gordon Gow –
It is a community-based last-mile warning system, being tried out in a selection of Sarvodaya’s villages in Sri Lanka. Different technologies will be tested in 32 of Sarvodaya’s Tsunami-affected villages; some are ‘organized,’ some are ‘less organized and…
The recent bomb atacks in Bombay have taken away hundreds of invaluable lives and brought miseray to thousands of families followed by shattering the millions. Nothing can measure or relpace the losses. India is recovering and it will overcome. The terrorists have also failed to inhibit the FDI as BusinessWeek reports.
Article available here.Rule of law, always, triumphs over the mindless outlaws.
Dilshani Samaraweera & Harsha de Silva
The Information and Communication Technology Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) and LIRNEasia have partnered to conduct an in-depth baseline sector analysis of the BPO sector in Sri Lanka, to assess its direct, as well as indirect impacts on the country, and to identify opportunities and constraints for its growth.
The preliminary findings of the analysis will be presented at the colloquium. The finalized country report will be available publicly and it is envisaged that it would constitute an essential input in the formulation of effective policies that would catalyze sector growth.
Taipei to replace cellular with wifi?
10 July 2006
Source: www.telecoms.com/itmgcontent/tcoms/news/articles/20017362396.html
Taipei’s City Government has launched a voice over wifi trial it believes could lead to 200,000 using the technology by year end.
Dubbed ‘Taipei Easy Call’ the service is based on Taipei’s city-wide “WiFly” WLAN network and is backed by ten companies, including the Taipei Computer Association (TCA).
The idea is to saturate Taipei with wifi hot spots enabling those taking part in the trial to switch from regular cellular networks to wifi when a signal is available.
“This is the world’s first internet phone system using the whole city, rather than a spot, as a wireless operation environment,” Mr Wongg of the TCA told AFP news agency.
According to reports the initiative will also involve switching schools and government offices…
Tags: AFP, internet phone system, internet telephony system, Ma Ying-jeou, regular cellular networks, taipei, Taipei Computer Association, Taipei\'s City Government, VOIP, wireless operation environment, WLAN, Wongg, www.telecoms.com/itmgcontent/tcoms/news/articles/200173.
Since the last thread was getting unwieldy in size it has been shut. Please continue the discussion here.
Tags: Colombo, compliant products/services, Donald Gaminitillake, enough applications, Harsha Purasinghe, I.B.M., Linux, Naveendra Gunaratne, Oracle, Ravi Peiris, software, software developers, Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka association.
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