LIRNEasia » ACEH

Tsunami risk reduction in the age of twitter

Rohan Samarajiva — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 14:09:29 +0000

A few days back, on April 11th 2012, a powerful earthquake occurred not too far from Aceh. Naturally, fears of a tsunami were uppermost in people’s minds. It’s been some time since we at LIRNEasia did funded disaster-related research, but within minutes, I was receiving requests for analysis on the lines of the post-mortems we’ve done after every major disaster in the region. So I started keeping notes and writing up a short piece. So far it has been carried in

Lanka Business Online
Sunday Island
Science Daily.com and
Silobreaker.com

LIRNEasia holds final HazInfo Workshop in Jakarta

Udu-gama — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:18:25 +0000

Yesterday, 5 March 2008, LIRNEasia, with its Indonesian partner, the Indonesian Institute for Disaster Preparedness (IIDP), held the final HazInfo workshop at the Hotel Borobudur in Jakarta, Indonesia. The “Sharing Knowledge on Disaster Warning: Community-based Last-Mile Warning Systems” workshop included several highlights such as a testimonial from an Aceh survivor of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami; informative presentations from the Indonesian Institute of Science (LIPI), KOGAMI Padang, GTZ-GITEWS, Bureau of Meteorology and Geophysics (BMG) and the University of Syiah Kuala, Aceh. The workshop encouraged animated discussion on the importance of community-based early warning systems, training, and the necessity for information to follow warning.

Jakarta Workshop Agenda

Jakarta HazInfo Workshop Report

Inauguration
Elements of a Community-Based Early Warning System | Rohan Samarajiva

Session I
From Emergency Response to Community Preparedness | Jan Sopaheluwakan
Methodology, Preparedness, Training and Community Organization: HazInfo Experience | Natasha Udu-gama

Session II
Tsunami Early Warning System: Lessons Learned from Padang City | Patra Rina Dewi
First Responder Action: Sri Lanka Experience | Nuwan Waidyanatha

Session III
Experience from Padang | Aim Zein
Transmission of Warning to Local Levels: Sri Lanka Experience | Nuwan Waidyanatha

Session IV
Determination of Hazard from the National Level: HazInfo Experience | Natasha Udu-gama
Tsunami and Disaster Mitigation Center at Syah Kuala University | Muhammed Dirhamsiyah

Session V
Roles of Policymakers, Regulators, Private Sector & Civil Society | Rohan Samarajiva

Indonesia disaster preparedness a work in progress

Udu-gama — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 11:26:33 +0000

Indonesia has learnt lessons from dealing with a string of earthquakes, but still can do more to reduce the impact of such disasters by quake proofing buildings and deploying more tsunami buoys, officials said on Wednesday.

An official at Indonesia’s National Coordinating Agency for Disaster Management said there had been progress in educating people since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that followed a huge quake off Aceh province and killed nearly 170,000 Indonesians.

Mobiles for humanitarian action?

Rohan Samarajiva — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 10:08:51 +0000

Our friend and colleague from TVEAP, Nalaka Gunawardene, writes from Geneva:

Message to aid workers: Go mobile — or get lost! « Moving Images, Moving People!

It might be that aid workers are all frustrated computer geeks…because all their talk was about collaborative and networking software, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the use of really high resolution (read: oh-so-sexy) satellite imagery, and the latest analytical tools — all requiring high levels of skill and personal computers with loads of processing power.

But no mobile phones! This was too much to let pass, so I raised the question: did you guys even consider this near ubiquitous, mass scale technology and its applications in crisis and disaster situations? And how do you engage the digitally empowered, better informed disaster survivors and crisis-affected communities?

I also recalled the example of Aceh tsunami survivors keeping each other informed about the latest arrivals of relief supplies – all through their mobile phones (as cited by the head of MERCY Malaysia on the previous day).

It turned out that they did discuss mobiles — well, sort of. Amidst all the gee-whiz talk about high tech gadgets, I received a short answer: widespread as mobile phones now are, ‘these systems are not fully integrated or compatible with other information platforms’ — whatever that means! The group’s spokespersons also pointed out that since mobile services are all operated by commercial (telecom) service providers, using their networks involves lots of ‘negotiations’. (I would have thought it’s the same with those who operate earth-watching or communications satellites.)

Indonesians die again without official warning

Rohan Samarajiva — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 10:21:42 +0000

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 to spread a warning without a system of sirens or alarms in place.

He said Indonesia now planned to speed up plans for a nationwide warning system.

Indonesia was hardest hit by a 2004 tsunami that killed at least 216,000 people in a dozen Indian Ocean nations _ with more than half the deaths occurring in Sumatra island\’s Aceh province.

Though the country started to install a warning system after that disaster, it is still in the early stages. The government had been planning to extend the alert system to Java _ which was hit by a quake in May that killed more than 5,800 people _ in 2007.

Answering reporters\’ questions as to why no warning was issued on Monday, Vice President Jusuf Kalla claimed there was no need because most people had fled inland after the earthquake, fearing a tsunami.

\”After the quake occurred, people ran to the hills … so in actual fact there was a kind of natural early warning system,\” he said. However, of dozens of people interviewed by The Associated Press in Pangandaran on Tuesday, only one person said he felt a slight tremor. None said there was a mass movement of people to higher ground before the tsunami, though some residents recognized the danger when they saw the wall of water approaching.

Indonesia tsunami system ‘not ready’

Chanuka Wattegama — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 07:08:05 +0000

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.
Java resident Elan Jayalani, whose village of Batukaras was one of those affected, told the BBC: “There was some confusion about the warning.
“We were told that there had been an earthquake and the tsunami might come in a couple of days… we never expected it.”
The new Indian Ocean early warning system – proposed after the December 2004 tsunami which claimed 200,000 lives – was said by the UN to be “up and running” late last year.
So why did a warning not reach Java’s affected communities in time?
Indonesian earthquake official Fauzi told the BBC that although progress had been made, there were still serious shortcomings in Indonesia’s monitoring systems and communications network.
These were compounded by the speed at which Monday’s tsunami struck, said Fauzi, who works for Indonesia’s Bureau of Meteorology and Geophysics (BMG).
It currently takes scientists up to 60 minutes to receive and analyse the data from 30 seismological stations and send out a warning.
With only a 20-minute interval between the magnitude 7.7 undersea earthquake and the arrival of the waves on shore, there was just no time to warn people, Fauzi said.
However, work is under way to improve the system.
• Thirty more seismological stations are to be installed this year
• A total of 160 will be in place when the network is completed in 2009, cutting the time taken to receive and process earthquake data to less than five minutes
• At present two ocean pressure sensors – part of the Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami (Dart) system – are in place. Another 15-20 Dart buoys are planned by 2009
• Four land-based tide gauges are now in place in Aceh, Nias island, Padang and Bali. An international network spanning the Indian Ocean continues to be updated and expanded
‘Unexpected’
The final part of the jigsaw is getting the warning message from tsunami monitoring centres to Jakarta and – in a matter of minutes – to often isolated communities.
Fauzi said: “We don’t have the systems yet so what we do is call by telephone. But sometimes the lines are busy and it’s very difficult to get through.
“We need to set up an exclusive communication system because otherwise it’s going to be the same problem. If we use public communication systems, it’s not going to work very well.”
In the meantime, officials were making use of SMS messages to contact communities at risk, he said.
Networks of sirens are also being set up this year in the Aceh, Padang and Bali regions to alert people who may be too poor to own TVs, radios or mobile phones. Another is to be built in Java next year.
Awareness level
Educating vulnerable coastal communities so they know how to react if an earthquake strikes or a tsunami warning is issued is also key.
When the waters receded before the giant waves hit Java’s coast, witnesses reported people running on to the exposed seabed to look – a reaction that cost many lives in the 2004 tsunami.
Charles McCreary, director of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii, told BBC News that, despite improvements in warning systems, basic safety messages had still not reached everyone.
“The strategy has always been that if you’re near the ocean and you feel a strong earthquake, that is your warning and you need to move to high ground or inland as quickly as possible.
“But that’s a hard thing to keep up that level of awareness and to have people be able to react quickly when an event occurs – and it looks that there was a failure of that today.”
Financial help continues to come from governments and organisations including Germany – a partner in building the Dart system – Japan, China and the UN, Fauzi said.
But, he added, establishing such a complex new monitoring system inevitably “takes time”.
“Also, right now, there are difficulties with our human resources because this is our first experience of setting up a tsunami system,” he said.
“What we need is to ask the developed countries also to assist us with expertise.”

All links must work in disaster warning

Rohan Samarajiva — Sun, 25 Dec 2005 05:28:12 +0000

The following article emphasizes the importance of the last mile and also demonstrates the value of the research we will be undertaking in 2006 on assessing the suitability of various technology solutions.

Tsunami warning system a work in progress

By JOSEPH COLEMAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER


	Yuliana, 25, watches her 9 month-old baby, Nurul Husna, as they sit in front of their tent in Lampaseh Aceh, Banda Aceh, Indonesia, Friday, Dec. 23, 2005. Acehnese prepared for the one year anniversary of last years devastating Asian Tsunami, with many having regained jobs and houses, while thousands are still without employment and living in tents. (AP Photo/Binsar Bakkara)

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — It doesn’t look much like an escape route yet. The path between two plots of property on Indonesia’s tsunami-wrecked coastline is strewn with smashed masonry and is blocked by a pond. The planned escape route in the Indonesian town of Banda Aceh represents the low-tech end of a sophisticated network of seismic monitoring, satellite communications and underwater sensors that is meant to give early warning in case of another tsunami.