Governments need to pay more attention to the costs of false warnings. It’s not that this has not been said before. But now we have real evidence from the region.
Gulfnews: Cyclone victims ignored repeated warnings
A false tsunami alert two months ago led thousands of Bangladeshis to ignore warnings as Cyclone Sidr approached, costing many lives, villagers and officials said on Tuesday.
“This time we did not take the number 10 danger signal seriously because the government has been issuing these warnings quite often. We have rushed to cyclone centres in the past and then headed straight back,” said Abed Master, a teacher in Golshakhali, one of the worst-hit villages in southern Bangladesh.
Officials said they had struggled in vain to persuade villagers - used to the Bay…
The victims of cyclone in Bangladesh are poorest among the poor. Their views about effective warning system “lacks credibility” to the concerned bodies.But it is a real bad news when the merchant mariners have slammed Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD) for suddenly raising the cyclone’s severity within an hour. It clearly demonstrates the BMD’s professional incompetence. Reuters provides the chilling details.
I was in Macau attending Mobile Asia 2007 when cyclone SIDR was brewing in the Bay of Bengal. BBC and CNN were updating its movement since November 12. To put a perspective to it, their weather commentators said SIDR’s intensity was similar to Katrina.
Both the international TV channels consistently mentioned Bangladesh being the very possible victim. Unlike in New Orleans, the international TV news crew did…
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Six water pressure sensors placed on the seabed in the southern Bay of Bengal and northern Arabian Sea will act as sentinels in India’s tsunami early warning system, which was formally inaugurated today.
The sensors — four in the Bay and two in the Arabian Sea — will look for changes in ocean water level and send readings via satellite to the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) in Hyderabad, the hub for the system.
The Rs 125-crore early warning system will also use a network of seismic stations, tide gauges and computer simulations based on seabed studies to issue alerts about tsunamis — waves sometimes triggered by undersea earthquakes.
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Continue reading “Tsunami sentinels on duty under sea - Six sensors in place, six more to…
:The Daily Star: Internet Edition
Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka’s largest community-based organisation, and LIRNEasia, a regional ICT policy think-tank, collaborated on a 32-village pilot project that sought to identify the best technologies for reaching villages; to identify the significance of organisational strength and training for risk reduction; and to assess the participation of women in these activities.The community-based approach implemented in the project is different from a public-warning approach, but has lessons for government communications with first responders and for community organisation and training as well.
For example, the project field tested addressable and remotely activated satellite radios that have coverage over the entire Bay of Bengal region. Other equipment deployed included Java and Symbion enabled mobile handsets capable of generating loud alarms and multi-language alert messages.
The Bangladesh…
Tags: activated satellite radios, Bangladesh, Bangladesh Network Office for Urban Safety, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Bay of Bengal, Community, Daily Star, Department of Civil Engineering, DHAKA, government communications, Internet Edition, ITN Centre, Java, last-mile warning systems, MILE WARNING SYSTEMS, Sri Lanka.
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Tsunami concern for Bay of Bengal
Now, Phil Cummins, lead author on the Nature paper and a geologist at Geoscience Australia, believes this is not the case.He said: “I reviewed the geological literature and found the evidence for a lack of tectonic activity along the Myanmar coast was not compelling.”
Historical evidence
Recent GPS data, he said, suggested that the plate boundary was at sea in this area, hidden below thick layers of sediment.
Smith Dharmasarojana is a hero to those in the disaster risk-reduction field. He was the Met Chief who raised the flag re a tsunami hitting Thailand well before 2004 December. He lost his job as a result. When the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami did hit, he was recalled and made the disaster-preparedness czar. Because of his drive, Thailand is among the best prepared for a tsunami or similar disaster today.
I have read about the mudslide triggered tsunami as a theoretical possibility (cannot actually recall specific mention of a historical event). The danger with this particular form of tsunami is that there is no prior earthquake for the sensors to catch. The only thing that can detect the resultant tsunami is a tsunami buoy of the…
Tags: Andaman Islands, Bangkok, Bangladesh, Bay of Bengal, East Coast, India, Indian Ocean, island of Phuket, Myanmar, National Disaster Warning Centre, Smith Dharmasaroja, Sri Lanka, Thailand.
The wind was not held back
Below is a talk given 6 years ago entitled “To hold back the wind.” That was an attempt to get disaster preparedness going. It failed, obviously. The walls of water came in with no warning; thousands died instantaneously; millions are homeless. Parentheses refer to 9/11 in the US for scale: in a few hours on the 26th of December more that 17,900 (3,000) died out of a population of 19 million (280 million). More than a million are homeless (mostly office space was lost). More will die due to epidemics caused by thousands of unburied corpses, bad water, etc. (insignificant). This is just Sri Lanka. LIRNEasia’s immediate focus is the Bay of Bengal region. We have lost over 40,000 people…
Provisional Mission Statement: Improving the lives the people of Asia - by making it easier to use the information and communication technologies they need; by changing the laws, policies and regulations to enable those uses; by building Asia-based human capacity through research, training, consulting and advocacy.
Why LIRNEasia?
Enormous amounts of money are invested annually in ICTs. The potential of information and communication technologies, or ICTs for economic and social progress is substantial. ICTs aren’t necessarily the answer to higher incomes and development in itself; but together with other factors, they provide a means to improve people’s capabilities and knowledge so that they may better their lives. ‘Asia’ is the collective name for the countries roughly encircled by Russia, Turkey, Egypt and the Indian and Pacific Oceans.…
Tags: Afghanistan, Asia, Bangladesh, Bay of Bengal, Bhutan, Broadband, Business Center for Internet, Cambodia, Canada, China, Colombo, communication technologies, Denmark, DHAKA, Distance Learning Center Limited, Egypt, Hong Kong, Indian oceans, infoDev, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, International Development Research Center, Internet users, ISP, IT-based teaching facility, Korea, LIRNE.NET, LIRNEasia, LIRNEasia\'s mission, mobile phones, Mount Lavinia Hotel, Myanmar, Pacific oceans, Russia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, The Netherlands, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, United States government, video conferencing, virtual organization, Wi-Fi.
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