I chaired the session on international and Indian best practices and made a presentation based primarily on the experiences of designing e Sri Lanka back in 2002-03 and LIRNEasia research.

My key message was that there were no best practices that could be imported to Kerala. What were best were what fit the specific circumstances. These included a majority of the population owning feature phones and most people not having credit/debit cards.

So my suggestions for the Government of Kerala included making government data public in computer-readable form with minimal restrictions so that app developers could make them into usable applications for Kerala citizens, and working on setting in place the institutional arrangements for location-based services by focusing first on cell broadcasting.

The last time I was in Kovalam (in the very same hotel, Vivanta by Taj, then Taj Green Cove), it was for a similar small high-powered session on Indian telecom policy pulled together by Aspen in early 2008. Its recommendations gained significant traction.

I have a feeling that something good will come of this meeting too.

What is even more worrisome is the lack of knowledge among all the parties about the available modes of communicating early warnings. No mention of cell broadcasting that is capable of delivering location-specific tailored information to all mobile handsets within the range of a base transceiver station. The journalist has done a good job except for repeating misinformation about poor communication infrastructure and access in rural areas.

Pradeep Koddippilli, the DMC assistant director-in-charge of early warnings, told IPS that the centre had not received any warning from the meteorology department tasked with assessing dangerous weather events. “We kept contacting them repeatedly through the 25th, but there was no warning,” he said.

Despite the millions spent on setting up early warning towers and networks, a recent assessment by the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs released in November said that the meteorology department, in fact, lacked the technical capacity to predict rainfall and fast moving weather patterns.

“The U.N. assessment confirms the technical capacity of the department of meteorology needs to be further developed in order to enable it to deliver reliable quantitative rain forecasts,” said the report titled ‘Disaster Response and Preparedness Assessment Mission to Sri Lanka’.

Experts told IPS that multiple dissemination systems are at the disposal of the DMC – ideal for a country where communication infrastructure is poor in rural areas.

In addition to the 67 warning towers set up island-wide, the DMC can also tap into the wide network of public officials at the village level, volunteers with the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society, secure satellite communications and, at least, one national mobile network to send out alerts.

“You cannot say what is the best system because each one has its own strengths and weaknesses. What is important is to have several systems to make sure vulnerable communities receive warnings in time,” Suranga Kahandawa, disaster management specialist at the World Bank, told IPS

The government’s own nationally and provincially representative Household Income and Expenditure Survey shows that more than 75 percent of households in the Southern Province (affected by the most recent early warning fiasco) have a telephone in the house (almost all being GSM and CDMA handsets capable of receiving cell broadcasts), clearly contradicting the claim of poor infrastructure in rural areas.

LIRNEasia’s Teleuse@BOP4 research (representative of those at the Bottom of the Pyramid; but not at the level of Province) showed that urban households has slightly higher (7%) ownership of phones, but that when it came to access to a phone within the household there was no difference between urban and rural households.

There was no causal connection. And the rest of the machinery for making cell broadcasting an effective public warning mechanism is not in place, yet. But we are confident the seed that we planted will bear fruit.

The slideset is here.

The technology is also being tested in a very different part of the world in which disaster may strike with very little warning: Israel. EViglio is working on an SMS-CB system that will warn residents of incoming rockets within seconds after they have been fired. Testing of the system will begin in June 2011.

Cell broadcast systems are also being tested or deployed in a number of other locations around the world. The Maldives, a collection of low-lying islands in the Indian Ocean with nearly 300,000 inhabitants, will be rolling out an SMS-CB system to warn of “tsunamis, earthquakes, flash floods, tidal waves, thunderstorms, tornadoes and waterspouts, strong winds, and drought.” The Netherlands and parts of the U.S. including Florida and other gulf coast states, New York City, and Houston are also working on their own systems, according to U.S. firm CellCast technologies.

This technology does have some obvious disadvantages — for one, not everyone carries their cell phones on them at all times. Compared to other solutions, however, it could prove useful: sirens can’t convey information with anything close to the specificity of a text message, and television and radio can only push messages when they’re in use.

The Gold Coast authorities used SMS for 10,000 people. How did they know these were the phones belonging to the people in the high-risk areas? Is it not common that people who are found on beaches, do not necessarily live nearby? So how did they pick the 10000 numbers? And how come they missed the head of the local disaster management group?

“Not everyone keeps their radio on.

“We need a system to make sure the low ground gets priority warning.”

Dr Wilson said a siren system, doorknocking and use of modern media such as Facebook were needed.

Emergency Management Queensland regional director Eddie Bennet said 10,000 text messages were sent to residents in seven suburbs identified as at greatest risk of flooding.

He said a blanket text message to the whole Gold Coast was not deemed as necessary.

The message that was sent directed Lakeview, Boykambil, Woongoolba, Currumbin, Cabbage Tree, Budds Beach and Paradise Point residents to seek further advice.

Mr Bennet said he believed the state’s first formal emergency alert had been successful.

“There was absolutely no confusion. There was a sound reason for this and valid purpose for sending them out.”

Local Disaster Management Group deputy chairman Councillor Ted Shepherd was not aware the texts had been sent and said he believed the level of threat did not warrant the service.

“It attracts too many spectators,” he said.

Patra Rina Dewi, director of the Tsunami Alert Community (Kogami), a nongovernmental organisation working on disaster mitigation training for communities, said the knowledge people most need is whether an earthquake has the potential to become a tsunami.

The current standard for this is an earthquake that occurs less than ten kilometres below the seafloor and is recorded as more than seven on the Richter scale.

“But this kind of information should be translated into easy information for the people,” said Patra.

She added that the most effective warning method is sirens, but these are often of limited number and can be heard only at a distance of about one kilometre.

In most countries (few exceptions being North Korea, Burma/Myanmar, Papua New Guinea), mobile penetration is broad enough that cell broadcasting would be superior. Not that you cannot have a few strategically placed towers so the objectives of security theater and commissions from construction can also be satisfied.

CB [cell broadcasting] is an intrinsic feature of GSM, UMTS and IS 95 CDMA networks, and is thus available in the two Maldivian networks. But it must be activated. Most handsets are capable of receiving CB messages but the feature must be turned on. However, in the early stages, getting customers to turn on the feature could be an effective way of educating them of mobile-based public warning.

Following stakeholder meetings that included sharing of information on the ongoing CB channel-standardization work of Study Group 2 of the Telecommunication Bureau of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T) and experience in attempting to use CB for public warning in Sri Lanka, the recommendations to TAM are being finalized. They include the constitution of a “trust protocol board” to develop the terms of access to the CB broker server to ensure security and the conduct of live demonstrations on a test channel that will not be seen by the public. The latter is likely to bring up technical issues that require resolution before full-scale implementation.

Above is a quotation from a box on pp. 29-30 of the 2009 World Disasters Report, published by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, titled “Focus on early warning, early action.” The box, written by Rohan Samarajiva, addresses one of the most difficult problems of public warning, that of ensuring that warnings reach not only the citizens but tourists, which, at peak amount to 1/5th of the population of the Maldives.

The work was carried out at the request of the Communications Authority of the Maldives under our ongoing Mobile 2.0 research program. It is expected that the report, prepared by Natasha Udu-gama, will be released next month.

The IFRC report quotes extensively from LIRNEasia research and publications, in addition to the inclusion of the box.

In the hope of revising the text and energizing the reform effort, the Sri Lanka Press Institute organized a workshop, at which I was asked to speak. In light of the 15 minutes I was assigned, I decided to focus on SMS and cell broadcasting within the larger context of mobiles, a subject we are deeply interested in, rather try to cover the waterfront.

In my presentation, I contrasted the connectivity and new media availability in 1998 when the Declaration was worked up, and now. I showed how significant mobiles were, and discussed two (or three) applications that had media-like qualities (allowed for one-to-many communication). This included customer-requested SMS and cell broadcasting.

Unfortunately, not enough time was available for discussion. Some of the questions/comments (including from the panel) assumed that the state in Sri Lanka was like that in Sweden (not that they made this comparison): asking for explicit statements of policy and thinking that appropriate selection of metaphor and frame would change the outcome. This is an issue I have to come back to over and over again, that all policy design must begin from a realistic analysis of the state, its fundamental incentive structures and capabilities. Just because we wish we had rational government processes, we will not get them.

The Ministry has already received funds from UNESCAP to build three tsunami warning towers in the Eastern, Northern and Southern Provinces and hopes to build another 25 towers by December 26 [2006] to mark the second anniversary of the disaster, according to the Times.

We were skeptical and we were right. By September 12th, 2007, the day of the last false warning and erroneous government evacuation order, one tower was up. The one tower did not work.

So now, one and a half years after that false announcement about 25 towers (and almost four years after the tsunami), we have a Cabinet decision:

Cabinet approved a memorandum submitted by the Minister of Disaster Management and Human Rights, Mahinda Samarasinghe and the Minister of Local Government and Provincial Councils, Janaka Bandara Tennekoon, to accept the revised proposal to expand the Emergency Response Systems (ERS) currently in place by upgrading and establishing 14 fire and rescue stations, in addition to the 18 stations developed under Phase I of the project.

Accordingly, emergency treatment equipment and basic life support (BLS) ambulances will be provided for 12 hospitals and 50 multi-hazard warning towers with communication facilities will be provided, while 15 district emergency operation centres will be set up, replete with transport and communication facilities.

This phase will be implemented within the framework of the Road Map for a Safer Sri Lanka, and will cost 4.63 Euro, which will be financed by Rabobank International TCE Export Finance.

Now Rabobank International TCE Export Finance does not quite sound like a concessionary lender does it?

So then, let us ask about the value of warning towers. What is the range of a warning tower? Would 50 (or 51 including the one in Hikkaduwa) towers be enough for the vulnerable coasts of Sri Lanka? Does the government have an effective method of activating these 50 towers? Has the government completed the promised review of the alert/evacuation actions of September 12, 2007? Has it got a good answer as to why it could not get the Hikkaduwa tower to work on that day?

Or more fundamentally, has the government assessed the efficacy of warning towers versus cell broadcasting that can effectively reach the vulnerable populations on the coast?

Why is harmonization important? Coastal areas are vulnerable to rapid-onset, broad-spectrum hazards such as tsunamis and cyclones. Coastal areas also attract large numbers of tourists. Therefore, these disasters affect not only the nationals of the countries they occur in, but also tourists. For example, Sweden, which far from the Indian Ocean, had 20,000-30,000 tourists in the tsunami affected coastal areas of Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia when the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami occurred. It lost 543 citizens and over 1,500 Swedish tourists required emergency medical assistance and transportation home. The 2004 tsunami was one of Sweden’s worst natural disasters, even though it occurred thousands of miles away from its shores.

Cell broadcasting, which is capable of reaching almost all mobiles within the range of a base station, is an ideal vehicle for transmitting early warning (and of coordinating disaster response). However, its efficacy with tourists depends on harmonization of channel addresses. If the channels opened for receipt of warnings in a tourist’s home country are not used for the same purpose in the visited country, it is clear that the tourist will not receive locationally relevant warnings. In addition, it is possible that commercial or other messages could be received on the phones of persons travelling through multiple countries, causing annoyance and confusion.

There are over 66,000 logical channels that can be used for cell broadcasting, with a subset being marked out by ITU-T for public warning purposes. The ITU process seeks to accommodate the interests of countries such as Sri Lanka and India where warnings need to be delivered in multiple languages. Currently, only Tanzania and the Arab Block appear to be actively engaged in the standards discussion. It is time others joined.

Of all the South Asian countries, it is best positioned to exploit the potential of cell broadcasting both for early warning and for commercial applications. In this light, LIRNEasia was pleased to be invited to conduct a scoping study on cell broadcasting for both public-service and commercial purposes by the Telecom Authority of the Maldives. As part of that activity, we organized, in collaboration with TAM, a workshop with the participation of Mark Wood (CEASa International) and Harsha Purasinghe (MicroImage), two people who have worked on implementing (not just talking about) cell broadcasting for the past few years.

Mark talked about the change in the environment for cell broadcasting following the US rule that any mobile device that was incapable of delivering public warning would have to be labeled as such and the greater enthusiasm displayed by the EU following the successful trials in the Netherlands. Harsha described the innovative work done by his team together with Dialog Telekom and the University of Moratuwa on developing DEWN. The commercial applications of cell broadcasting (location-based) services are also seen to be quite significant and attractive in and of themselves.

LIRNEasia was very pleased to see the high levels of enthusiasm among the participants and is confident that with timely follow through the Maldives can become the Asian leader in providing security to both its citizens and its guests through effective early warning.