LIRNEasia » communication equipment

Concept Paper for a Dam-related Hazard Warning System in Sri Lanka (INTERIM)

Ayesha Zainudeen — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 10:21:13 +0000

A Participatory Study on Actions Required to Avoid and Mitigate Dam Disasters
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Executive summary in Sinhala (PDF)
Executive summary in Tamil (PDF)
The need for this project arose in the course of disaster-management expert consultations carried out by LIRNEasia and The Vanguard Foundation in the preparation of “NEWS-SL: A Participatory Concept Paper for the Design of an Effective All-Hazard Public Warning System” in January-March 2005. The current Concept Paper outlines the contours of an early warning system for dam related hazards in Sri Lanka. It is being developed in a participatory, consultative, and transparent process.
This interim draft has been compiled on the basis of research and an Expert Consultation held 20 May 2005 at the Distance Learning Center located on the campus of the Sri Lanka Institute of Development Administration, with participation from experts representing several decades’ worth of experience in several key Sri Lankan dam administration authorities.
This draft is posted for comment. Comments on this Interim Concept Paper can be submitted until Wednesday 20 July 2005, by email, post or fax, or you may enter your comments directly on the LIRNEasia website in the space provided below.
Relevant comments and suggestions will be incorporated in the final paper.
email: asia@lirne.net
post: LIRNEasia, Sri Lanka Institute of Development Administration (SLIDA), 28/10 Malalasekera Mavatha, Colombo 07, Sri Lanka
fax: (94) 11 452 7648

Executive Summary:
The dam network in Sri Lanka comprises over 350 medium and large dams, and over 12,000 small dams. Today, dams and their complementary structures shape Sri Lanka much as they did thousands of years ago. Maintenance, safety oversight, and usage rights are shared among several Ministries, Authorities, organizations, and informally stake holding nearby populations. This is natural given the multiple usages and demands placed on the dam system. However, there is a great need for better oversight of the dam system and the proper coordination of functions, especially related to safety.
Among the resultant negative outcomes are non- updating of and non-adherence to Standing Orders for maintenance and safety, minimal education of vulnerable populations on the risks and responsibilities of those living in the shadow of dams, and poor disaster response plans. Most seriously, it appears that inadequate priority is being given to the proper maintenance and periodic overhaul of dam structures, and that the existing financial arrangements are quite unsatisfactory. Given the number and widespread distribution of dams in Sri Lanka, it is clear that the affected populations and sectors are many, and that the effects of dam-related hazards can be very serious. In the opinion of the experts the current financial, operational and regulatory arrangements are unlikely to prevent the occurrence of dam-related disasters and may even contribute to them.
The key to effective dam safety is the formulation of Standing Orders that cover all aspects of dam hazard monitoring, risk assessment, remedial action, safe operation and emergency management; the keeping of the Standing Orders up to date; and strict adherence to their provisions.
Risk assessment and vulnerability mapping must be conducted for all dams. This is the basis for effective disaster preparedness.
Early detection of signs of a breach is critical to effective dam safety. If the weakening of the structure is detected very early, remedial measures may be taken to repair it and avoid it from becoming a hazard. Even if the detection of structural problems occurs relatively later, action may be taken to mitigate its effects, for example by lowering water levels. Even if it is detected a few hours prior to a breach, that would still allow for action to save lives and property.
At present, sophisticated dam hazard detection and monitoring devices are not in wide use in Sri Lanka, the most common methods being visual inspections, for the most part, by lower-level staff. The Kantale dam was visually inspected several months its breach to no avail. The actual breach was detected by a villager. The most advanced equipment was installed at Lunugamvehera, one of the most recent large dams, but they have not been maintained in optimal condition subsequently. Even this equipment required periodic visits to their locations by the technical staff While recognizing the costs and maintenance implications of state-of-the-art dam hazard detection and monitoring equipment, this Paper suggests that it may be worthwhile to conduct at least one pilot project using advanced dam hazard detection and monitoring equipment coupled with advanced information and communication technologies that would enable the data to be monitored in multiple locations including the dam’s own control facility.
Even if advanced detection and monitoring systems are adopted, it is essential that the staff, the villagers and others who live by and frequent the dam area be trained to look for signs of impending hazards.
Hazard detection and monitoring information must be interpreted by skilled professionals in order to generate disaster alerts and warnings. Given the short time periods that may be available and the importance of site-specific knowledge, the responsibility for issuing alerts and warnings must reside within the dam operator, preferably with the engineer responsible for the dam. ICTs may be used to provide the decision maker with back up expertise.
It is critically important that engineers in charge of major dams and their technical staff be provided with modern communication equipment and that they are exempted from government regulations inimical to use of fixed telephones above a threshold. Mobile telephone use should be encouraged with cost reimbursements.
Last mile dissemination of disaster alerts and warnings should be well planned, with multiple redundant media and channels, ranging from cell broadcasts that will be limited to coverage areas of specific base stations to use of mosque loudspeakers and temple bells. Training, drills and community participation is crucial to the success of last mile dissemination.
It has been found that unsatisfactory financial arrangements, wherein dam operators supply valuable services but cannot recover their costs, contribute to the systemic problems of neglecting or postponing major and ongoing maintenance work. It is essential that some mechanism for reliable, predictable cost recovery that can be used for maintenance be devised and implemented.
The government should establish a regulatory body with dam safety as its primary objective, separate from and superior to, each of the entities currently owning, operating, or using dams. It should give priority to expertise and stakeholder consultation and be insulated from day-to-day political interference. In other words, it should be independent. The current difficulty of a lack of power over peer government agencies can only be resolved by placing the dam safety functions within an organization that is accountable to Parliament and is not under a specific Minister.
The Dam Hazard Unit (DHU), which contains specialized expertise on dam hazard detection and monitoring, can be placed within either the Public Utilities Commission, which already has some safety regulation functions, or the proposed NEWS:SL [National Early Warning System: Sri Lanka]. The larger organization will give the necessary stature, authority and independence; the focused unit structure will allow the experts to conduct their business in a professional manner.
The removal of immediate dam safety responsibilities from the persons and organizations currently in charge of the reservoirs is not proposed in any way. Those who are closest to the potential hazard-generating structure and who have the best knowledge of it must continue to perform those functions. The mandate of the DHU will be explicitly limited to regulation, alternative dispute resolution and related practices to minimize and promptly resolve inter-agency disputes, and standard setting.
In order to enforce its directions and orders, the DHU and its parent should have the power to shut down structures that are judged to be dangerous, using carefully circumscribed procedures that allow for optimum publicity and which adhere to the principles of natural justice.

Responding to the tsunami

Rohan Samarajiva — Tue, 28 Dec 2004 15:24:48 +0000

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 by the present count. Everything I said above re Sri Lanka applies to the region. We will give food and shelter; we will comfort the living and bury the dead; but we will and must do more. We must create the conditions to minimize deaths on this scale.

The speech below is what I gave at the Workshop on Effective Use of Telecommunications in Emergency and Disaster Management, organized by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka on the 30th of November 1998, just over six years ago. That workshop brought together everyone in government working on disaster management as well as relevant civil society organizations and all the telecom operators. It was addressed by the Minister of Posts, Telecommunications and the Media and by the Deputy Minister of Social Services who was responsible for disaster management in that government. The workshop was preceded by an interim report that had been prepared after extensive consultation with stakeholders. The workshop resulted in a final report with multiple annexes, recommendations, and even a Cabinet Paper authorizing and requiring the Telecom Regulatory Commission to be the focal point for effective use of telecom in disaster management in Sri Lanka. TRC staff were trained in disaster management and work was assigned. The subject of disaster management became so important that the staff of the TRC collected funds to place communication equipment in the ambulances of the National Hospital, remedying a stunning gap discovered in the course of the research. One would think that this was a policy process that had been run by the book; that it would yield the desired results. Or so I thought when I left the office of Director General of Telecommunications and Sri Lanka in June 1999.

The test of good policy is implementation. The test was the tsunami of the 26th of December 2004. The government of Sri Lanka and the Telecom Regulatory Commission failed. There were no early warning systems using telecom technology; there were no procedures to prevent the networks from crashing in the face of the surge of calls; there were no priority schemes for disaster management workers; there were no emergency telecom kits ready to be used; and two days later, newspapers are still carrying reports that the dead cannot be counted for the lack of working telecom facilities.

At this moment, the focus is on disaster recovery. In the face of the unprecedented scale of human suffering that has been unleashed on this poor land, that is understandable. But I will swim against the tide and state that we must use this moment to also look beyond the immediate and urgent needs and think of how we could have reduced the suffering and saved lives if only we had prepared in times of calm. The foundation of disaster management is disaster preparedness.

That is what we were trying to do back in 1998-99 when we worked with all the disaster management agencies. Obviously that did not work. It is possible that the reasons for failure were the lack of incentives meaningful to Sri Lankan bureaucrats and politicians; the tendency in government organizations to denigrate and nullify initiatives associated with the predecessor of the current leader, and so on. But if we leave aside these uncharitable explanations for the moment, what we are left with is the explanation that the previous effort was badly timed; it was undertaken at a time of calm, when the disaster had to be imagined. The valuable work that was done got neglected in the press of everyday matters.

So now is the time to engage the people responsible for disaster management. Despite the fact that our hands are full and our hearts are heavy, this is the moment we must attend to the task of preparing for the next disaster. LIRNEasia will use its capabilities for this task, redirecting some of the funds set apart for other projects to initiate a regional project on the effective use of ICTs for disaster management. Natural disasters do not respect national boundaries as we saw from this tsunami. Our response must also not respect national borders. But we must work and we must prepare. Otherwise, another 50,000 lives later, we’ll be having this same conversation.

Please await details in the coming days.
Telecom in disaster management