More concretely, we are working on a media note summarizing lessons from our post 2004 tsunami research, which was on risk reduction, not on relief and recovery. Here below is a excerpt from the note. The full text is Pacific tsunami revised.

Japan is a country that knows how to deal with earthquakes and with tsunamis. Its buildings are constructed to code; its people are trained on how to respond from when they are in school. It is also a wealthy developed country and one that has a high population density. Therefore, the original hypothesis was that loss of life will be much less than in the case of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami while property losses will be much larger. First reports indicate that the early warning systems worked and the years of training citizens to respond appropriately yielded results. Yet the losses of life in Sendai, the city most affected by the local tsunami, indicate that more can be done in early warning and in disaster-resilient land-use planning and building construction.

In relation to the teletsunami that threatened the littoral countries of the Pacific Ocean, the risk-reduction measures appear to have worked, at least in the developed economies. The microstates of the Pacific islands have significant similarities with the Sri Lankan coastal communities that were studied as part of the HazInfo project. Whether or not the early warnings went through effectively to the last mile in those countries and whether those communities were prepared to respond appropriately remains to be seen.

The New York Times quotes experts on the same lines:

Initial reports from Ofunato on Friday suggested that hundreds of homes had been swept away; the death toll was not yet known. But Matthew Francis of URS Corporation and a member of the civil engineering society’s tsunami subcommittee, said that education may have been the critical factor.

“For a trained population, a matter of 5 or 10 minutes is all you may need to get to high ground,” Mr. Francis said.

That would be in contrast to the much less experienced Southeast Asians, many of whom died in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami because they lingered near the coast. Reports in the Japanese news media indicate that people originally listed as missing in remote areas have been turning up in schools and community centers, suggesting that tsunami education and evacuation drills were indeed effective.

Still, Chile’s earthquake preparedness clearly saved lives. Laura Torres, 62, and her husband, Víctor Campos, 66, live in Constitución, a city flanked by the ocean and a river. When they quake struck, the earth shook so violently they could not stand.

They crawled to assist their son, who is severely brain damaged; Mr. Campos picked him up, trying to walk as the earth heaved. They ran up into the hills, amid wails from others around.

In the tsunami-prone region, earthquake training had taught them that they had about 20 minutes to make it to high ground, Ms. Torres said, but the roaring of the water, a strange sound like a plane’s motor, suggested that it was barreling in much sooner.

Still, they made it to the hills

Scientists have been chasing earthquake prediction — the holy grail of earthquake science — for decades. In the 1970s American seismologists declared that the goal was reachable. Yet we have little to no real progress to show for our efforts. We have a good understanding of the planet’s active earthquake zones. We’re pretty good at forecasting the long-term rates of earthquakes in different areas. But prediction per se, which involves specifying usefully narrow windows in time, location and magnitude, has eluded us.

Nearly nine months after a devastating earthquake in Sichuan Province, China, left 80,000 people dead or missing, a growing number of American and Chinese scientists are suggesting that the calamity was triggered by a four-year-old reservoir built close to the earthquake’s geological fault line.

A Columbia University scientist who studied the quake has said that it may have been triggered by the weight of 320 million tons of water in the Zipingpu Reservoir less than a mile from a well-known major fault. His conclusions, presented to the American Geophysical Union in December, coincide with a new finding by Chinese geophysicists that the dam caused significant seismic changes before the earthquake.

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.

Read more Reuters Alertnet | Indonesia disaster preparedness a work in progress

In the aftermath of the events following the alert a lightning survey was conducted by the Academy for Disaster Management Education, Planning and Training’s (ADEPT) community volunteers (Community Support Leaders or CSLs). 25 CSLs each interviewed 20 families. The results of the survey can be found here.

Sri Lanka News | Online edition of Daily News – Lakehouse Newspapers

Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe, called for an immediate review of the tsunami alert process that was put into operation on September 12 to learn from the experience and refine procedures the Disaster Management and Human Rights Ministry in a release said.He stated that the successful exercise could prove a platform for future improvements to the early warning process making it more effective and efficient.

Consequent to the earthquake in Indonesia, the tsunami early warning process was activated in Sri Lanka on September 12.

The Minister appreciated the efforts of the officials of the Disaster Management and Huamn Rights Ministry Meteorology, Department Disaster Management Centre, Geological Survey and Mines Bureau and the NARA.

He also commended all Governmental and Non-Governmental agencies for their involvement in ensuring that the safety of coastal dwellers was catered to by moving them to secure locations further inland.

He made special mention of the role of the Police and Armed Forces and the entire national media network, especially the electronic media including several FM radio stations, in implementing the early warning process.

He highlighted the input of communications companies Sri Lanka telecom and Dialog GSM who also contributed immensely to this exercise.

The Minister called for a sharing of experiences between experts at the national and district level and service providers whose interactions would result in improved coordination and programming during a future emergency.

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Lessons from the Sri Lanka tsunami warnings and evacuation of September 12-13, 2007

The tragedy of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was the absence of any official warning. The September 12th Bengkulu earthquake shows that this is unlikely to be the case in the future. We have seen that the new institutions created since the 2004 tsunami have the will and the capacity to act. What we must guard against now is indifference to warning; of populations that refuse to evacuate in the face of real danger.

The prediction of a tsunami is an inexact art that must be practiced in conditions of highly imperfect information and time pressure. In the Pacific Basin, which has had the most experience with tsunamis, 75 per cent of all warnings are false. But this does not cause major harm because the false warnings are contained within the official system and do not get through to the general population for the most part.

Tsunamis are rapid-onset hazards. It took 90 minutes for the 2004 India Ocean tsunami to reach the Arugam Bay-Panama coast in Eastern Sri Lanka. In September 2007, the earthquake occurred at 1110 UTC or 4:40 PM Sri Lanka time. Tsunami Bulletin 001 issued by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center at 1124 UTC (4: 54 PM Sri Lanka time) projected arrival times of over three hours, with the shortest being to Devundara (3:37 hours after the earthquake, at 8:13 PM Sri Lanka time) and the longest being to Jaffna (5:15 hours). Colombo, which was marginally affected even in 2004, was projected to be made contact with at 8:45 PM Sri Lanka time (4:05 hours after the quake). This was because the origin was well to the south of the northern tip of Sumatra where the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami originated and because the earthquake was 10 times weaker than that in 2004.

As much as possible of the limited time must be allocated to (a) decision making by authorized persons at the national level about the issuance of watch, warning or evacuation messages; and (b) decision making and action at the level of communities, including evacuation if appropriate. This means that the time taken to communicate the watch/warning/evacuation messages must be minimized.

This does not mean, however, that evacuation orders should be given as quickly as possible. Ideally, such strong measures will be targeted, for example to the Matara district which was foreseen to be the first point of contact. Even there, closing roads would be done as close to 8 PM as possible, because people need the roads and public transport to effect an orderly evacuation.

Decision-making at the national level

As stated above, the issuance of tsunami watch/warning/evacuation messages is an inexact art, based on imperfect information. Given the massive costs associated with evacuation orders (not only in terms of lost productivity but also in terms of deaths, injuries and other negative outcomes that can be caused), government must be the sole authority. Given the certainty of blame if a tsunami does hit and an evacuation order had not been issued, there is likely to be a bias toward over-use of warnings and evacuation orders especially in a culture that does not value economic activity highly.

It is important that procedures be established not only to make considered but quick decisions about watch/warning/evacuation messages, but also to counter balance the bias toward excessive use of warnings and evacuation orders. This includes clear decision rules and assignment of responsibilities. A multi-stage and multi-party decision process (for example having one center for hazard detection and monitoring (Sri Lanka Meteorological Department) and another for public warning (Disaster Management Center) may not be the best way to improve decision making and minimize time.

When time is short and ambiguity can be deadly, it is best to stick to prepared texts and formats. Standard message templates in all three official languages preferably generated using the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) software have been recognized as a high priority by the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights and the Disaster Management Center.

Communicating messages to first responders and media

It appears, from anecdotal evidence, that the tsunami hazard information center (Met Department) received large numbers of phone calls from the media when word got around that a potentially tsunamigenic earthquake had occurred on the Indian Ocean side of Indonesia. In many cases, senior officers who should have been communicating the scientific evidence to key decision makers at the DMC and the Ministry were being called directly.

This practice is problematic for two reasons:

1. It eats up the time that should be used for considered decision making on whether or not to issue national-level watch/warning/evacuation messages. Time spent on the phone is time not spent on analyzing or communicating the evidence to the relevant authorities;
2. The unstructured format of a journalist-initiated phone call can lead to misunderstanding. For example, some journalists may not know the difference between an alert and a warning. This format also does not leave a record in case there is a need to review it at a later time.

Expressing concern about talking to journalists in the aftermath of a tsunamigenic earthquake does not equate to a recommendation that no one should talk to the media. What is required are:

1. A reliable and fast method of communication (e-mail, fax, telex, or even a taped telephone voice message) with journalists in all three official languages. Messages should be sent to designated numbers and e-mail addresses, preferably using automated procedures.
2. Journalists who call the designated number (preferably in a hunting configuration that can handle multiple simultaneous calls) should be able to hear a taped message.
3. If journalists require additional information they should be able to call a designated spokesperson, whose sole responsibility is to talk to the media. All conversations should be taped.

The point is to give more information faster and in better formats. Shifting away from the current unstructured modes to a structured mode will allow this to be done. Involving journalists in the process of restructuring the communication system of the Met Department will help improve it and will also serve to educate journalists about it.

Multiple media such as fixed and mobile phones, SMS, fax and the Internet should be used. Redundancy improves reliability. Using CAP enabled media will help streamline the process and expedite the messages. Where character limitations exist, as in SMS, the short message can be used to direct the recipient to the place where the complete message can be obtained.

The LIRNEasia-Sarvodaya Last Mile HazInfo pilot project showed that the most efficacious method of communicating to first responders would be through addressable satellite radio sets plus GSM/CDMA phones. If the government wishes, these instruments can be temporarily loaned to government for trials as decided at a recent meeting convened by the Ministry and the DMC.

Decision making at the community level

The Sarvodaya-LIRNEasia community centered disaster risk reduction approach places greatest weight on decision marking and prior preparation and training at the community level. In this model, each Sarvodaya village will have an ICT guardian who can communicate bidirectionally with the Hazard Information Hub (HIH) of Sarvodaya. The objective of the next stage of work within Sarvodaya is to equip 1000 advanced villages belonging to Sarvodaya with the knowledge and training to devise and implement emergency response plans at the village level and to have the ability to communicate information to and from the HIH.

In this model, the community will be alert and ready to respond in the optimal way to any watch, warning or evacuation message issued by the government. The HIH will amplify the government’s message and prior training and preparation will enable to community to respond in the most productive manner to a government message. The objective of those working at the national levels and designing and operating the communication systems should be to give the community unambiguous information and the longest possible time to take appropriate action.

Community preparedness also helps the national-level decision makers. If they know that the community is prepared and capable of responding quickly and in an orderly manner to an evacuation order, they can delay the “strong measures” until absolutely necessary. It is when that confidence is lacking that there is a tendency to issue warnings and evacuation orders too early. It is perhaps because of this that Thailand did not join Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in issuing evacuation orders after the Bengkulu earthquake.

Minimizing the false

In the disaster risk-reduction field, false warnings are not seen as being a result of malice or incompetence. They are simply artefacts of the inexact art of predicting the onset of hazards. Professionals know this, but the general public does not. If they are subject to too many false warnings, the general public will not respond even to true warnings.

Now that we have gotten over the problem of issuing no warnings, we have to address the problem of reducing false warnings. Effective design of protocols at each stage of the warning chain and committed implementation combined with a passion of continuous improvement will help us reduce the false and realize the promise of early warning to save lives.

Rohan Samarajiva, Ph.D.
Project Director, Last Mile HazInfo Project &
Executive Director, LIRNEasia
13 September 2007

It’s still beyond the reach of science to predict exactly when an earthquake will strike, but Japan will soon get the next-best thing — televised warnings that come before the shaking starts.

In an ambitious attempt at protecting large populations from seismic disaster, Japan’s Meteorological Agency and national broadcaster are teaming up to alert the public of earthquakes as much as 30 seconds before they hit, or at least before they can bring their full force down on populated areas.

The system — the first of its kind in the world — cannot actually predict quakes, but officials say it can give people enough time to get away from windows that could shatter, or turn off ovens and prevent fires from razing homes.

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These disruptions have major consequences for any business that relies on telecom for delivering their services, including, banking, trading, call centers, remotely managed services etc. This event also underlines the necessity for redundancy and why policymakers and regulators must liberalize international gateways to allow a number of different submarine cables connecting different destinations to land in a country.
From Bloomberg:

Damaged cables include the APCN2 cable and Sea-Me-We3 cables, Chunghwa’s Leng said. Eight STM-1 cables from Okinawa off Japan and 4 STM-1 cables to Shanghai are acting as backup, Chunghwa said in a statement. The company may also use the ST-1 satellite.
Singapore Telecom, France Telecom SA and Pakistan Telecommunication Co. are among companies that own the Sea-Me-We3 cables linking Europe to Asia. Operators in the APCN2 cable network that connects Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore include China Unicom Ltd., StarHub Ltd., Telekom Malaysia Bhd. and Telstra Corp.
[..]“The repairs could take two to three weeks,” said Leng Tai-feng, president of Chunghwa Telecom Co.’s international business. The Taipei-based company, Taiwan’s largest phone operator, said two of its undersea cables were cut.
HSBC Holdings Plc said its online banking services were down, while Chunghwa said almost no calls could be made to Southeast Asia, causing disruption to companies including First State Investments in Singapore.
“I can’t trade if I don’t know the prices,” said David Leong, who heads the Singapore trading desk at First State, which manages $15 billion in equities in Asia and emerging markets. “I’ve put in limit orders to try to minimize the damage, but even then you need to have the basic information.”

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India, others work on region’s first disaster management policy
The Hindu, August 22, 2006
New Delhi, Aug 22. (PTI): India and seven other South Asian countries, which bore the brunt of nature’s fury in an unimaginable proportion in the recent past, came together here on Monday to work on a first-ever policy on disaster management and identify gaps in the existing infrastructure.

The two-day ‘South Asia Policy Dialogue’, organised the National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM) in collaboration with UNDP, comes in the backdrop of the havoc caused by earthquakes and tsunamis that struck the nations in the region.

Inaugurating the conference, Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil said, “Now, things are beginning to change fast. There is a paradigm shift from the past, where relief and rehabilitation were prominent, to a holistic approach which includes prevention, mitigation, relief and rehabilitaiton.”

“The role of the Government is fast changing from just providing exgratia to the survivors to a concerted effort to prevent the disaster,” he said.

Higlighting the need for a comprehensive disaster risk reduction system, Patil said India was losing two per cent of the GDP every year due to natural disasters “When the country was not able to spend so much money for public health”.

He said the challenge faced by the South Asian nations will be to fetch “desired results” from the disaster management related policies.

Besides India, Government officials and NGOs from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are particiapting in the conference.

Delivering the keynote address, TERI Director General R K Pachauri said the region faces an enhanced risk of natural diasters due to increasing population and climatic changes.

The region should play an active role in the mitigation of green house emissions and called for a collaborative research by the South Asian countries on climatic changes, he said.

The conference will be deliberating on the current status and future possibilities of community-based disaster risk mitigation practices.

It is also expected to prepare a roadmap for risk reduction, NIDM Executive Director P G Dhar Chakrabarti said.

In December 2004, the Asian tsunami had hit Sri Lanka, India, the Maldives, Indonesia and Thailand causing immense devastation and killing thousands.

A devastating earthquake in October 2005 had rocked Pakistan and India, killing at least 75,000 people and rendering three million homeless in the Kashmir region alone.

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.

3 Tsunamis have occurred in the Indian Ocean within the last 20 months. The last tsunami killed over 500 in Indonesia.

We can excuse ourselves for not having a warning system for the 2004 tsunami. But what about the next one? We cannot give excuses any further.

Before we go in to the details I will present the evidence and how is our preparedness– (Associated Press)

- local time 14:19 a Earthquake happens in the Indian Ocean,- PTWC issues a warning 17 minutes later- 39 minutes later first wave hits the coast

- message reads … affective coutries Indonesia and Australia

According to the Associated Press, Indonesia promises to roll out warning system in 2009. Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie told Associated press “ we are preparing one, but is not finished”. “After earthquake occurred people ran up hill”, V. President of Indonesia

Warning system links

Link 1 – Issue message to from the detection centers

Link 2 – Warn the Government Officials of threats

Link 3 – Warn first-Responders such as police and local government agents

Link 4 – Warn the last mile

Can we talk in past tense instead of future tense. Two other Nations ARE QUIPED with early warning system. Thailand has built a warning towers on beaches across its southern coast. Malaysia HAS positioned two buoys off its coast and have tested the system.

Now countries that speak in future tense; Sri Lanka has a plan to install a national warning system and information will be passed to villages by phones or national media

Rohan asks questions from the audience …

Do you get warnings through the gov now – audience NO

Do you have sirens in Churches, Mosques, and Temples as the Government has promised – audience NO

“Physical world of hazards, symbolic worlds, link technologies & institutions that work imperfectly.”

The Last-Mile HazInfo project is not a public warning system, it is a closed network alerting system. The Last-Mile project envisions on overcoming the lessons learned from the 2004 tsunami — keep ahead of congestions, address point-to-multiple media

We will provides the knowledge for the last mile to make their own response plans and when they are provided with them risk information. The last-Mile First-Responders will react based on the training and the severity of the hazard information.

We do not tell people to evacuate or take action but we only provide the know how and the information for the last mile to make their own decisions

10 deaths and 5 premature births as a result of inappropriate warning by the government in after the great Nyas earthquake in March. The incident happened at night where a people were sleeping.
Disaster Management is a village level duty. Therefore, we will only provide risk information; but will not ask people to evacuate. Sarvodaya is not authorized to issue public warnings but can develop a good information communication network to provide the necessary Disaster related information for local awareness and response planning.

The last-Mile system overcomes all these problems where a wakeup feature has been introduced. This is to help the Government by preparing the last mile.

First phase will evaluate how the organizational level of the villages and whether training is necessary for such a system.

Ultimate objective is to use the research findings to develop a model to implement an alerting solution in 226 of the Tsunami affected villages as a phase 2 of this project; phase 3 will implement a early warning solution for the 15000 Sarvodaya villages.

Gordon Gow –

Objective is to make everyone comfortable with the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP). Presentation will highlight the most relevant aspects that deal with the LM-HWS project. It is a core function of the project

Several Needs:

• deliver messages to multiple technologies
• Need to ensure accuracy and consistency in the content
• - Need future expansion and interoperability

CAP is a mean to deliver information to a diverse set of technology which will be tested on Addressable Satellite Radio (ASR), Fixed Phones, Mobile Phones, Remote Alarm Device (RAD) and VSATs.

CAP Background

• standardize content of alerts across all hazards and enable multi-media dissemination
• Works started by the Partnership for Public Warning in 2002
• PPW submitted a report to OASIS in 2004 – Version 1.0 in the project we are using Version 1.1 approved in 2005
• XML-based data interchange format being implemented by government and private sector organizations

Why use CAP

• Open source protocol, which means it is free for us to use
• systematic Message Composition
• Multimedia distribution of single message
• Customization and filtering possibility
• Growing international recognition and implementation (e.g. WCATWC)
• Contribution to the evolution of CAP standard itself

All communication systems can be broken into 3 layers –

1. Content Layer: warning messages
2. Applicant Layer: mobile phones (WAP, Java, SMS, CB), telephone, radio (text display, text-to-voice), Internet (pop up display, email, rss)
3. Physical transportation layer (wireless networks and wired networks)

CAP fits in the Application Layer of the communication hierarchy.

A raw CAP message contains the XML tags and is annoying to read (raw software code). A CAP message viewed through a browser still looks very hard to read (raw information only). After applying a style-sheet to the message it can be converted in to a human readable message (clear message).

It very common to use web links in the message to direct readers to additional information such as a map of the effected areas.

A CAP “profile document defines its implementation for the LM-HWS, which is found in the Hazard-Information-Hub (HIH) guidelines; i.e CAP Profile. First-responders must understand certain features of the CAP profile: Alert, Information, resources, Area segments.

The 3 language problem has been solved by using multiple Information blocks; i.e. An Info block for Tamil, Sinhala, and English per message. The priority of the message is based on 3 pieces of the message: Urgency, Severity, Certainty. Urgent messages means that the community must act immediately; high priority implies that the community must be put on stand by; other a low priority message implies that the community must stay vigilant and keep a look out for hazards.

A government warning will be relayed by the HIH over the Sarvodaya network whenever it is issued. HIH will simply copy the government message and past it in the “description” element of the CAP message and set the “Event” as a “government warning”, which is one of the predefined hazard events in CAP.