Tag Archive for ‘Gordon Gow’ at LIRNEasia

Tag Archive for 'Gordon Gow'

LIRNEasia’s Mobile Benchmarks (South Asia and Southeast Asia) and Broadband Benchmarks Report for October 2008 has been released. Click HERE for more information.

A world free from 9/11s and tsunamis?

Chanuka Wattegama

on September 12, 2008

Exactly seven years from yesterday (still today to some), early in the morning on September 11, 2001, nineteen hijackers took control of four commercial airliners en route to San Francisco and Los Angeles from Boston, Newark, and Washington, D.C. The hijackers flew two of the airliners, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, into the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center. Another group of hijackers flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. A fourth flight, United Airlines Flight 93, whose ultimate target was either the United States Capitol or White House, crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The rest, as we say, is history.

What 9/11 was to the West, ‘the’ tsunami was to the South. Caught unaware, more than 225,000 lives…

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Tags: Alberta, Asia, Boston, Boxing Day, Colombo, communication technologies, conventional fixed wireless telephones, Gordon Gow, hazard alert systems, India, Indonesia, International Development Research Centre, Java, LIRNEasia, Los Angeles, mobile phones, Newark, Pennsylvania, Pentagon, Peter Anderson, public network, remote alarm device, SAN FRANCISCO, satellite radio, satellite technology, Shanksville, Simon Fraser University, South Towers, Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan government, Thailand, United States Capitol, University of Alberta, Very Small Aperture Terminal, VSAT, west coast, White House, World Trade Center.

HazInfo Canadian Researcher speaks at the 1st WRECOM Conference in Rome

Nuwan Waidyanatha

on October 5, 2007

Gordon Gow, a lead researcher in the Last-Mile Hazard Warning System (LM-HWS) Pilot (HazInfo project), presented the paper titled – “Community-based Hazard Warnings in Sri Lanka: Performance of Alerting and Notification in a Last-Mile Message Relay” at the 1^st Wireless Rural and Emergency Communications (WRECOM) Conference in Rome, Italy, Oct 01-02.

One of Gordon Gow’s key contributions to the HazInfo project was the Common Alerting Protocol Profile for Sri Lanka, which was a hard case as far as integrating the multi-language scenario as it is the case in Sri Lanka. The CAP Profile for Sri Lanka was designed for disseminations in Sinhala, Tamil, and English languages. Such a complex profile of CAP was field tested in Sri Lanka’s HazInfo project. This was the first time a Multilanguage…

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Tags: Alberta, Community, European Union, Faculty of Extension, Gordon Gow, Graduate Program, Italy, Mile Message Relay, Rome, Sri Lanka, st Wireless Rural, University of Alberta, voice and data systems, Wireless ICTs.

LIRNEasia/WorldSpace to present HazInfo results at WPMC 10th International Symposium

Nuwan Waidyanatha

on September 19, 2007

The HazInfo paper titled “Last-Mile Hazard Warning in Sri Lanka: Performance of WorldSpace Satellite Radios for Emergency Alerts”, coauthored by Srinivasan Rangarajan, PhD (Senior Vice President Engineering, WorldSpace), Peter Anderson (Associate Professor, Simon Fraser University), Gordon Gow, PhD (Assistant Professor, University of Alberta), and Nuwan Waidyanatha (Project Manager, LIRNEasia) was accepted for oral/poster presentation at the Wireless Personal Multimedia Communications (WPMC) at The Birla Science and Technology Center in the heart of Jaipur, India, December 03 – 06, 2007.

WorldSpace, a lead technology partner in the HazInfo research project, field tested 16 Addressable Radios for Emergency Alerts (AREAs) in the Sarvodaya Communities and 34 AREAs in the Sarvodaya District Centers. Although the AREA solutions lacked bi-directional communication and seemed the least effective, the AREA solution proved to…

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Tags: addressable/broadcast technology, Alberta, AREA addressable/broadcast technology, Bengkulu, CDMA, cellular telephone, Gordon Gow, GSM, India, Jaipur, Mile Hazard Warning, Peter Anderson, Simon Fraser University, Sri Lanka, Srinivasan Rangarajan, University of Alberta, Wireless Personal Multimedia Communications.

HazInfo Paper Accepted for the 1st WRECOM Conference in Rome, Italy

Nuwan Waidyanatha

on July 30, 2007

Paper titled “Community-based Hazard Warnings in Rural Sri Lanka: Performance of a Last-Mile Message Relay”, authors – Gordon Gow (Associate Professor, Faculty of Extensions, University of Alberta, Canada), Peter Anderson (Associate Professor, Department of Telematics, Simon Fraser University, Canada), and Nuwan Waidyanatha (Project Manager, Last-Mile Hazard Warning Systems, LIRNEasia, Sri Lanka), will be presented at the 1^st Wireless Rural Emergency Communication Conference. The WRECOM 2007 Conference is jointly organized by the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, the IEEE Communications Society and the Vehicular Technology/Communications Society joint Chapter Italy Section. The conference will take place in Rome, October 1-2, 2007.

The HazInfo project realized that early warnings via Information Communication Technology (ICT) must be a point-to-multi-point application and is best accommodate by Wireless ICTs. The HazInfo pilot included outfitting…

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Tags: Alberta, Canada, Community, Faculty of Extensions, Gordon Gow, IEEE Communications Society, International Development Research Center, Mile Hazard, Mile Message Relay, Peter Anderson, Rome, Simon Fraser University, Sri Lanka, st Wireless, University of Alberta, University of Rome, wireless communication equipment, Wireless ICTs.

Colloquium on Real-Time Biosurveillance For Early Warnings in Sri Lanka

Tahani Iqbal

on October 12, 2006

Assume a scenario where among the chief complaint strings of two unrelated patients in the same District on the same date there was a mention of bloody stools in pediatric cases. The multiple mentions of “bloody stools” or “pediatric” might not be surprising, but the tying together of these two factors, given matching geographic locations and timings of reporting, is sufficiently rare that seeing only two such cases is of interest. This was precisely the evidence that was the first noticeable signal of the tragic Walkerton, Canada, waterborne bacterial gastroenteritis outbreak caused by contamination of tap water in May 2000. That weak signal was spotted by an astute physician, not by a surveillance system. Reliable automated detection of such signals in multivariate data requires new…

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Tags: Alberta, Artur Dubrawski, Base Hospital, Canada, CDMA, data algorithms, Gates, Gates Foundation, Gordon Gow, GSM, last mile using information communication technology, Ministry of Health, mobile phones, personal computer applications, possible food complaints, Sri Lanka, University of Alberta, USD, USDA, Walkerton, wireless local loop, Wireless Local Loop Network Applications.

Learning to Respond Intelligently

Nuwan Waidyanatha

on July 29, 2006

Often a response is a result of a stimulus. Evacuation drills are stimulus-response models; the drill is activated by a siren and the people are expected to react by hurrying to safety zones, in most cases defined by the community’s response plan; i.e. activating an existing emergency response plan.Social Cognition is encoding, storing, and retrieving social information and applying the cognition to social situations. Consider the social situation of a disaster and the event of setting of sirens. The awareness programming in community risk reduction helps the community prepare for social situations. Cognitive representation of social information are schema.

Biological Psychology defines “Awareness” as a human or animal perception and cognitive reaction to a condition or event; awareness does not necessarily imply understanding.

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Tags: classic law, Colombo, early warning systems, Gordon Gow, Michael Shor, regulated systems, Shanthi Sena, Thai government, Thailand, United Nations.

Live Feed: Common Alerting Protocol Workshop of the Last Mile HazInfo Project in Sri Lanka

Nuwan Waidyanatha

on July 21, 2006

Nandan Jayasinghe –

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.

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Tags: Aburizal Bakrie, Addressable Satellite Radio, Alberta, alerting solution, All communication systems, Associated Press, Australia, Dialog Communication Research Lab, Dileeka Dias, early warning solution, earthquake, good information communication network, Gordon Gow, Indian Ocean, Indonesia, Java, link technologies, messages to multiple technologies, mobile phones, multi-media dissemination, Nanadana Jayasinghe, oil lamp, Open source protocol, point-to-multiple media, raw software code, Rohan Samarajiva, SMS, Sri Lanka, Thailand, tsunami, University of Alberta, WAP, web links, wireless networks, XML.

HIH Standard Operational Procedure Training Workshop

Nuwan Waidyanatha

on July 19, 2006

Rohan Samarajiva and Gordon Gow developed a set of standard operational procedures for the Last-Mile Hazard Warning System. The manual titled “Guidelines for HIH“, provides the steps and actions need be taken by the actors and entities of the Sarvodaya’s Last-Mile Hazard Warning System. A 1-day workshop was held today at the Sarvodaya Community Disaster Management Center, “Samana Teta”, to train and introduce the literature in the guidelines to the HIH staff members.

Another workshop will be held on July 21, 2006 to introduce the standard operational procedures to the Community First-Responders. The program is a 1 day event to be held at the Sarvodaya Damsak Mandiraya in Moratuwa.

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Tags: Gordon Gow, Mile Hazard Warning, Rohan Samarajiva, Sarvodaya Community Disaster Management Center.

“Responsive Innovation for Disaster Mitigation” - A Public Lecture by Gordon Gow

Nuwan Waidyanatha

on July 18, 2006

Thursday Evening, 5:00PM
Sri Lanka Foundation Institute
100 Independence Square, Colombo

This lecture is free and open to the public. The lecture will address all-hazards warning and the use of the Common Alerting Protocol in disaster mitigation.

Gordon Gow is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Extensions at the University of Alberta, Canada. Co-author of the book: “Mobile and Wireless Communication: An Introduction” and most current book: “Policymaking for Critical Infrastructure”. Moreover, he is the communication systems consultant for “Evaluating a last-mile Hazard Dissemination: A Research Project” in Sri Lanka.

Gordon Gow –

It is a community-based last-mile warning system, being tried out in a selection of Sarvodaya’s villages in Sri Lanka. Different technologies will be tested in 32 of Sarvodaya’s Tsunami-affected villages; some are ‘organized,’ some are ‘less organized and…

2 Comments
Tags: Alberta, Canada, Colombo, Faculty of Extensions, Gordon Gow, Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka Foundation Institute, Wireless Communication.

Live feed: Colloquium on A Common Alerting Protocol Message Relay

Ayesha Zainudeen

on June 15, 2006

Nuwan Waidyanatha - Project Manager, Last Mile Hazard Warning System

The socioeconomic belief is that a CAP message relay is one way of effectively managing disasters, and that is what is envisioned in the Last-Mile Hazard Warning System (LM-HWS) Pilot Project. I will be talking about the current Workpackage of the LM-HWS project, which is developing the Hazard Information Hub (HIH). The general objective of the LM-HWS project is to evaluate the suitability of a selected set of ICT that can communicate CAP messages and alert the village first-responders. The Sarvodaya HIH was specifically built with the intension of providing structured risk information such as CAP messages to the local communities.

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Tags: Biswajit Nandy, Dialog Telekom, Gordon Gow, internet emergency, Internet Emergency Public Alerting System, Java, Last Mile Hazard Warning, Nabil Seddigh, Ottawa, public alert client software, public official web portal, Response Addressable Satellite Radio, Rupinder Singh, SMS, Solana Networks, Sri Lanka, system admin tools, University of Moratuwa, Warning Network Remote Alarm Device Dialog Telekom, WorldSpace Global Data Solutions.

Hazard Warning Initiatives: Media Event

Divakar Goswami

on January 25, 2006

LIRNEasia organised a press conference to highlight two major initiatives in the area of hazard warning, one that it launched on providing disaster mitigation and last-mile connectivity to tsunami-affected villages and the other that it wrapped up on dam-related hazard warning system for Sri Lanka.

LIRNEasia released A Concept Paper for a Dam-related Hazard Warning System in Sri Lanka: A Participatory Study on Actions Required to Avoid and Mitigate Dam Disasters in collaboration with its project partners, the Vanguard Foundation, Sri Lanka National Committee on Large Dams (SLNCOLD), Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG) and Sarvodaya. This work was funded by the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives. Prof. Rohan Samarajiva, Executive Director of LIRNEasia, handed over the final concept paper to U. W. L. Chandradasa, Director, Disaster Management Centre,…

10 Comments
Tags: addressable satellite radio technology, Canada Fund for Local Initiatives, Gordon Gow, Government of Sri Lanka, Intermediate Technology Development Group, last-mile technologies, LIRNE asia, London School of Economics, Media coverage, Rohan Samarajiva, Samana Teta Disaster Management Institute, Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka National Committee on Large Dams, U. W. L. Chandradasa, Vanguard Foundation, Vinya Ariyaratne, Wil Baker, WorldSpace.

Last-Mile Hazard Information Project is On

Divakar Goswami

on January 5, 2006

LIRNEasia is undertaking a project to provide disaster mitigation training and last-mile connectivity to tsunami-affected villages along the coast of Sri Lanka. The effectiveness of training and five different ICT technologies that will be deployed will be assessed with a view of rolling out the most successful strategies and technologies in 226 tsunami-affected Sarvodaya villages. This IDRC funded project is partnered with Sarvodaya, Vanguard Foundation, Dr. Gordon Gow, LSE, UK, TVE Asia Pacific, Sri Lanka and the Community Tsunami Early-Warning Center (CTEC) at Peraliya.

In the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004, it was evident that if Sri Lanka along with the other affected countries had an effective disaster warning system in place, many lives could have been saved. The lack of a national…

1 Comment
Tags: Bay of Bengal, Community Tsunami Early-Warning Center, Gordon Gow, ICT technologies, Indian Ocean, LSE, Mile Hazard, Sarvodaya, Sri Lanka, tsunami, TVE Asia Pacific, United Kingdom, Vanguard Foundation.

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