Dr. Gow who was previously at the LSE is now an Associate Professor at University of Alberta.

The presentation began by looking at situations where systems/programmes are developed but only to fall to disuse. The focus will be on the last-mile. The presentation looks at the long term viability of a system. Financial resources are eimportant. The need to tap everyday communicative acts was also highlighted. The need to move beyond a narrow scope of early warning. As investment in last mile systems fall, the vulnerability increases. The cycle continues. The need for more moderate investment was stressed.

If the vulnearbilities of the local communities are reduced then their ability to eliminate or mitigate the disaster increases. This over time leads to risk reduction.

What role does community media play in hazard warning?

The stages of disaster management cycle were introduced as mitigate, prepare, response and recover.

Technologies with local contributions and variety of technologies were discussed. A differentiation was made with the ‘cult media’ such as twitter. Peer to peer was recongised as the best in terms of emergency communication. A lot of this is going on already, in examples such as California wildfires. The idea of crisis informatics was also introduced. The idea of effective use was stressed. The importance of local knowledge and participation for effective use.The UN has similar ideas about warning to risk reduction.

Three related ideas was introduced. Early warning linked to disaster risk reduction and for it to be sustainable the effective use of ICTs should be done.

The need for knowledge sharing was stressed leading from talking amongst community members about risk reduction.

3 stories were highlighted.

story 1 was highlighted the creation community based hazard warning system. Successful but long term sustanance is in doubt. An example of community media bridging communities and the global media.

Story 2 on bridging the generational gap. In Andaman and Nicobar island, it was stories passed down for generations as folklore that saved lives. But there are risks due to false positives. However, it is an example of informal early warning over time. An inter-generational warning system.

Story 3 is on bridging both space and time. An individual who heard about the news 1000s miles away, called village elders and an emergency evacuation plan was put in place.

The road to disaster resilience needs both time and space and hence relationships. The importance of social capital in sustainability hazard warning systems.

The importance of the sharing economy was highlighted. 3 insights were identified as being necessary for the sharing economy  to work.

How does this work? The need for tools for sharing is necessary, phone calls, texting, pictures. Looking at the Haz Info project, mobiles were the most popular. Specialised technology maybe abandoned. Use of everyday technology will lead to better sustainability. These tools need to be given to the community.

The need to respect diversity was highlighted. Allow community members to spend little or more time as they want. A selfish motivation can lead to collective value eg: tagging pictures on flickr, but the tag is now available for everyone.

3rd Insight was identified as the need to build open systems. Allowing people to create and share as they wish.

Standards for information sharing is necessary for this, as in open application interfaces and non propriety licensing for the building of open systems.

The success stories from 2004 tsunami highlights the need for relationships across space and time. Importance of Social capital.

Local risk mapping was also introduced. A pilot in Vietnam found that ownership of the system to the community leads to long term sustainability.

The presentation concluded with idea that a successful strategy needs to go beyond early warning. Time and Space in terms of relationships is key. The findings of the 2004 Tsunami need to be shared.
Ms. Helani Galpaya asked if there is example on the disaster world that related to this concept. Dr. Gow replied that he idea was to look at the overarching aspects.

Prof. Rohan Samarajiva asked if flickr the best example of this concept or is it open source. The reply was Open source.

Dr. Gow in response to a question said that the emphasis in more on sharing economy as opposed to social media. The idea behind the concept is to understand what makes people share knowledge and build relationships that go beyond technology.

RS: The central argument of the concept is around sharing Economy.

Comments by RS: In Sri Lanka, most activity in open source is through payment. The platform maybe open source but people do not contribute willingly. In order for the sharing economy to work, other aspects such as infrastructure and other economic aspects may need to be in place. The sharing economy is more visible in more economically developed countries.

Community sharing will be more relevant some hazards as opposed to others.

Response from GG: Where hazards are likely to often, the systems are likely to work better. If government supply of hazard information is scarce, then community based solution is what will work. Eg: Call from a mobile. The more the community is used to sharing information about slow onset disasters, the better the community is prepared to deal with the situation.

Comments by RS: Sarvodaya may have data on this. Communities will do it if there is stimulus from outside. Salaried staff will be needed to provide the stimulus.

GG: Agree with the idea that stimulus is needed for community sharing. The need for the community to see the value of disaster preparedness is important. In a system where the hazard knowledge is not provided by the government, where does one go?

RS: In Sri Lanka we have examples of community based activity however, we seems to have difficulty in channelling it to productive purposes.

TW: How do we convince people (first responders) using two-way radio to use the internet? Demonstrating the value of the internet. With new digital generation this might not be an issue in the future.

NW: What can replace ‘internet sharing economy’?

RS: Issue between private and public goods.

HG: Examples of sharing traffic information on radio.

RS: The examples are there, village knowledge sharing will work. But the sharing economy in terms of the economy may not work in Sri Lanka.

RS: The catalyst in the form of salaried employees will be needed to tell the community to work on its contingency plans.

GG: The idea is to ensure that this method (sharing economy) to benefit all areas rather than just hazards.

RS: It is possible that this maybe happening in some of the villages as seen during the haz info projects.

DS: The knowledge sharing is already happening among the village. Why not piggy back on that?

GG: Yes if possible.

RS: So how do we find these people who already have system to share knowledge between villages?

DS: Systems already in the health sector at local government level.

RS: Will the system be sustainable?

DS: Recongnition acts as motivationas there is personal gain. Identity brings about value. Can that replace money value?

RS: However in order for the system to work there would be a need for money at some level.

The 3-day UN-SPIDER  workshop was notable in that it featured a number of German and international presentations on the themes of Session 1: “Space technology in support of risk and disaster management”, Session 2: “Vulnerability and Risk Assessment”, Session 3: “Contributions of space-based technologies to existing and proposed early warning systems”, and Session 4: “Disaster Medicine, Telemedicine and Integrated Vector Management (IVM)”. Natasha Udu-gama presented on “Last Mile Hazard Information Dissemination” during Session 3 highlighting the usage of WorldSpace Addressable Radios for Emergency Alerts (AREA) systems as appropriate for last-mile hazard information dissemination in the LIRNEasia pilot project “Evaluating Last-Mile Hazard Information Dissemination”. The presentation also presented sustainability models for WorldSpace in Bangladesh and Indonesia, while demonstrating the role of last-mile systems with national early warning systems for developing nations and the need for sustainable options for integrating space-based technologies in the last mile.

The workshop included a number of international experts from the remote sensing and GIS fields, as well as NGOs, national donor agencies, national disaster management agencies and health fields. The interest in the last-mile was a significant talking point during the workshop and HazInfo was recognized as a leading best practice in this regard. Moreover, the theme of sustainable funding and continuation of best practices came to the fore with many of the participants calling for UN-SPIDER and other related working groups to become better proponents of ensuring that sustainable options are investigated and invested in.

Natasha’s presentation is available here.

The Discoveries and Breakthroughs in Science report on “New Disaster Warning Standards” provide the true features of CAP. However, fails to realize that the CAP standard was developed in the English Speaking Countries and has only been tested in those developed countries. The standard does give provision to issue warnings in multiple languages by creating a new “info” section for each language; where the info section is a subelement of the CAP Message. CAP still requires testing over a multiple array of ICT devices that can be used in a last-mile with language localized alerting applications before it is concluded as a “universal standard”.

CAP is being deployed as part of the HazInfo project, which has established last-mile networking capability for 32 tsunami-affected Sarvodaya embeded villages in Sri Lanka in order to study the suitability of various Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) for a standards-based community hazard information system. A major component of the HazInfo Project is the use of the Common Alerting Protocol to enable data interchange between the Hazard Information Hub (HIH) and a range of end-user technologies. CAP is a simple, flexible data interchange format designed for collecting and distributing “all-hazard” safety notifications and emergency warnings over information networks and public alerting systems.

“Evaluating Last-Mile Hazard Information Dissemination: A Research Project”, also referred to as the “HazInfo Project” was launched in December 2005 and is being tested in the Sarvodaya embedded Coastal Districts of Sri Lanka. The research project is funded by the International Development Research Center of Canada (IDRC). The research findings from the simulated tests and exercises of the 5ICTs and Processes will provide a guide to implementing an early warning system for the next 1000 Grama Swaraja villages.
CAP as a content standard is deliberately designed to be transport-neutral. In web-services applications, CAP provides a lightweight standard for exchanging urgent notifications. CAP can also be used in data-broadcast applications and over legacy data networks. CAP provides compatibility with all kinds of information and public alerting systems, including those designed for multilingual and special-needs populations. Further, CAP incorporates geospatial elements to permit flexible but precise geographic targeting of alerts. CAP also provides for associating digital images and other binary information with alerts and supports various mechanisms for ensuring message authenticity, integrity and confidentiality where required.

CAP was integrated into the project because of the following perceived benefits and advantages:

• Since it is an open source, XML-based protocol with clearly defined elements, CAP should be capable of supporting data interchange across multiple dissemination channels.
• With CAP, one input at the central information hub can be translated into multiple outputs for downstream alerting.
• CAP provides a standardized template for submitting observations to the central hub (upstream) and thereby supports situational awareness to improve overall management of a critical incident.
• A CAP-enabled system will more easily integrate with other national and international information systems.

Results to date suggest that the basic internetworking arrangement at lower technical layers has proven to be reasonably robust and reliable but that a key challenge remains in the upper layers of application software and content provision. This is evident in the apparent difficulties faced when implementing CAP messaging over multiple last-mile systems that include commercial satellite and terrestrial network technologies .

Lessons learned from silent-tests and live-exercises points to several key bottlenecks in the system where the integrity of CAP messages is compromised due to problems associated with software interoperability or direct human intervention. The wider implication of this finding is that content standards by themselves are not sufficient to support appropriate and timely emergency response activities. Those working with content standards for hazard information systems must consider closely the interoperability issues at various layers of interconnectivity.

Designers: Botrel et al of CAP have given the message recipients full autonomy to take action based on the information they receive. It is expected that the community has an Emergency Response Plan (ERP) that is executed on the basis of the content in the CAP message. Therefore, it is important to avoid ambiguity in the alerts; example: if the message indicates that the particular community is absolutely at no threat then the community ERP will be to record/acknowledge message only and do not relay any further (i.e. terminate event).

Global Organizations such as United States Geological Survey (USGS) that issue CAP messages, to this day, use the OASIS CAP version 1.0 and not version 1.1, which was released by OASIS in October 2005. HazInfo Project has been testing with the latest version 1.1 and has difficulty automatically importing the USGS Messages in to the CAP readers used in the project because of the mismatch in the Document Object Model (DOM).