More than 200 small dams did breach during those rains, causing extensive damage to crops and infrastructure. The most dangerous form of breach, the over-topping of the earthen dams of large reservoirs, was avoided only by timely measures taken by irrigation engineers — at considerable cost to those living downstream. This irrigation emergency was captured by a local cartoonist: the head in this caricature is that of the minister of irrigation.

In early February, Sri Lanka announced that it will expand its dam safety programme to cover more large reservoirs and will ask for additional funding from the World Bank following recent floods. Never mind the irony of a proud heritage now having to be maintained with internationally borrowed money. Public safety, not national vanity, comes first.

Only two corrections. The expansion of the USD 71 million dam safety and water resource planning project is no sure thing. Until the agreements are signed, nothing is certain. And while I did propagate the story that 200+ reservoirs breached in the January-February rains, I have since been informed that more than 400 breached.

Given the massive costs associated with evacuation orders (not only in lost productivity but deaths, injuries and other negative outcomes), government must be the sole authority. Given the certainty of blame if a tsunami does hit, over-use of warnings and evacuation orders is likely. It is important that procedures be established not only to make considered but quick decisions about watch/warning/evacuation messages, but also to counter the bias toward excessive warnings and evacuation orders.

Disaster risk-reduction professionals know that false warnings are an artefact of the inexact art of predicting the onset of hazards: but the general public does not. If they are subject to too many false warnings, they 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 false warnings.

But it appears that a crackpot university teacher and a local TV channel have combined to sow panic along the Sri Lanka coast, as documented impeccably by Nalaka Gunawardene:

The latest was on 15 April 2011, when confusion and panic were reported from many coastal areas of Sri Lanka following rumours of an oncoming tsunami. It was attributed to a television channel that had broadcast the views of a Lankan geologist who is speculating on predicting earthquakes with a little help from the heavens. Well, at least certain planets in the Solar System.

Scientific speculation is one thing, but causing public alarm and panic – especially at holiday time – is quite another. The Disaster Management Centre (DMC) was quoted as saying its units in the southern coastal areas had to take special measures to assure the people that there was no threat. The media reported how some people in Matara, Galle, Kalutara, Negombo, Trincomalee and Batticaloa fled their homes fearing another tsunami. Many of these areas were battered by the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.

The panic prompted the Disaster Management Minister to say that ‘legal action will be taken against astrologers, academics or others who make predictions on natural disasters and thereby cause panic among the people’.

I can recall the suspicions our disaster preparedness work evoked, despite repeated assurances that we would never infringe on the government’s authority to issue warnings. I hope the Minister will initiate legal action.

We said that the last mile was the key to saving lives; that focus had to placed on getting the warnings out to the potentially affected people; that they had to be trained to react appropriately; that all the fancy technology in and under the sea would come to nought if these key actions were not taken.

Our collaborator Nalaka Gunawardene says it again in a SciDev piece worth reading:

“What failed was the education process ­ only some of the people fled to higher ground and one of the boats put to sea immediately after they felt the earthquake ­ the right thing to do in these circumstances. Why wasn’t everyone well prepared to respond given the recent history of earthquakes and tsunamis in the region?”

Nalaka Gunawardene, director of TVE Asia Pacific, a not-for-profit media group, hinted at underlying problems with the system’s suitability for its environment.

Gunawardene told SciDev.Net that tsunami early warning systems installed after the 2004 tsunami “focused on the technology and overlooked the institutional arrangements and local capacity”.

He added: “The elaborate and expensive early warning systems installed after the 2004 tsunami have run into various problems of maintenance. Some were too sophisticated or too fragile for the rustic tropical Asian conditions. As a result, some of these systems are not in a state of readiness to swiftly and decisively handle a tsunami warning on a 24/7 basis.”

]]> http://lirneasia.net/2010/10/post-mortem-on-the-tsunami-dead-of-pagai/feed/ 0 http://lirneasia.net/2009/12/innovative-organizations/ http://lirneasia.net/2009/12/innovative-organizations/#comments Sun, 20 Dec 2009 06:20:37 +0000 Rohan Samarajiva http://lirneasia.net/?p=6392 Given we’ve just finished celebrating LIRNEasia’s fifth anniversary, I could not but notice a rather striking compliment in a piece published to mark the death anniversary of Professor Cyril Ponnamperuma, a great Sri Lankan who gave me my first job , post-PhD. The author, Nalaka Gunawardene, is a person we partner with on occasion and a good friend. But anyone who knows Nalaka will have no doubt that he speaks his mind without fear or favor.

Looking at the 2009 December piece, I also came across an earlier post that refers to LIRNEasia in the context of innovative organizations:

If we want to nurture imagination and innovation, we must first learn from the mistakes of the recent past. Obsolete institutions and ossified policies will need to be reformed. Worthy senior academics now past their prime should gracefully retire, or at a minimum, stay out of the way.

Pursuit of this ideal need not be the exclusive domain (or burden) of the state. In fact, private efforts can nurture innovation faster and better. Two current initiatives augur well for the future: LIRNEasia and Institute for Research and Development (IRD). Interestingly, both are headed by returning diaspora scientists who completely ignore the local hierarchies.

]]> http://lirneasia.net/2009/12/innovative-organizations/feed/ 0 http://lirneasia.net/2009/05/reflecting-on-indian-telecom-policy-remembering-the-bad-old-days/ http://lirneasia.net/2009/05/reflecting-on-indian-telecom-policy-remembering-the-bad-old-days/#comments Sun, 17 May 2009 14:03:46 +0000 Rohan Samarajiva http://lirneasia.net/?p=4306

Tharoor recalled the infamous words of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s communications minister in the 1970s, C.M. Stephen. In response to questions decrying the rampant telephone breakdowns in the country, the minister declared in Parliament that telephones were a luxury, not a right. He added that ‘any Indian who was not satisfied with his telephone service could return his phone’ — since there was an eight-year waiting list of people seeking this supposedly inadequate product.

According to Tharoor, Mr Stephen’s statement captured perfectly everything that was wrong about the government’s attitude: ignorant, wrong-headed, unconstructive, self-righteous, complacent, unresponsive and insulting. “It was altogether typical of an approach to governance in the economic arena which assumed that the government knew what was good for the country, felt no obligation to prove it by actual performance and didn’t, in any case, care what anyone else thought.”

Shashi Tharoor is now a newly elected member of Parliament from Kerala, representing the same political party in the same state as the late Mr Stephen. Telecom has changed in India, but even more, mindsets within the Congress Party have changed! And that may be the greatest achievement of all!

Read the full blog entry, based on LIRNEasia research on teleuse at the bottom of the pyramid.

Two publications, with chapters by LIRNEasia researcher Chanuka Wattegama, were launched during the GK3, third global Knowledge conferences held in Kuala Lumpur in December, 2007.

The biennial Digital Review of Asia Pacific is a comprehensive guide to the state-of-practice and trends in information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) in Asia Pacific. The third edition (2007/2008) covers 31 countries and economies, including North Korea for the first time. Each country chapter presents key ICT policies, applications and initiatives for national development. In addition, five thematic chapters provide a synthesis of some of the key issues in ICT4D in the region, including mobile and wireless technologies, risk communication, intellectual property regimes and localization.

Communicating Disasters: An Asia Pacific Resource Book,  co-published by TVE Asia Pacific and the UNDP, brings together 21 authors – most of them from Asia – who share their experiences and insights on effective communication before, during and after disasters. Coming out in time for the third anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004, it takes stock of communication lessons of the mega-disaster. Its core message: adequate planning can help avoid communications disasters when communicating about disasters. Edited by two leading Asian journalists – Nalaka Gunawardene and Frederick Noronha – the book carries a foreword by Sir Arthur C Clarke.

When it comes to using phones, the film says, people at the bottom of the income pyramid are no different from anyone else; they value the enhanced personal security, including emergency communications, and social networking benefits. Increasingly, poor people are not content with just using public phones or shared access phones (belonging friends or family). They see a utility and social value of having their own phones.

These insights emerged from LIRNEasia’s large representative sample survey of telephone use at BOP in India, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand. The survey conducted by ACNielsen, a multinational market research company, confirmed some known trends, whilst challenging conventional wisdom on several fronts. According to LIRNEasia Lead Economist Dr. Harsha de Silva, the findings completely debunked the myth that 50 per cent of people had never used a telephone.

Part 1

Scroll down for Part 2

The survey also found that men and women use phones pretty much the same way at the bottom of the pyramid. Says Ayesha Zainudeen, Senior Researcher, LIRNEasia: “There are almost no differences between men and women — except in the case of Pakistan, where you have the cultural factors playing in.”

The survey, supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre, IDRC, has been well received by telecom operators and industry regulators across Asia.
 
The film features an interview with the head of Sri Lanka’s leading mobile phone company, Dialog Telekom, who acknowledges using survey findings to further customise products to suit aspirations at the bottom of the pyramid.                                                                              

The film will be premiered at the Third Global Knowledge Conference (GK3) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, from 11 to 13 December 2007. It will be part of an interactive quiz that LIRNEasia and TVE Asia Pacific will jointly present during the global event, expected to attract 2,000 participants.                                                                                                  

Focusing on the theme “Emerging People, Emerging Markets, Emerging Technologies”, GK3 will connect those in governments, business, civil society and academia engaged in using ICT tools for meeting the real world’s needs — to reduce poverty, increase incomes, create safer communities, create sustainable societies and support youth enterprise, etc.
                                                                                                                                                           The interactive quiz will be conducted by TVEAP Director Nalaka Gunawardene, who counts many years of experience in broadcast quiz shows. He will be joined by LIRNEasia’s research staff to provide the live audience with interesting insights into the wide-ranging survey.

The telecom industry believes that the next billion phone subscribers will come mostly from the emerging markets. Therefore, understanding tele-use at the bottom of the pyramid becomes very important.

As with all TVEAP films, Teleuse@BOP will be available to broadcast, civil society and educational users without a license fee.

Both LIRNEasia and TVE Asia Pacific are members of the Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP), conveners of the GK3 platform.

Part 2

Bridging the long ‘last mile’ in Sri Lanka / 2006/4 / Media Development / Publications / Home – World Association for Christian Communication

While the countries of South and Southeast Asia were largely unprepared to act on the tsunami, it was not really a complete surprise. As the killer waves originating from the ocean near Indonesia’s Sumatra Island radiated across the Indian Ocean at the speed of a jetliner, the alert about the impending tsunami moved through the Internet at the speed of light. Scientists at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre (PTWC) in Hawaii, who had detected the extraordinary seismic activity, issued a local tsunami warning one hour and five minutes after the undersea quake.

That was a bit too late for Indonesia – which, being closest to the quake’s epicentre, was already hit – but it could have made a difference in countries further away, such as India, Sri Lanka and Thailand. As is now well established, an authentic warning was delivered to each country, but there were few listeners at the receiving end – and even fewer to act on it.