COLLOQUIUM April 1, 2005
In accordance with standard economic principles, an all-hazards early warning system is a public good that is both non-rivalrous (consumption by one economic agent does not prevent consumption by another) and non-excludable (a user cannot be excluded from consuming the good without significant effort) in nature. Given these characteristics and the related “free-rider” syndrome, pure public goods will not be supplied by the market. Goods with significant public-goods-characteristics tend to be undersupplied.
The two classic solutions to the problem of funding and the supply of public goods are taxation and the bundling of a public good with a private good. The latter solution is an innovative one that has not been fully explored in the public goods literature nor is there much evidence that such a solution has been deployed in practice. The presentation at the colloquium will elaborate on these issues.
31 Comments
Chanuka
I have given a bit of thought about the topic we are about to discuss.
Let me ask a simple question: What will happen to the Insurance premiums the clients pay, if the insurance industry decides to fund for an effective disaster warning system? (or in Harsha’s language, ‘package public goods with private goods’)
The obvious answers will be:
1. It will go up. (Okay, the clients pay an extra premium for the value addition)
2. It will remain same (The industry absorbs the cost of system without passing it to clients)
Do you believe, there is one more theoretically possible answer?
It can even go down!
How?
If this system can prevent loss of life (forget the property for the moment) it will reduce the volume of insurance claims. So the operational cost of the insurance industry will go down and they can offer premiums at lower rates.
Only thing I do not have the data required to calculate the critical level that this becomes practical. But I am sure if the percentage of people who has taken life insurance is increased to a certain level, say 50% or so (against current 9%) the insurance industry will be more than happy to fund this project!
Imagine what would have happened if half of the people who died on Dec 26th had insurance policies each worth Rs. 100,000!
Harsha
chanuka et. al.
regarding your question of pricing, its very simple and your answer is correct. it’s purely the economies of scale in operations. the marginal cost of ‘producing’ each policy comes down as the number covered increases. it is true that insurance is different from hoppers for example and premiums are based on probablity rather than cost plus; but the logic still holds.
lets discuss
harsha
Chanuka
Please refer the attached 2 slides to get an over-simplified illustration of my theory that explains under what conditions it will
be economical for the insurance industry to invest in a warning system. (The exponential curves are given as straight lines for
convenience)
Will insurance insurance invest in warning system? (Powerpoint)
The advantage of not having a PhD is that I can still speak in layman’s language!
Chanuka
Harsha
chanuka
you are on the right track; but you have used an extreme case; to make a profit = cost is less than income.
the general case in any firm is to ‘maximize
profits’which is to reduce costs and increase income. now in our case this translates to reducing the payout [cost] and increasing the income [premium]. given insurance is a regulated industry let us assume for the moment that income remains the same. so the objective is to reduce the payout.
lets take fixed assets [shops, homes, cars, computers etc.]. now for the insurance company, the expected payout is the product of the probability of a bad event [disaster that causes damage] and the amount of the damage. the probability of an event is a given and would remain constant [or might shift for instance with new fault lines and then again remain constant].
so the only variable here is the amount of the damage. so if the amount of the damage can be reduced by issueing a warning so that the movable assets can be removed, then the damage is less and the payout is less. as long as the payout reduction is greater than the cost of issuing the warning, the insurer would issue the warning.
in life insurance the amount insured remains fixed and the probability becomes a variable. again the same logic applies. if the warning can get the insured person evacuated to a safe area then the probability of the person dying from a tsunami will reduce and the payout continues to remain zero.
hope i shed some light. we can discuss this at the colloquium.
harsha
samarajiva
Mea culpa. There are no pure public goods. Given scale and technology, certain goods exhibit the characteristics of pure public goods, but it is always subject to those conditions. Think of transmitting disaster warnings across an SMS system where capacity is 1000 simultaneous messages. Rivalry does apply, once the limit is reached.
This reminds me of the debate about “information wants to be free.” The arguments work to the extent that we disregard the medium on which the information is embedded; as soon as the medium comes into the picture, the technology and scale limitations apply.
harsha
well, yes. everything is bounded by some condition; geography, technology, time… pure public goods like clean air too is subject to a geographic area.
in our case, people living in tsunami prone areas would have a positive value from an early warning of a tsunami but people inland would not… so then does it mean that even though the early warning is non-rivalrous and non-excludable, it is not a pure public good becasue of the condition that people inland have no value from it?
the point is for the early warining to be ‘produced’ we need to either determine the actual value of a [tsunami] early warning in the areas that it offers value or adminstratively establish an ‘amount’ to be ‘produced’.
samarajiva
Public goods and the Supply of Early Warning System
Colloquium 1 April 2005 (incomplete notes)
Rohan: We think that following the work we did on the report there are issue of public goods theory that can be developed. 1) I pushed the idea that it is a pure public goodit is a mistaken view. Once it is embedded into technology there are limitations on how many messages can be supplied. With SMS there can be congestion after some point and excludability criteria is not met. We should have said it depends on technology and scale.
Over to Harsha.
Harsha: I have argued previously with Rohan that it is not a pure public good. But now I think it is a pure public good. All goods are bounded by geography, time etc. For our purposes as long as it has public characteristics it is enough for our purposesdoesnt need to be pure public good. There is a boundedness of pure public good quality. With private goods people can buy at whatever price he can afford. In Public goodsa block of public goods is givenwe cant select. We cant have a downward sloping demand curve. Consumers dont have choice of buy any quantity.
Harshain private goodyou add quantities horizontally. But in public goodyou have X amount of finite public good, consumer cant determine quantity. Hence the market doesnt clear.
Rohan: what if is there is no supply? You assume there is some supply.
Harsha: You ask consumer how much value does u want to spend for X amount of public good. And keep adding it. But in reality, everybody free-rides. Unless govt decides that they would provide some amount of public good. So some quantity of public good isnt supplied or undersupplied.
Rohan: In our case we dont have any supply for public disaster warnings.
Rohan: American revolution happened because of non supply of national defence. We can have variable provision of public good in terms of disaster systems in different parts of SL. It is a public goodfor reasons outside of economicsmoral responsibilities; duty of care and providing warning to neighbour who may be in danger.
Asantha: in case of tsunami there wasnt no demand we could gauge.
Rohan: in actual human experience, tsunami is like water inundation just like cyclonessame effect. In Sri Lanka we have suffered many casualties from that.
Harsha: there is agreement that there is under provision of the service. How do you provide right amount of disaster warning system. When made into a multi-hazard systemit becomes like a civil defence and take public goods characteristics
Luxman S: demand is set by consumers who are able to buy. By getting the govt to provide this service you turn it into a public good.
Lakhshaman B: civil defencethere is public and private supply of various services. It is a hybrid model–probably 90% is public good and 10% is private good for civil defence services.
Sarasali: US embassy had a warning system. Security office gets info. Phone tree where each person has a person to call
Harsha: These are components of the system. Not a full system.
Divakar: In the US, private individuals attach web cams to dams and other critical infrastructure and beam it down the Internet for everyone to see including the Homeland security department. Provided by private individuals but a public good.
Harsha: Only way to provide (and ensure funds dont run out) is by bundling with private goods. Logical candidate is insurance industry
Malathy: Why not hotels and insurance industry
Harsha: Robert Shiller asks why hotels (high profile, profitable, etc) were unable to warn their guests? Answers this by pointing out that institutional rigidities in these countries (lack of tsunami insurance policies) leads to hotels not taking preventative measures (that the insurer may enforce on hotels).
Indi: will insurers have incentive to protect lives in the small villages?
Rohan: emphasise corporate social responsibility
Lakshaman B: cant rely on good faith of hoteliers
Harsha: in regard to public goods, there are always people who free ride
Rohan: hotels can reduce their losses if they take action.
Harsha firms exist to maximise profit.. In the insurance industry, revenue = premium. But this is regulated in the insurance industry. Only way to increase profit is to reduce costs, i.e., risk.
Asantha: look at media industry built in incentive to disseminate warning media industry will spend money to disseminate warning
Divakar: what about oversupply? Credibility of media is at stake?
Harsha: Revenue is via advertising
Lakshaman B: greater readership ? more advertising
Asantha / Rohan: telecom industry also has incentive to disseminate warning.
Harsha: must find industries that have a private incentive to disseminate warning. In insurance industry, depending on the kind of insurance policy (life, property, etc)
Indi: this is the governments job in any case
Harsha: in Japan, insurance industry spends USD .200.mn on tsunami education
Rohan: credible agent (third party) should do vulnerability mapping
Divakar: what about the poor people who cant afford insurance coverage?
Malathy: they free-ride on the warning provided by the insurance company
Rohan: Shiller suggests using aid money to develop innovative insurance products
Harsha: MS Swaminathan in India is supported by donor money
Rohan: The solution will be a hybrid, mix and match solution, for e.g., Sarvodaya can act as the govt in terms of warning issue in the Sarvodaya villages. In other places, the private sector can issue warning.
Luxman S: Sarvodaya can market preparedness to the hotels, via rating system and they get a logo/emblem that says they have undergone tsunami preparedness compliant
Rohan: this should be an international standard, which does not exist for the moment
Luxman S: in any case, hotels can have preparedness measures (evacuation, maps, etc)
Divakar : Ideally if the government was an enlightened one, it could devolve some of the warning components to private organizations that have presence on the ground like Sarvodaya
Luxman S: government can be on the demand side of the equation; warning can be marketed to the Govt (pradeshya sabhas) etc.
Harsha: this will work as long as someone is incentivized to produce the warning
King Parakramabahu
Rohan
Are you going to promote privertisation of the Nationl Security.Do you think that every thing under the sun has an economic value ? Why USA could not face KATRINA having equiped with sophisticated diaster prepared systems.Why are you not trying to sell your grand mother to Sudda to earn some bucks? Please don’t try to sell the country. -Parakrama-
samarajiva
I hope the commenter will take the trouble to read the report which is the final position on these issues; the colloquium was part of the process by which we arrived at the conclusions.
Very interesting that Katrina has been brought up. The warning system worked very well in the Gulf Coast: warnings were issued; manadatory evacuation orders were given. What did not work was the evacuation itself. That is what we’re now working on with Sarvodaya: to design a training program that will ensure the villages are prepared to handle an evacuation.
Did the warning system work in Sri Lanka in December 2004? In March 2005? In July 2005? Does the commenter believe that the government of Sri Lanka is capable of delivering effective warnings? How does the government of Sri Lanka’s record in the eight months after the tsunami compare with that of Thailand? Aren’t these the important questions, not about what mythical things will be sold to mythical beings?
Naleendra
To answer the first question raised by King-Parakramabahu-the-not-so-great, the simple reason why national security is not being provided by a private company is that national security is a public good and hence non excludable. Otherwise, if a private company can provide a public good like national security, there is nothing wrong with that. If a government – which is not a private entity by any means – can provide private goods such as financial services, transportation, electricity, water, education and healthcare, why not a private company does the opposite?
As for Katrina: well, there are many people in Sri Lanka who takes a strange and sort of unsympathetic satisfaction when they see Sudda fails in something, be that in war or disaster. Just because Sudda fails in the warning systems or evacuation process, that does not mean we should not have any tsunami warning systems! This is one of the dumbest arguments I have heard. I am sure King Parakramabahu is turning in his grave reading the stupid comments of those who take his name!
King Parakramabahu
You are too late mister. The DMC has already being established under the disaster management act.Now you will not be able to earn dollers by selling poor tsunami victims.Pacha Gas yata Thel Beheth veddungengen beheth ganne nashta kama leddun vetari.
samarajiva
For the record.
The last-mile hazard information project discussed on the LBR Money Report on 4 January 2005 that pushed the buttons of the King is complementary to whatever the Government does. My understanding is that the Act does not actually deal with warning and preparedness but has a focus on relief and recovery.
I personally have not billed for one cent in any currency for any of the disaster-related work done through LIRNEasia, Sarvodaya or any other organization. All my time on these projects has been donated.
King Parakramabahu
Rohan
You are wrong. You better see the Act.The DMC has already formulated proposals on warnning and preparedness. Since the DMC is supposed to do every thing free of charge, not a single vulture can make business out of it.Why don’t you try to get a consultancy job in DMC as you did in telicom field.
H.M.Jayatilaka
A cosultancy job in DMC ? Ehenam jnathavata deyyangema pehityi.
Naleendra
I thought we would badly miss King Parakramabahu after the Presidential Election but Lo and behold, he is very much here!
Okay, let me ask a question your majesty, is there any harm is having two or more disaster warning systems – especially in the wake of the disaster we faced one year ago?
For example, the government has its own postal system. In addition there are so many local courier services operate in Sri Lanka. Has this done any harm? What would have been the case if we never had any private courier services?
Also there are government hospitals. There are also hospitals operated by private parties. Has this done any harm? What would have been the case of we never had any private hospitals?
This is a free country and free market. So what this big fuss is about?
Your majesty, can you please explain…?
Hettiarchchi
Ravula Ginigaththama suruttu pathtu kranna hadana Amana pora wethati
Then you can issue false warnning and loot the property of people when they get panic. In National level security systems, to issue warnning you need to collect data that should not be expoused to privete parties.Every human being has a fundametal right to know about any possible theat to them.You can’t sell their right.It is the prime dutuy of the government to issue warnning.You have the duty to satisfy your wife.Can you deligate these duties to the man at the next door ? You are not free.you are bound to the environmet.You can’t sell every thing.
Bongman
Hettiarcchi, what happens when you don’t satisfy your wife or vice versa? She gets the postman/gas deliver guy/your neighbor to perform the services you have been unable to fulfill. In your case, you will head to Liberty Plaza 8th floor, and yes that service is bought and sold like any other market transaction.
Similarly,when the Sri Lankan government fails to meet it obligations and duty to warn its citizens of a national disaster that wipes out 40,000 lives that could have been easily saved with a 2-minute warning, then it is natural that civil society steps into fill the void that the government has relinquished. Even after a year since the date of the tragic day, the Sri Lankan still does not have an early warning system in place for reaching its citizens. For warnings to be effective, evacuation drills and marking of safe routes and places have to be undertaken, has the Sri Lankan government conducted any of that? Does it have any plans to do so in the future? Isn’t the silence and inactivity on the part of the government criminal??
Remember the “false warning” on March 28 that came much too late? If an actual tsunami was headed to Sri Lanka, the warning would have come after the waves had gobbled up lives and property (more here http://www.lirneasia.net/2005/04/tsunami-lessons/). The looting that you refer to also occured thanks to the govt issued false warning. March 28 made abundantly clear that even after three months since the tsunami the bungling Sri Lankan government didnt have its act together (nobody could reach the Met dept, no single voice in the govt came out with an unambiguous, timely warning). Isn’t this criminal??
I have seen the organizational chart of the DMC and in this bureaucratic behemoth has no provision for early warning. Its duties kick in after the damage is done and lives are snuffed out. Instead of waffling about ocean-based tsunami sensors (that involve foreign equipment procurement and plenty of opportunities for kickbacks) the Sri Lankan government needs to have a clear plan as to how it is going to deliver warnings to the last mile, to each and every vulnerable household. It needs to work with local communities to conduct vulnerability mapping of villages and towns, it needs to provide training and conducts drills so people who are currently living in fear, know what to do in case of a warning. Is the Sri Lankan government doing this? Or even providing the funds for others to do it?
In most decent countries, the government is responsible for all of the above and is tasked to provide early warning to its citizens. In this part of the world that is not the case. When civil society mobilizes its resources to get the neccessary infrastructure and training in place, why are you carping? Don’t you have no shame for yourself and your goverment?
Bandara
To Naleendra ( Mahdena Mutta’s golaya)
We can remember Mahadena Mutta was one of the chief advisers of Moragoda during Ranil’s (person who tried to take the name of King Parakramabahu)period.Thanks to Mutta who has prevented Ranil comming to power.We don’t know whether Dr. Mahadanamutta (who thinks that he is the Jack of all trades) and his golaya have any basic qualification on meteorology,Geology,Ocenanography or Hydraulics inoder to anlyse a Tsunami.
Bogman (I think Mutta is writing on this name)
You are talking on assumed conditions.You know nothing about what DMC has being doing.The DMC has launched a road map 2 weeks back on disaster prepaedness and mitigation.I want to know about Dr. Mahadena Mutta’s qualifications on this subject.
Bongman
Bandara (in sanskrit it means monkey), pray tell us what the DMC is doing in the area of early warning? Disaster preparedness and mitigation has very little to do with early warning. It is sad that I have to point out the obvious. Since I am not Sinhala speaking, local lingo snides are lost on me.
Instead of delving into conspiracy theory about some chief advisor who prevented somebody else from winning the election etc. which has again very little to do with the subject under discussion (is this what u bureaucrat twits do while sipping tea and pushing files?) address the substantive issues I have raised or crawl back into your hole.
samarajiva
It’s legitimate to ask whether persons proffering expert advice and running research projects have the requisite qualifications. This question has been answered earlier on this site, but I will respond again, with a few updates. The basic answer can be found at Annex 5 at http://www.lirneasia.net/wp-content/news-sl-annex.pdf, but given the understandable difficulties people have in downloading a document, I repeat the information below.
Please note that our work has been in the component of a risk mitigation system known as dissemination of alerts and warnings, not hazard detection and monitoring, which is where knowledge of geology, etc, come in. Annexes 1-4 of the NEWS:SL document available at http://www.lirneasia.net/wp-content/news-sl-annex.pdf document the extensive consultations we conducted with experts on all aspects of the subject.
(b) Rohan Samarajiva
Participated in emergency broadcasts issuing warnings re the two cyclones of 1978 by
the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation, 1978.
Organized an ICTs and disaster warning workshop for the Arthur C. Clarke Centre for
Modern Technologies, 1986.
Represented Sri Lanka at the Tampere Intergovernmental Conference on Emergency
Telecommunications in Tampere, Finland, May 1998.
Chaired ad hoc committee to resolve contentious language on the draft convention and succeeded in achieving a solution acceptable to all parties leading to adoption of the Tampere Convention on the Provision of Telecommunication Resources for Disaster Mitigation and Relief Operations, May 1998.
Initiated and supervised the participatory process leading to the Final Report of the Pilot Study on the Use of Telecommunications in Disaster and Emergency Situations in Sri
Lanka, January 1999.
Contributed to the submission of the Cabinet Paper the led to decision to ratify the
Tampere Convention on the Provision of Telecommunication Resources
for Disaster Mitigation and Relief Operations and to assign disaster telecom
responsibilities to the Telecom Regulatory Commission, 1999.
Samarajiva, R. (2001). Disaster preparedness and recovery: A priority for telecom
regulatory agencies in liberalized environments. International Journal of Regulation and
Governance, 1(2): 1-16; also in Proceedings of the Policy and Development Summit, ITU Telecom Africa 2001. Johannesburg, December 2001.
http://www.itu.int/TELECOM/aft2001/cfp/auth/4858/pap_4858.pdf
Srivastava, L. and R. Samarajiva (2003), Regulatory design for disaster preparedness
and recovery by infrastructure providers: South Asian experience, in Critical
infrastructures: State of the art in research and application, eds. W. A. H. Thissen & P.
M. Herder, pp. 103-120. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Samarajiva, R. “What happened in Sri Lanka and why it won’t be so bad next time,”
presentation at closing plenary of Pacific Telecom Council conference, Honolulu, Hawai’i, 19th January 2005.
Additional publications
Samarajiva, R. (2005), Mobilizing information and communications technologies for effective disaster warning: Lessons from the 2004 tsunami, New Media and Society (7(6); 731-47. http://nms.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/7/6/731. Prepublication version: http://www.lirneasia.net/2005/07/icts-and-early-warning/
Samarajiva, R. (2005) Learning from the tsunami, Sri Lanka Institute of Directors Power Pages, 5(1), March, cover story. http://www.lirneasia.net/2005/02/learning-from-the-tsunami/
Samarajiva, R. (2005). M. Knight-John, P. Anderson & A. Zainudeen, National Early Warning System: Sri Lanka (NEWS:SL) , a participatory concept paper for the design of an effective all-hazard public warning system, version 2.1, http://www.lirneasia.net/2005/03/national-early-warning-system/ , 17 March.
Additional presentations and papers
“Mobilizing ICTs for early warning: Lessons of the 2004 tsunami,” plenary presentation at the International Association for Media and Communication Research conference, Taipei, 26-28 July 2005.
“Moblizing information and communication technologies for effective disaster warning: Lessons from the 2004 tsunami,” colloquium at Department of Communication, University of California, San Diego, 1 June 2005.
“Learning from the tsunami,” presentation to monthly meeting of the Sri Lanka Institute of Directors, Galadari Hotel, Colombo, 24 February 2005.
On lack of early warning system for disasters, Assignment, BBC World Service, 15 and 16 January, 2005, http://www.bbc.co.uk/print/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/01_january/14/sri_lanka.shtml
Naleendra
To whoever calls himself Bandara:
First of all, I asked a question from the person who called himself as King Parakramabahu and not from you. So there was no need not jump the gun, as you have done. This gives me the idea that it is one irritated person who posts under different names. You look so irritated that you have even forgotten your disguise when you jumped to reply me.
I am not a golaya of any Mahadenamutta. I am a student, alright but I have no relation to this research or LIRENASIS and I am here only as a citizen of Sri Lanka, nothing else. I asked a simple question. I do not question about the effectiveness of the system DMC proposes. I just want to know what is wrong having another system. Why keep all your eggs in one basket? Please answer this. You have not done that so far.
I assume both the King Parakramabahu and Bandara the same person. It appears to me you are so narrow minded you enjoy having monopolies and that too government monopolies. You don’t even like to settle for an oligopoly! What madness is this? Who believes in government monopolies these days?
I have no expertise in Meteorology, Geology, Oceanography or Hydraulics but I do not think I should have any qualifications to record my opinion here as a layman? Do you say that you want to prevent me speaking just because I do not have any expertise on the above subjects? If that is the case sir, you are violating the fundamental rights of someone! Please note I am not going to stop and wait. I am a citizen of this country and I have the right to select what I want and not what you want to recommend for me!
Mr. Bandara you show your expertise in the above disciplines by misspelling the word ‘Oceanography’. Enough for your expertise!
Naleendra
HM King Parakramanahu / Mr. Bandara,
Can you please give me a link from where I can find the information about the DMC you talk so much about?
I have done a Google search but all I could find was some effort to establish a Disaster Management Committee for Libraries, Information Services and Archives.
So please stop your mud slinging a for few minutes and help me to find this information.
King Parakramabahu
For people like the one Mr. Naleendra who does neither know the subject nor accepts it, two articles written by the telecom expert Mr. K.K. Gunawardana ex-DG Sri Lanka Telecommunications Regulatory Commission will be very useful. Mr. Naleendra can try the following.
http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2005/02/27/fea04.html
http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2005/02/20/fea05.html
Bongman
I looked at the link provided by KK Gunawardana’s lackey (or is the King the same person as Gunawardana??). They have absolutely nothing to do with the supply of early warning system, DMC or anything being discussed here. Doesn’t KK Gunawardana have anything better to do with his time than trying to peddle some irrelevant articles he wrote in a newspaper?
samarajiva
The King has only given links to two of Mr Gunawardene’s articles. All four are linked from http://www.lirneasia.net/2004/12/anti-reform-article/ on this website. The single response from me is also linked from the same post. As stated in the note that I wrote back in December-January, there were other priorities that had to be attended to at that time (my response which was published in January was sent to the Observer before the tsunami).
I am happy that I took the decision to give priority to disaster warning work at that time without getting entangled in the unfocused personalized diatribes that substitute for policy debate among some people. As a result, we now have the resources to train large numbers of villages to respond effectively to disaster warnings, even if the government fails to do its duty by them.
Why am I skeptical that the government will be effective in disaster warning? Because the e-mail addresses and fax numbers given by the government organizations to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center did not work in late February 2005, just two months after the tsunami (this is not a casual comment; it was stated under oath at the Presidential Commission on the Tsunami).
Why am I skeptical that the government will be effective in the larger area of disaster mangement? Because the government still does not yet have a single figure on the number of deaths that occurred because of the tsunami: http://www.lankabusinessonline.com/new_full_story.php?subcatcode=22&subcatname=&newscode=628576181
If people don’t like what we’re doing, I suggest they do something that is good in their view, like volunteering to help the government effectively respond to disasters. The task before us is large one; it is too big for one person or entity. In the end, what matters is whether we help people sleep in peace in their homes and whether more lives are saved the next time, nothing else.
Naleendra
Your majesty King Parakramabahu,
Are you unable to understand simple English? I have asked for some information on DMC and these articles are on telecom reform or some other topic.
Can you please tell me where I can find information on DMC. I ask because I do not know and like to learn about it.
Sivasuthan
Does the DMC mentioned here covers the areas of Tamil Eeelam too? Or it covers only Sri Lanka?
Prabaharan
DMC does not cover Tamil Eeelam as there is no such country.Tamil Eeelam is only a dream which will not come true.Mahadana Mutta can do Tsunami warnnig business there.If there any spelling mistakes Naleendra will correct.Bandara may be a desendend of a black monky.But Bogman must be a decendend of a white monky.Now at least we know who is Mahadanamutta.E-mail address of DMC is dmcsl@sltnet.lk , dgdmcsl@gmail.com.
Naleendra
Politics apart, Sivasuthan raises a very valid question.
As we all know, Government of Sri Lanka has no control over certain parts of the island. We also know disasters are not something just restricted to the parts of the island governed by the government.
The bottom line is any Disaster warning system launched should be equally effective all over the island. If such a system is implemented by government, I am sure we should have some sort of mechanism to implement the same in the areas not controlled by the government. (like the PTOMS for disaster recovery) I am not sure an arrangement like this is already in place in case of the DMC.
My personal opinion is a Disaster Warning system launched by the partnership of civil society and private sector will be more effective in the areas in the North and East. Why should a population that does not respect the laws of government of Sri Lanka will listen to government warnings? How can the government conduct training in these areas?
Bongman
Praba, alias Bandara, King & KK Gunawardana, none of your avatars have contributed subtantively to the discussion here. Are you guys seriously brain damaged? Most high schoolers are taught about the various fallacies in logic and reasoning; rejecting a claim on the basis of irrelevant facts on the author who made the claim, is classic Ad Hominem attack. This is the fallacy you’ve been indulging since you stepped into this thread.
I also find your laziness disgusting–instead of asking others for their qualifications why don’t you google them? I googled “Rohan Samarajiva” and among other things I found that he was a tenured professor of communication at Ohio State university, Professor at the Delft University in the Netherlands, Honororay professor at the University of Moratuwa, Director General of Telecoms, he chaired committe at the Tampere Convention on Emergency Telecommunications, he is invited to speak on disasters and communication at universities all over the world (too numerous to list them). This dude has serious qualifications, so instead of looking like a fool in the future its best to do your own homework before challenging someone.
I know you will be tempted to post another idiotic post under a name that’s supposed to impress us, but please do us a favor and resist that itch.
Prabaharan
Bogman
When I question about qualification of Mahadena Mutta Why Bogman’s rectum gets itchy feeling. I think Bogman’s back and Mutta’s head seems to be inter linked. If Bogman is a Sudda buger how can he know abot Mahadena Mutta. May be from google search.I found the meaning of Bogman in Cocorodian langauge is Donkey.
LIRNEasia’ multidisciplinary work on disruptive innovation
Today, I delivered the keynote at the 9th International Conference on multidisciplinary approaches at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura. Here is on story that I told.
Learnings on disaster risk reduction in Sinhala
මූලික වශයෙන් ආපදා අවදානම අවම කිරීමේ වගකීම භාර ගත යුතු වන්නේ රජයයි. සුනාමිය ඉදිරියේ රජය අසරණ වුවද එම භූමිකාව පවරාගත හැකි වෙනත් ආයතනයක් නැති බව අපි එකල කීවෙමු.
(Research Report) Health-Related Information and COVID-19
Information collection (or data collection) is vital during an epidemic, especially for purposes such as contact tracing and quarantine monitoring. However, it also poses challenges such as keeping up with the spread of the infectious disease, and the need to protect personally identifiable information.
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