I was invited to speak at the opening session of the ESCAP training workshop organized by the ICT and DRR Division, March 8-9, 2016. This was to introduce the report we had prepared for ESCAP on Building e-resilience, which is about to be released. The slides I used in my presentation are here. Because there was enough time (unusually), I went into some depth on one recommendation per inter-governmental organizations; governments and telecom service operators. Insurance appeared under two headings and took much of the time devoted to discussion.
UNESCAP in partnership with the International Think Tank for Landlocked Developing Countries (ITT-LLDC) held an Expert Workshop on ICT for Promoting Inclusive and Disaster Resilient Development, from 14-15 May 2015 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. I represented LIRNEasia and shared our recently completed research enhancing the role of ICTs for Disaster Risk Management(DRM), that was led by Shazna Zuhyle. I made two presentations. The first looked at emerging trends in DRM including the use of mobile network big data for disaster risk mitigation and planning. The second looked at the role of ICTs for DRM in SriLanka.
Based on writing and interviews done in June 2015 in the context of LIRNEasia’s events organized to mark the 10th anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami on December 2004 http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Regional/2014/12/22/Contributing-to-global-knowledge/. The first multilingual trials of the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) – a data format for exchanging public warnings and emergencies between alerting technologies – were carried out in Sri Lanka as part of the Hazard Information Project funded by Canada’s International Development Research Centre.
The 2014 LIRNEasia Disaster Risk Reduction Lecture focused on all aspects of the early warning ‘chain’ and what advances have been made in the ten years since the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. On the whole the message that was conveyed was very positive. Tremendous progress has been made both in the science of understanding when a tsunami has been generated and in the deployment of instruments throughout the world’s oceans, including the Indian Ocean. The purpose of all this effort and investment is getting people out of harm’s way. That means that warnings, including evacuation orders, have to be effectively communicated to all those in harm’s way; that evacuation must be orderly; and most importantly, that the evacuees take the appropriate action willingly and with knowledge.
Right now disaster awareness is high. A cyclone was heading toward Sri Lanka’s Northeast Coast but has apparently veered off toward the Indian East Coast. Flooding has started in different parts of the country, trees are falling, transport has been affected. Of course, people are very aware of Hurricane Sandy and the US East Coast because of the power of international media. I found myself also monitoring Hawai’i a few days ago, because they were expecting a tsunami there (it came, but at insignificant wave heights).
Making Emergency Communication Effective LIRNEasia’s 3rd Disaster Risk Reduction Lecture On 19 June 2012 from 15:00 – 17:00 at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute, 100 Independence Square, Colombo 7 The main talk will focus on actions to improve alerting and situational-reporting to make emergency communication more effective. The talk will focus on establishing an alerting profile and a multi-agency situational-awareness software tool that the Sahana Software Foundation has developed. Such a tool can help bring organizations together to more effectively communicate disaster information and ease them away from unproductive silo thinking. It will also allow the Disaster Management Center to perform its functions better. Moderator: Major General (retd.
The moderator of the DRR lecture and panel and leading science writer Nalaka Gunawardene has written about the discussion at the DRR lecture. 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.
The tsunami occurred within three months of LIRNEasia’s founding. We were lucky. No one in LIRNEasia was directly affected, though there were several “what ifs”. It changed our research program for sure. We did three projects directly connected to the tsunami: NEWS:SL which was a study on how Sri Lanka could establish a robust, effective national early warning system (Note to the government: it’s not too late to implement even now), when we figured there would be no first-best solution, the HazInfo project that sought to understand how communities at the last mile could prepare themselves to receive government warning and respond appropriately, and a little pilot on how communities could be given voice called Webhamuva.
SciDev, a prestigious science communication channel, has featured our cell broadcast report, the first of the Mobile 2.0 reports to be released. Texting short messages through mobile phones could help in early warning of natural disasters in the Maldives, says a new report. The technology, called cell broadcasting, helps to deliver messages simultaneously to multiple users in a specified area. “In the case of the Maldives, if an early warning is introduced, it must be able to reach all of the outlying islands including tourists on resorts.
Chanuka Wattegama, Senior Research Manager, LIRNEasia, chaired the thematic session on ICT for Disaster Risk Reduction during the International Conference on Building a Local Government Alliance for Disaster Risk Reduction in Incheon, Republic of Korea, on 11-13 August 2009. The thematic session brought together specialists from Asia and the Pacific to share knowledge and experiences on ways in which ICTs have been used in response, recovery and risk reduction efforts. The session – organized by the United Nations Asian and Pacific Training Centre for Information and Communication Technology for Development (APCICT) – was part of the International Conference, jointly organized by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN-ISDR) and the Incheon Metropolitan City of the Republic of Korea, and was attended by senior government policymakers, disaster managers and representatives from international and regional agencies. Chanuka was also interviewed by Korean electronic media on LIRNEasia’s disaster management efforts Chanuka Wattegama, Senior Research Manager, LIRNEasia, chaired the thematic session on ICT for Disaster Risk Reduction during the International Conference on Building a Local Government Alliance for Disaster Risk Reduction in Incheon, Republic of Korea, on 11-13 August 2009. The thematic session brought together specialists from Asia and the Pacific to […]