AFP: Asia remembers tsunami victims three years on Also in Indonesia, a dramatic drill simulating a tsunami strike was held in Java’s coastal province of Banten involving around 9,000 residents, local television reported. The simulation, designed to test a tsunami warning system gradually being rolled out, saw hundreds of students, along with residents clutching children, rush to higher ground assailed by wailing sirens. “This country is vulnerable to tsunami threats. Let us pray to God for this country to be kept safe from tsunamis,” President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said after observing the exercise. Powered by ScribeFire.
Status quo of the tsunami early warning system for the Indian Ocean The fastest warning is useless as long as the gap to the so called “last mile to the beach” is not closed. The population in the threatened area needs to be informed in time, but they also need to be trained how to react properly. The people need to be informed about evacuation plans and how to behave in the case of emergency. Japan carries out this kind of training in schools, plants and companies on a regular basis. The establishment of such an education programme in the areas bordering the Indian Ocean has only just started.
India’s Bharti Airtel, China Mobile and PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia are UBS’s top three telecom investment picks in Asia for 2008, as their home markets enjoy strong growth rates. “Growth features such as rising consumption, elasticity of demand and economies of scale will continue to be the main themes for the growth markets, including China, India and Indonesia, which are still under-appreciated by investors, in our view,” UBS said in a report. India and China, the world’s fastest-growing mobile markets, added around 8 million mobile phone subscribers in October, taking their user base to approximately 217 million and 531 million, respectively. Read the full story in Forbes.com
Indonesia’s largest telecommunications company, Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telkom), said Wednesday it has asked unit Telkomsel to appeal a ruling that Telkomsel has broken the anti-monopoly law.Indonesia’s competition watchdog (KPPU) ruled on Monday that Telkomsel, the largest cellphone carrier here, has broken the competition law. The KPPU fined it 25 billion rupiah (2.7 million dollars) and ordered Telkomsel to lower its tariff by a minimum of 15 percent. “As the majority and controlling shareholder of Telkomsel, Telkom has requested Telkomsel to immediately carry out a legal review in accordance with its own internal processes and governance practices,” Telkom said.
The Jakarta Post [PDF version] Indonesia is striving to maintain its commitment to information and communication technology (ICT) for the education system, a top government official said. “Seventy percent of our vocational high schools, 30 percent of senior high schools and 20 percent of junior high schools are equipped with computer laboratories,” Education Minister Bambang Sudibyo announced at the opening of the sixth International Symposium on Open, Distance and E-Learning in Kuta, Bali, on Wednesday. The government has also distributed television-based Televisi Edukasi equipment to some 35,198 junior high schools, and has developed thousands of programs comprising on and offline learning activities, TV broadcast materials and audio programs throughout Indonesia. “Globalization has pushed the development and utilization of information and communication technology in the education sector,” Bambang said.
Indonesia has learnt lessons from dealing with a string of earthquakes, but still can do more to reduce the impact of such disasters by quake proofing buildings and deploying more tsunami buoys, officials said on Wednesday. An official at Indonesia’s National Coordinating Agency for Disaster Management said there had been progress in educating people since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that followed a huge quake off Aceh province and killed nearly 170,000 Indonesians. Read more Reuters Alertnet | Indonesia disaster preparedness a work in progress
On October 25, 2007, LIRNEasia will hold its first regional dissemination workshop for the “Evaluating Last Mile Hazard Information Dissemination” (HazInfo) pilot project at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) through its Bangladesh Network Office for Urban Safety (BNUS) in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The purpose of the workshop is to gather experts, practitioners and community organizations to discuss the findings of the HazInfo project and determine ways in which the project may be developed to suit community-based hazard information dissemination regionally. The “Sharing Knowledge on Disaster Warning: Community-based Last-Mile Warning Systems” workshop in Dhaka will feature five presenters from government, academia and NGOs. Dr. A.
On 12 September 2007 the Tamil Nadu Government asked the coastal districts to remain on alert following fears of tsunami in the wake of the 7.9 magnitude powerful earthquake that rocked Sumatra near Indonesia. After the Union Home Ministry sounded an alert, the State Government instructed the district collectors of Chennai, Kancheepuram, Cuddalore, Nagapattinam, Thanjavur and Kanniyakumari to remain on high alert to meet any eventuality. On being alerted, the district administrations sounded the alert. In the aftermath of the events following the alert a lightning survey was conducted by the Academy for Disaster Management Education, Planning and Training’s (ADEPT) community volunteers (Community Support Leaders or CSLs).
Total broadband growth in the Philippines from 2005 to 2006 was at 157% while Greece’s was 168%, Ovum said. The Philippines had 127,942 subscribers in 2005 and this number grew to 329,216 as of end-2006. The cost of broadband in the Philippines is also expensive relative to average monthly disposable incomes of subscribers. The highest monthly fee in 2006 was $96.08, with the lowest at $17.
BY VERONICA S. CUSI, Businessworld THE PHILIPPINES was the second fastest-growing market for broadband worldwide in 2006, according to a study by UK-based research and consultancy firm Ovum. This was primarily due, however, to the fact that broadband is just taking off in the country, and Ovum said growth could be significantly higher if regulators allow more competition that would lead to cheaper services. Greece took the top spot in the study, and the other countries in the top ten list were Indonesia, India, Ukraine, Ireland, Thailand, Vietnam, Russia and Turkey. Total broadband growth in the Philippines from 2005 to 2006 was at 157% while Greece’s was 168%, Datamonitor affiliate Ovum said.
Professor Charitha Pattiaratchi, Leader of the Coastal Oceanography Group at the School of Environmental Systems Engineering of the Australian National Facility for Ocean Gliders carried out a real-time analysis of the tsunami alerts and warnings around the Indian Ocean basin following the massive Bengkulu earthquakes off the coast of southern Sumatra, Indonesia on 12 September, 2007. In his paper, Pattiarachi discusses background for tsunami generation, the present status of the tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean, and the role of deep-water tsunameters in the detection of tsunamis on 12 September. For more details, see Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System: Example from the 12th September 2007 Tsunami.
The Minister is to be commended for initiating the review of the alert process that went from alert to evacuation in minutes. Sri Lanka News | Online edition of Daily News – Lakehouse Newspapers Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe, called for an immediate review of the tsunami alert process that was put into operation on September 12 to learn from the experience and refine procedures the Disaster Management and Human Rights Ministry in a release said.He stated that the successful exercise could prove a platform for future improvements to the early warning process making it more effective and efficient.
It has been a practice at LIRNEasia to write an assessment of the responses to potentially tsunamigenic events in the region. We commented on Nias and Pangandaran. Now that the discussion on the response is starting, here is our take: Lessons from the Sri Lanka tsunami warnings and evacuation of September 12-13, 2007 The tragedy of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was the absence of any official warning. The September 12th Bengkulu earthquake shows that this is unlikely to be the case in the future. We have seen that the new institutions created since the 2004 tsunami have the will and the capacity to act.
The National Disaster Warning centre (NDWC) Thailand, has defended its decision not to issue an early tsunami alert after the 8.4-magnitude earthquake off the west coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island on Wednesday evening. Instead, the NDWC made a broadcast three hours later telling people there was no cause for alarm. Centre chairman Smith Dharmasarojana said yesterday the delay was based on a thorough analysis of the situation. The NDWC decided against a sudden TV broadcast to warn people about a possible tsunami because it predicted the quake, which struck about 6.
Second Tsunami-Detection Station To Bolster Indian Ocean System As part of the U.S. effort, in December 2006, NOAA experts and Thai government officials put a deep-ocean assessment and reporting of tsunamis (DART) station in the Indian Ocean, halfway between Thailand and Sri Lanka. (See related article.)DART systems provide real-time tsunami detection as waves travel across open waters, and each station is linked to a satellite for real-time data transmission on global networks.
The ITU’s World Information Society Report 2007 contains the following discussion of one of LIRNEasia’s flagship products, the Telecom Regulatory Environment (TRE) assessment, in Chapter 2, Bridging the digital divide (p. 32). “One innovative approach adopted recently in the Asian market is to try to quantify the extent of sector reform. LIRNEAsia has conducted research into the regulatory environment in six Asian economies (India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand). Their research is based on interviews rating performance in market entry, scarce resources, interconnection, prices, anticompetitive practices and universal service.