Using ICT for Effective Disaster Management A hotel that was hit by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Ahungalle, Sri Lanka is the location of a conference that examines all aspects of the relationship between ICTs and disasters. One of the guests at this hotel on the 26th of December 2004, Dr Chris Chapman, a theoretical seismologist, wrote one of the best analytical accounts of the experience, which is on this PDF document. LIRNEasia’s Executive Director Rohan Samarajiva and HazInfo Project Manager Nuwan Waidyanatha are participating as are a number of our partners in disaster work.
According to this intriguing story, Sri Lanka may become the first country in the world to license WiMAX operators. Leaving aside the wisdom of licensing technologies (as opposed to services), any action to shake things up in the broadband market must be welcomed. Of course, our joy will be that much greater if the TRC ensures that the WiMAX operators are given non-discriminatory and cost-oriented access to the SLTL and Dialog backbones and that open access to the undersea cable is also assured. Without these regulatory actions, one may get connectivity to something, but not the Internet.
According to this report, SLTL is pressing ahead on offering more high speed data services within Colombo. I think the correct amount is USD 2 million. If only one could offer high-end data services for USD 20,000! This news item should be of significant interest to our readers who want these services offered in rural locations such as Mahavilachchiya. Lanka Business Online
Rohan Samarajiva represented LIRNEasia at the Research ICT Africa (RIA!), Annual Meeting held recently in Dakar, Senegal with a view to contribute to the discussion on Telecom Regulatory Environment (TRE) assessment that RIA! is planning to undertake. The five-day workshop held from May 26-June 2, 2006, focused on three areas: the 2006 RIA! research agenda, outcomes mapping and RIA!
Nuwan Waidyanatha – Project Manager, Last Mile Hazard Warning System The socioeconomic belief is that a CAP message relay is one way of effectively managing disasters, and that is what is envisioned in the Last-Mile Hazard Warning System (LM-HWS) Pilot Project. I will be talking about the current Workpackage of the LM-HWS project, which is developing the Hazard Information Hub (HIH). The general objective of the LM-HWS project is to evaluate the suitability of a selected set of ICT that can communicate CAP messages and alert the village first-responders. The Sarvodaya HIH was specifically built with the intension of providing structured risk information such as CAP messages to the local communities.
From LankaBusinessOnline Extended Family 05 June 2006 14:23:29 Sri Lanka opens the door for fifth mobile phone operator June 5, 2006 (LBO) – Sri Lanka plans to expand its mobile phone market to five players, in a bid to bring down costs of telephony, the telecom regulator said Monday. Sri Lanka’s mobile market had grown 53.5 percent to 3.34 million customers as at end 2005, according to TRC figures. The island’s cellular penetration is expected to increase to 20.
By Nuwan Waidyanatha The Hazard Information Hub (HIH), operated by Sarvodaya as part of the Last-Mile Hazard Information Dissemination Project (HazInfo) to disseminate Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) risk information to the villages in Sri Lanka, monitored the recent tsunami drills conducted in the Pacific by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in the USA. The HazInfo project initiated by LIRNEasia, is a multipartner initiative aimed at tackling the “last-mile” challenges in developing an all-hazards approach to disaster management and mitigation.
PLEASE CONTINUE DISCUSSION ON STANDARDIZING SINHALA FOR IT APPLICATIONS IN THIS THREAD. CREATING ICT MYTHS THREAD HAS BEEN ARCHIVED. EXCERPT FROM PREVIOUS DISCUSSION BELOW:
In May 2006 Airtel launched a Tamil SMS solution developed by MicroImage, a Sri Lankan software firm, in the State of Tamilnadu. Tamil and Sinhala SMS are offered in Sri Lanka by Dialog Telekom and Celltel Lanka. The service is based on a key-entry system enabling a customer to type the SMS as fast as in English and “a one touch function guiding them using the key pad to type Tamil letters”, according to Airtel. “The subscriber needs to download the application free of charge from ‘Airtel Live’ on to their handsets. Those receiving the Tamil SMS also need to download the application in order to read it in Tamil.
A report on the Indicators Workshop held in New Delhi by LIRNEasia in collaboration with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is available here [PDF]. The report provides a review of international initiatives and best practices, examines some of the difficulties regarding standardising indicators across the region, the challenges of measurement and collection of indicator data and the process of developing an indicators manual for the South Asian region.
This article shows that government’s instinct to ban cellphones from conflict zones because of the belief that it will be used by militants/terrorists to further their cause, actually neutralizes one of the security agencies most potent weapons to track subversives. I doubt that the Sri Lankan government will allow cellular service to be available any time soon in the North. But at least it gives the security agencies some food for thought. The Indian government was similarly reluctant to have cellular service in Kashmir, but the Indian security agencies are their biggest proponents now. ———— Troops in Kashmir master new weapon: cell phones Reuters By Sheikh MushtaqSun May 21, 1:53 AM ET Minutes after a bomb exploded recently in Kashmir and wounded Indian soldiers, a senior member of an Islamist rebel group called local newspaper offices to claim responsibility for the blast.
The first phase of the Last-Mile Hazard Information Dissemination (HazInfo) project funded by IDRC, was completed recently with the training of trainer component. LIRNEasia is implementing this project along with its project partners Sarvodaya, the largest community organization in Sri Lanka and TVE Asia Pacific (TVEAP), a non-profit media organization working in the Asian region. LIRNEasia has undertaken a number of initiatives in the area of ICTs disasters and early warning post the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster of 2004. However, this is by far the largest project undertaken LIRNEasia in this area to evaluate the suitability of a number of ICTs (information and communication technologies) deployed in varied conditions for their effectiveness in the last-mile of a hazard warning system.
The link below is to a comprehensive article by a geo scientist on Sri Lanka’s seismic monitoring capabilities. Paper Articles – The Island “The seismic monitoring equipment available at the University of Peradeniya with peripherals at other national universities needs to be operationalized properly as a national network. The entire system must be maintained with the involvement of a competent group of scientists. The data processing centre at Peradeniya should be linked to the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau enabling independent data processing and interpretation at both these locations. Further, the coordinating centre of the security forces should have a direct link with the network to receive real time information.
AirJaldi Summit – Dharamsala, India Above is a link to a meeting on license-free WiFi networks, centered on what has been built at Dharmasala, the venerable Dalai Lama’s headquarters (he was denied the opportunity to visit Sri Lanka for the 2550 Buddha Jayanti, despite all the Buddhist rhetoric of our current government: http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=1,2155,0,0,1,0.
LIRNEasia is sending its Lead Economist Harsha de Silva to participate on a MIT scholarship to the first ever executive course offered by the Poverty Action Lab this summer. The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, a unit within MIT’s Department of Economics, serves as a focal point for development and poverty research based on “randomized trials”. According to Harsha, this program can significantly contribute to WDR & LIRNEasia’s ongoing and future research projects on ICTs. For example, “In the Teleuse on Shoestring project it is difficult to measure how much the poor actually benefitted from having access to the phone. There are a number of variables like cultural background, access to other infrastructure services, level of education etc which make it difficult for us to pinpoint how much access to telephone had in improving the quality of life of the poor in India and Sri Lanka,” said Harsha.
Hello… how do the poor use their phones? By Frederick Noronha, Indo-Asian News Service Dhaka, April 30 (IANS) It’s a billion dollar question: how do the poor of the planet use their mobile phones? A South Asian study conducted in India and Sri Lanka that looks at telecom users with monthly incomes of less than $100 says that over half the respondents do not even own the phone they use. Read more at DailyIndia.com Click here to access the main Shoestrings study