08.09.2013 Early warning
Efficient and simple use of information technology, such as through a mobile phone, can make a difference in floods warning system
By Akseeb Jawed
News items about flood victims have been the highlight of media in the past few weeks. Despite all the loss of life and property, nothing substantial seems to have been done in this regards so far.
As a result, the damage in terms of infrastructure and casualties is escalating. This situation is due to the fact that the flood management systems in Pakistan have always been more focused in the rectification of the after-effects of flood disaster rather than building up community resilience through participation and by setting up people-centered-flood early warning systems.
In this respect, the use of Information Technology can play a crucial role during the flood season. We can remember that mobile phones proved helpful in providing early warnings during the floods of 2010. SMS or calls proved to be an efficient and cost-effective way of disseminating early warnings during the monsoon season.
Since monsoon is a yearly occurrence in Pakistan and floods can’t be prevented entirely, a lot can be done to lessen the damage. For this reason, important changes are taking place the way floods are managed around the world, for instance, in United States of America, United Kingdom, Netherlands, and Switzerland, and Asian countries like Japan and Bangladesh have advanced IT-based flood early warning systems installed.
Information technology has been further developed by an Environment Agency, Halcrow, (UK) which is a licensed flood-warning service provider. They have developed Flood Alert, smartphone flood warning applications, which enable the users to get real time updates on flood warning in England and Wales.
In Pakistan, mobile phone use has quadrupled in the last decade both in urban and rural areas. One of the effective uses of mobile technology in flood early warnings was observed in Muzaffargarh district during 2010. Ameer Pur of Muzafargarh Tehsil faces frequent flooding because it is situated along the eastern bank of river Chenab.
Doaba Foundation surveyed this area and conducted a workshop to educate the locals about early warnings. As per the requirement for the area, the foundation formulated early warning committee that was responsible for issuance of warnings during flooding events.
An inhabitant of Ameer Pur, Sajjad Hussain Bhatti, reported that he got flood early warnings through mobile phone and was able to take necessary measures well in time to save not only people’s lives but also their crops by making dykes of 6 feet height and 8 feet width (this became possible with the collective efforts of 5 villages).
He further added that the people of his locality were given proper training to use the people-centered flood early warning system. Some of the people were given responsibilities to get information about the water level and in case of any emergency report back to the people via mobile phone.
As compared to previous techniques, the integration of IT in flood early warning systems proved to be more effective and less complex.
There are many proposed and on-going projects on the use of mobile phone in flood early warning systems. One such example is the FloodSMS, a modular flood early warning application proposed by ekgaon technology.
Such a technology would be able to give flood early warnings to a number of people that are in the range of/access to mobile phone/networks. The range of the network could be improved by making use IT-based technologies discussed above. The system would be able to handle multiple languages to overcome the communication barrier in the way of flood warnings.
There are number of mobile phone companies working in Pakistan. The government and the concerned authorities should encourage and support these companies in this venture of issuing flood warnings through mobile phone. This would not be a difficult task because the cell phones are equipped with number of applications and Internet facility as well.
There is need to install flood warning software which is most commonly used in the smart phones and ipods. There is diversity in culture of Punjab therefore; things could be further simplified by integrating a flood alarm bell in the cell phones so that illiterate, blind, old people, etc could understand the warnings.
Moreover, the PMD should enhance the potentiality of the existing commercial cellular network by increasing the storage for data and voice, introducing new handsets that have long-battery lifetime, more data capacity, and advance functions. For instance, 22 new sets of HF radio sets have been installed to improve communication of the meteor burst telemetry stations however, this could further be improved if technically advanced cellular network in installed.
In Pakistan the weakest element in the flood management activities is the dissemination of early warnings. In many areas warnings were either not issued or didn’t reach vulnerable population on time. The flood warning system could be further enhanced by integrating IT in the flood early warning system as people are now more familiar with different shades of technology.
So to speak, every other person have the availability of camera phones, internet availability on the cell phones, ipods, electronic gadgets, wikis, the web, voice email, voice messages, and text messages.
Channeling these resources properly can proved to be a valuable source of information and possess a great commitment for providing early warnings (particularly in initial response stages) to disaster managers. People could be actively engaged by recruiting them to assist in disaster response; keeping them informed as how to and when to relatively act. In addition, they could be vital auxiliary IT resources as it’s evident that traditional sources are mostly banged by a disaster.
IT mechanisms that amalgamate disaster response agency information systems to interactive public communications channels such as internet, or wireless communication could collectively provide an information gathering and dissemination mechanism that could give a considerable space to the agency being overload by the affected population seeking situational information.
The above given approach would increase the reliability of the communications, improve the performance of assistants, and develop public perception of appropriate actions. Some of the genuine concerns about the authenticity of information have restrained any major mileage towards integrating entirely the mentioned changes. Some important part of usage of IT technology may be missed as various individuals are involved in improvement of technology and during the filtration process some quality of technology may not be applied as the public officials usually have limited resources.
The writer is a researcher based in Islamabad