Flavor of the month of OCTOBER- Telecentres for Emergency/Disaster Coordination
Senthil Kumaran, Director for Informatics Division ,M S Swaminathan Research Foundation writes in Telecentre Magazine 2008 that telecentres play a critical role in disaster mitigation. He expalins how telecentres can assist the community in with mitigating natural disasters like in 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami, fisherman from South Indian sea coast had alerted the nearest village knowledge centre on the impending disaster. The timely action taken by the village knowledge centre had led to reduced loss of life and property. Given the increasing number of coastal hazards there is an urgent need for quick and responsive sea based information dissemination.
Following is the detaled description quoted from the Telecentre Magazine, 2008 for your reference:
Telecentres for disaster mitigation
The M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), Chennai, India has a number of telecentres (Village Knowledge Centres) in South India rooted in the community development. In Pondicherry (now called Puducherry), members of the community can access indigenous knowledge, fishery and agricultural information, Internet and training services at no direct cost. The foundation undertakes fund-raising activities to underwrite telecentre services. For instance, the Government of Pondicherry pays for access to some services interpreted to have a high community development value. The network of telecentres are organised into Village Resource Centres and Village Knowledge Centres clubbed as a Hub and Spokes Model, and have access to Indian Space Research Organisation's video-conferencing facilities, and enabled knowledge.Telecentres are specifically designed to meet special needs of fishing, crop farming and cattle keeping communities. Users can either walk into one of the centres of choice for information or receive information via loud speakers placed in strategic meeting places in the community. Information can vary in nature - like location of best fish catch for fishing community or weather information being re-packaged in local languages and formats that will be understood by the community. This information is vital for the fishing community to overcome unforeseen change in the sea. It also provides locale specific information on sea-based weather forecast, techniques of fish processing and marketing, natural disaster warnings, alternative employment for fisherfolk, the welfare schemes of the central and state governments, etc. Moreover the VKCs also helped local fishing communities hit by post-tsunami changes in fishing grounds, fluctuating weather and sickness due to extreme climatic conditions. In Veerapattinam village, just before the tsunami hit in 2005, fishermen, seeing abnormal changes in sea-behaviour, ran to the nearest Village Knowledge Centre, warned the villagers through the Public Address System of the VKC, which ultimately led to reduced loss of life and property.
If you have experienced similar stories, Flavor of the Month of October is the place to share your story. Please do share your stories, ideas, suggestions on how a telecentres can help with emergency or disaster coordination.
Looking forward to your active participation in the forum.
Views: 382
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Ammar Jaffri on -
Hi Sue,
A need of the hour initiative. Recently we had floods in South of Pakistan which has displaced a huge number of population specially from rural areas. I believe most of the demage could have been avoided if the target population of the area would have been
We can divide the total situation into three phases.
a) Preparing
b) Facing
c) Post event analysis for lessons learnt
I believe Call centers and mobile phones can estabalish a Hub and spokes grid for telecentres to work pro-actively for such situations. I feel lot of organizations ( local and Internationals ) are working in trouble areas with out any cooperation model. I suggest teelecentres may be used as a plateform for this coordination. Sharing of experiences is the key to number of problems today. ICTs provide excellent forum for this change of mindsets.
Discussion must continue till we do not form SOPs for above three stages, comments are welcom.
Regards,
Ammar Jaffri
-
Permalink Reply by Seuwandi Yapa on -
Dear Jaffri,
Thank you very much for sharing your comments and indeed basic idea behind telecentres at emergency situation is that telecentres can be the hub or main access point for the community to get the early warning on upcoming disasters. As you have suggested, i agree that there need to be a proper coordination from the telecentre and its staff how they going to respond and communicate immediately with the people and rescue teams. I hope Telecentres can make use of a successful mechanism and deploy an initiative if they can work together with community and it will be really helpful if telecentres will be supported by the community based organizations.
Thank you.
-
Permalink Reply by Nabil Eid on -
Thanks Seu,
You added an important issue this month
I think ICT / Telcenter can play a significant role in highlighting risk areas, but we need to determine the tools, awareness and challenges in addressing these issues, the effectiveness of ICT/Telecentre in reducing disaster risk depends on how it is used.
There are different types of software tools are being used to gather, store and analyze data related to disaster but there is limited capacity – in using software/hardware, data and lack of coordination in data collection, storage, and use resources.
There is poor training in emergency and lack of training personnel and transfer of experiences, building infrastructure and understanding of risks and disaster reduction concepts, is fundamental for disaster mitigation.
-
Permalink Reply by Seuwandi Yapa on
-
Hi Nabil,
Thank you for the comments.
I wonder, there is a possibility of the telecentres located in disaster prone areas to coordinate with national disaster warning centres in the respective country, and if its a possibility, telecentres can easily become the information centre to the community which immediately send out warnings on emergency situations. I am sure few telecentres work close with government organzations' early warning centres on disasters.
Have you ever come across with such experience and its a pleasure if you could share with us.
Thank you.
-
Permalink Reply by Sameera Wijerathna on -
.
Hi
Can Telecenters become Disaster Early Warning Centers?
http://ict4d-in-srilanka.blogspot.com/2009/05/can-telecenters-become-disaster-early.html
-Sameera
.
-
Permalink Reply by Seuwandi Yapa on
-
Hi Sameera,
Thank you for sharing the link to one of your interesting blogs on the topic.
I would like to invite all the members to follow your blog once again as you have already collected good resources and content related to the topic that we are discussing here.
Thank you :)
-
Permalink Reply by Sameera Wijerathna on
-
.
Hi
Can Telecenters become Disaster Early Warning Centers?
http://ict4d-in-srilanka.blogspot.com/2009/05/can-telecenters-becom...
-Sameera
.
-
Permalink Reply by Terrance W. Norton on -
Humm,
So what kind of software can be developed for gathering information and resources? I am interested more in the gathering of resources as a means to respond more appropriately to disasters.
I believe that there will be rioting in the streets of America and we need to have a better mechanism in place before Marshall Law is declared and then people being gathered to go to a concentration camp of FEMA.
Any suggestions are welcomed!
-
Permalink Reply by Seuwandi Yapa on
-
Hi Terrance,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Its good if we can develop software that can detect and gather all sort of necessary information on upcoming natural disasters. Creating a software for a telecentre community will require lot of expertise in technical knowledge and infrastructure that they might lack. with such circumstance, I think of telecentres coming into partnerships or work in collaboration with their national/ regional disaster warning centres. Internet connectivity and IT infrastructure available in the telecentre would be sufficient to fulfill a task of efficient and effective coordination between the local community and the respective early warning centres.
Thank you.
-
Permalink Reply by Don Cameron on -
Hi Terrence,
The Open Source and non-profit based disaster management software “Sahana” may fulfil resource management and other needs (Google Sahana for more info). Amongst its strengths the Sahana development community has strong affiliations with the global disaster management community. Sahana evolved in Sri Lanka following the SE Asian Tsunami and is now a truly global imitative. Sahana is also in use and supported by the Emergency Management Office of the US city of New York and is a very good cultural “fit” with the Telecentre movement.
Disclaimer: I am a former Director of the Sahana project.
Don
-
Permalink Reply by Don Cameron on
-
Telecentres are often ideally placed to assist with disaster prevention, planning, mitigation and recovery by virtue of location and the combination of technology and skill.
Many of our Australian Telecentres are located in cyclone and other disaster prone locales (fire, flood, drought etc.) and operate as hubs for community and communications during time of crisis. The physical location of the Telecentre is often the factor most strongly positioning the community asset for disaster roles where consideration was incorporated during construction of the Telecentre.
We find that Telecentres have a role to play across the spectrum of other (external and intrernal) societal skills and disaster resources – ie where no other resources exist the Telecentre becomes a communications point, a refuge, a centre for people to gather and coordinate activities. Managed technology has an ability to drive calm amidst chaos. Conversely where extensive disaster resources already exist (eg a Telecentre in a large city with urban response facilities), the Telecentre can still be utilised to provide a local planning centre and communications facility that may not be otherwise present to responders and aid agencies (the Red Cross or Sans Frontiers etc.)
Whats important is for CTC managers to recognise the potential of individual Telecentres in disaster effort and work with local groups to promote and develop disaster plans supportive of all community resources - and where possible to secure disaster training (for themselves first) and to subsequently distribute training and skills to the broader local community.
Don
-
Permalink Reply by Seuwandi Yapa on
-
Hi Don,
Thank you for sharing your experience. Its great to hear about Australian Telecentres.
Do you have a Telecentre Network on your country.
Keep in touch and I am really interested in getting to know more about Australian Telecentres.
Best :-)
Quick Links
Subscribe to our NewsletterFind Us on...
Initiatives
Latest Activity
telecentre.org's video was featuredTelecentre Leaders Speak
telecentre.org posted a videoTelecentre Leaders Speak
© 2012 Created by telecentre.org.
