Communication Media and Digital Technology for Better Disaster Management

By: Raj Pareek ( Management Professional at a Leading Telecom Service Provider Company)

Heavy rainfall lashed Kerala on the mid-evening of August 8. Dams were filled to capacity. Almost all dams (35 of 42), for the first time in the state’s history, were opened as the water level had risen close to overflow level, flooding local low-lying areas.

According to a report, 370 people succumbed to the natural disaster while around 33,000 people were rescued. A number of water treatment plants were forced to cease pumping water, resulting in poor access to clean water—especially in the northern districts of the region. Over 5,645 relief camps have been opened at various locations to accommodate the flood victims. It is estimated that 12 lakh people have found shelter in such camps. The flooding has affected hundreds of villages, destroyed an estimated 10,000 km of roads and thousands of homes have been damaged or destroyed.

There have been 52 rescue teams of central forces including units of the Indian Army and the Indian Navy. State governed forces like Kerala Police and Kerala Fire and Rescue Services assisted the civilian administration in rescue work and restoration. Fisherman from Thiruvananthapuram and Kollam districts supported the rescue operations with their boats and rescued several who were trapped in their homes. Mananthavady and Vythiri in the hilly Wayanad district have been totally cut-off, with roads washed away.

We should look forward to immediate solutions that can be deployed so that we do not face such destruction again in future.

Information is the main element in the damage and needs assessment process and the basis for coordination and decision making in emergency situations. It has a powerful impact on how national and international resources are mobilized. It is essential for after-action analysis, evaluation, and lessons learned.

Satellite Radio Application

Satellite radio can play a key role during both the disaster warning and disaster recovery phases. Its key advantage is the ability to work even outside of areas not covered by normal radio channels. Satellite radio can also be of help when the transmission towers of the normal radio channels are damaged in a disaster.

Establishing communication with remote areas has been a great challenge and with the advent of satellite communication, the problem of connectivity to remote and far-flung areas has been resolved. Satellite communication provides the facility of covering areas (national and international) using one or several satellites. Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites orbit around the earth at a distance of few hundred kilometers providing the facilities of remote sensing. However, the Technology is expensive in India. People prefer to use other types of communication media such as wireline.

In such scenarios Internet of Things (IoT) and Satellite technology can play a very vital role. Let’s hope that we eventually get to the point where the IoT becomes a critical part of disaster response.

Flood Disaster Management

Flood is one of the most common disastrous events that take place in different countries every year around the globe. IoT has been able to be applied to save the livelihood among flood-affected areas in recent times. It further investigates the M2M and ultra-low power processing architecture for better dissemination with flood monitoring purpose.

An integrated weather and flood detection and notification system can also be used where audible alarms, Short Message Service (SMS)-based notification, web portal-based visualization, and status of the flood situation is facilitated. In the United States, A Netduino Plus 2-based water level mentoring system is recently designed to measure the water level in a river, pond, lake, and lagoon. The developed system uses water level sensor to estimate the depth of water bodies by incorporating IoT as an essential tool where the information about a level of water is sent to a local machine through the local WiFi. The received information on the local machine can be obtained by any smartphone and other digital devices. A recent experiment shows how cooperative flood monitoring and early detection service can be leveraged using IoT, Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) and SMS. The water sensors that in turn notifies the local network about the possible occurrence of a flooding event.

A novel mechanism for dissemination of prior flood status using Closed-circuit television (CCTV) and IoT presents the idea behind the visual flood monitoring where CCTV cameras capture real-time image from the river and send the images to remote machines where machine learning algorithm decides about the flood status and water level in the river. If level crosses the threshold alert is given in form of alarm as well as push-up notifications. Images are captured in the remote IP enabled CCTV cameras, later-on, real-time feed, and virtual markers are added on to the images. It is followed by event-based visual sensing, which is logged as flood risk and water level estimation. Finally, the fluctuation level is recorded and seamlessly posted over the system. The event-based triggering mechanism is performed in two steps. Firstly, an image parser processes all the noises from an image and ordinarily marked and set up for further feeding. And secondly, an algorithm searches for the availability of water using the proposed approach.

Floating Device System

A recent advancement at UC Berkley has opened a new paradigm of gathering information about the flood situation of a river using their floating product. The portable and cost-effective floating object carries the Global Positioning System (GPS) sensor and the acceleration sensor. Upon sudden rise or gradual change in water is monitored by a floating object and instantaneously sent to the nearby people through the web as its alerting act.

It is a versatile IoT-enabled device meant to be used in poor infrastructures. This gives it the power to connect with low connectivity areas where 2G communication still exists.

Today, disaster responders gain reliable, timely information only when they reach an emergency zone and take stock of the situation. In the case of hurricanes and major weather events, physical and technical roadblocks often prevent response teams from obtaining critical data to track damages, prioritize response needs, and keep the public informed so that people know how to stay safe. Ineffective communication channels, overburdened response systems, satellite disruptions, and internet blackouts further impede people from getting the help they need.

That’s where the value of IoT sensors that collect data and systematically broadcast signals from emergency areas comes into play. These sensors can relay information about their surroundings directly to government agencies and emergency teams. For example, sensors can measure temperature, water quality, pressure, level, smoke, and humidity, to name just a few uses. In the case of wildfires, sensors can detect how far and how fast is the fire spreading. For hurricanes or tsunamis, sensors can monitor water levels to send alerts at the first sign of flooding. Sensors can also be used to detect the presence of harmful gases or chemicals emanating from a storage tank, factory, or plant in the path of destruction. These devices can be critical for urgent decisions like whether to evacuate an area at risk of flooding or how to guide residents to the safest exit routes ahead of an emergency.

In practice, this starts with establishing systems that connect local data to government responders. Technical teams could deploy sensors that send web-linked data to a digital command center that government officials can access remotely while at the scene. Drones could surveil disaster areas during the search-and-rescue phase and then move to data collection to support the recovery effort once the immediate danger has passed.

In order to optimize effectiveness, agencies should place web-linked sensors on physical assets such as levees, bridges, and utility poles to monitor risk factors such as rising water levels in low-lying areas and to alert authorities when there’s an issue with critical infrastructure. In areas vulnerable to flooding, for example, response teams should arrange sensors in various locations so that one device going down won’t take down the entire network. Establishing a stream of data from sensors in at-risk areas can also help pinpoint and prioritize, which neighborhoods need to be reached first.

Response teams can gain an even clearer picture of the emergency situation if the sensor data is combined with Census-verified demographic and relevant third-party data. Increased socio-economic and demographic data would be useful for informing outreach tactics.

Disaster management activities depend on large volumes of accurate, relevant, on-time geographical information that various organizations systematically create and maintain—the advancement in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the form of Internet, GIS, Remote Sensing, and Satellite communication.

Remote Sensing, on the other hand, as a tool can very effectively contribute towards the identification of hazardous areas, monitor the planet for its changes on a real-time basis, and give early warnings to many impending disasters. Communication satellites have become vital for providing emergency communication and timely relief measures. Integration of space technology inputs into natural disaster monitoring and mitigation mechanisms are critical.