ITU Members Seek to Coordinate Disaster Relief, Early Warning
GENEVA -- Many solutions have emerged for disaster relief and early warning, but obstacles remain to better global coordination for disaster relief and early warning, said officials meeting Thurs. at the ITU here. Coordination among international entities seems “woefully missing at this point,” said Ken Smith of Verizon, speaking as reporting member for SG2, ITU-T’s lead study group for telecom for disaster relief and early warning. “And one of the things that we will specifically be focusing on… is to find a way to involve D sector, R (ITU Radio) sector and other ITU organizations in the development of the plan for these types of services.”
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“One of the issues is the lack of participation from ITU’s development (D) sector,” made up of developing countries, Smith said: “D sector are members we think have the most to gain from this work. They can bring more requirements to the table than tier 1 countries, although after Katrina in the United States last year… perhaps that begs the question that we need to look at as well.”
“A generally simple approach” is needed to be successful in public warning, said John Hayes, dir.-World Weather Watch Dept. of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO): “The more complex you make a warning system, the more difficult it is for a person in the public to understand what it is you want him or her to do… Not many systems, not one system for every threat, but a single, multihazard system.”
One of the challenges is staying aware of all the standardization work in public warning, an official said. One idea is to bring OASIS’s (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) CAP (common altering protocol) work into the ITU, including formal communications with IETF, ISO and other groups. “We certainly welcome that… There certainly is a need for standardization in public alert and warning,” said Elysa Jones of Warning Systems, speaking as chmn. of OASIS Emergency Management Technical Committee.
Three technical and legal measures could help relief operations, said Bo Bergner of Swedish Post & Telecom Agency: (1) Removing delays and costs like duties “when assisting parties need to move equipment into a requesting state that has a disaster area.” (2) Once equipment is in a disaster area, getting the necessary permission to use it, specifically the use of radio transmitters. (3) Having every governmental or nongovernmental assisting party offering telecom assistance “inform the operational coordinator about the types of telecommunication equipment they plan to use during operations -- especially on radio transmitters -- and corresponding spectrum needs.”