Federation of Internet Alerts advocating Pictographs in Alerting

High level technical diagram for mobile pictograph alerting

Almost one year ago, I had presented a concept on the use of "pictographs in alerting" and shared the evidence for the growing need for such an initiative. This was at the 2013 CAP Implementation Workshop in Geneva. The real need was to aid the linguistically challenged: tourist in a foreign country and illiterate. Moreover, it would remove the need to for messaging in multiple languages; especially in countries that are home to a multitude of races and languages.

Although the design was prescribed for mobile phones, given it's worldwide penetration over PCs, it does not differentiate between internet (data) or voice (SMS, Cell-broadcast) channels, it is adaptive. The idea is to use predefined EDXL-CAP elements to trigger the appropriate message. The message would indicate the urgency, severity, certainty, and event. However, the entire message is based on a set of logic determined by a larger set of EDXL-CAP elements.

The Federation of Internet Alerts (FIA) is a newly formed consortium that is collectively addressing those risk information presentation issues.  They are namely a group of public and private partners with a strong business inclination towards adverting. While Google.org was one of the pioneers to work with alerts in the advertising space, others such as ValueClick are also contributing to the initiative. They all have good intentions, namely with opening up their resources to alerting authorities to disseminate warnings.

Realize how Ad Exchanges and Ad Networks can push Life-saving warnings

FIA is currently in the process of standardizing how an alert message should be presented to an audience. Although CAP is a content standard, it does not address how the information should be presented. As my colleague: Eliot Christian (Special Scientific Adviser to WMO), authoring the standardization guidelines, states: "the need for FIA messaging guidelines in the presentation of public warnings arises because different online media will be presenting warnings across overlapping audiences. That means people online could receive inconsistent presentations of warnings for the same event. Inconsistent presentation of warnings can be confusing, and confusion is dangerous in life-threatening situations." I am currently reviewing their first paper on the guidelines.

Practicalities of EDXL - the Sahana Case

Sahana EDXL Experience

"Was EDXL-DE ever used in any of the Sahana Disaster Management Software Products?” "Yes in  EDXL-RM” (Resource Message); see the code snippet that includes EDXL-DE. EDXL-RM is specifically designed as payloads of the EDXL-DE. The development was for a client wanting to interoperate with WebEOC. ”The WebEOC implementation was being handcrafted in raw JavaScript and Eden’s native S3XML was seen as a simpler solution by the Client's own Software Developers, who were handling that side of the interface”. Further work on the EDXL-RM with the EDXL-DE wrapper was stopped until any new use-cases emerged.

“At the National Library of Medicine (NLM), mainly at my behest, they do use EDXL-DE 1.0 as a wrapper.” It encases the triage data (text and photos) sent from the TriagePic applicationto the web site via web services.  This was somewhat as a foundation for and in anticipation of use cases emerging for data interchange with state and local agencies, as well as FEMA.  These use cases have been slow to emerge in practice.  For app communication to the mothership, the overhead of the wrapper, while small compared to photo payloads, is still hard to justify if there’s no pay off. The NLM Webmaster is suggesting that alternative lightweight (but non-standard) wrappers and payloads, using JSON/REST more than XM, is the way forward

“Sahana Eden haven’t updated the existing DE-1.0 wrapper to DE-2.0 and I’m not sure they will invest much more into EDXL because every time they offer EDXL, clients find it way too complex and too narrowing to build their applications upon, and use either our native S3XML format.”

S3XML, like OData, does not set any limits to the contents at all. Furthermore, there doesn’t seem to be a coherent resource “CAP message“. If there was, even the standard REST controller could export the full message. Nevertheless, it would be possible to define such a resource with some minor tweaks to the existing data model. As is, many Eden modules have the tendency to define incoherent data models, yet models can be changed to provide better interoperability.

Particular Problem

The idea with the one particular project was to use Eden as database for managing resource requests, and to have an already functioning WebEOC solution sending those requests to Eden. The desire was to use EDXL-RM for data exchange. The first software build provided an EDXL-RM interface for it.

“A noteworthy issue was that the base data, e.g. requester information (delivery sites, contact information etc) was stored on the Eden side. EDXL did not provide any elements whatsoever to look them up, let alone to maintain them. Nevertheless, that is not an uncommon situation at all: why should the references in EDXL-RM be decentralized? Isn’t it more common that the request management database holds both – request and requester information?”

Realizing the Scope of EDXL-RM

One should not confuse with messaging from information management, where latter is what the project intention were. One should realize the scope of EDXL-RM. As stated in Section 1.3 of the specifications document, it is merely defines 16 separate and specific message types supporting the major communication requirements for allocation of resources across the emergency incident life-cycle. It’s not one size fits all! Moreover, the Resource Messaging goes through three distinct phases of “discovery”, “ordering”, and “deployment”. The level of detail of the reference information would vary in each phase. Therefore, the message broker would need to manage those elements through out the life-cycle involving the resource messaging phases.

Is S3XML Versatile?

Relating to an experience, of my own, with an application involving EDXL-CAP and the use of Eden’s native S3XML for generating Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) compliant document outputs, what I realized in EDXL-CAP was it was only producing the set of data for the specific GUI and not the entire CAP message. For example, the segment of a CAP message had it’s own GUI to edit the specific values. Within the segment GUI, the S3XML output would only produce the XML for the Alert segment and not the rest. 

S3XML is not GUI-specific, not at all. By default a standard REST controller provides the same output for a non-interactive request as for an interactive one, which is a meaningful behavior, though. However, the Point-Of-Interest (POI) exporter in Eden’s OpenStreetMap (OSM), for example, combines multiple data resources into a single output document, and is still both RESTful and S3XML and “inline-transformable”.

OData provides a generic interface standard to query data repositories of all kinds, including schema introspection. Eden’s S3XML is very similar to OData, although it does not implement aggregation methods, yet. APIs with (semantic) schema introspection capabilities have a much higher potential to facilitate interoperability than emergency management specific data formats; especially with non-emergency-management specific applications. However, that may be an over statement, while such level of achievement is still a bit away. However, Humanitarian eXchange Language (HXL) is a big step into that direction.

EDXL-HAVE, Yet Another Experience

“One of the problems encountered with EDXL-HAVE, namely the standard data structure for Hospital Availability Exchange, is that it assumes the role of an “emergency manager”, a decision maker who controls the resources and is thus in need of the information – and that organisations are ready and open to provide it (i.e. a hub-spoke model).”

In the EDXL-HAVE standard, it is assumed that hospitals (or their operators) report to that decision maker(s) on their available capacity, and the decision maker responds to that information, though not by routing patients but by acquiring and deploying additional resources as needed. This doesn’t work where the response decision happens entirely decentralized. In multi-national scenarios, why would India even respond to Pakistan’s HAVE data needs, even if it was ready to assist in an event?

In such cases the information flow is more peer-to-peer and organisations are expected to self-organize. High-level decision making is based on aggregated information whereas details may not be shared at all. Of course, organisations can make pre-event agreements to share HAVE information – but not at an aggregation level of their choice! Using the protocol requires thus both organizational (to actually collect the data at the required level of detail) and political (to share the data) change upfront. It would be better if HAVE (as well as other EDXL standards) had an integrated aggregation pattern, so that you can easily choose the level of detail that fits for the particular case without having to adapt your application.

Does EDXL Require Organizational Change?

EDXL is perceived a domain model requiring organisational change upfront, instead of one that is easy to implement on existing models. The most common answer received from developers that Sahana has interacted with was “EDXL wasn’t designed for the cases I was talking about” To that end, we wonder what the common denominator for EDXL standards is? In most cases it is FEMA and the US way to deal with disasters. Although originating in US, EDXL-CAP is the only initiative that the US nor FEMA was the early adopter. Perhaps one reason to it gaining wider scale global adoption with several Nations and Alerting related Vendors implementing the EDXL-CAP standard.

A non-advocate of standards may see EDXL very much as a US-specific thing. In fact, he had no requests so far for any EDXL support outside the US, and especially not at the INGO level (e.g. United Nation Organizations). New, RDF-based (Resource Description Framework) approaches, like HXL seem more promising these days and may outperform all the use-case specific standards in the long run. It is hardly feasible (or even desirable) for most organisations to adapt their data flows to EDXL requirements. Hence, they prefer standards which adapt to their existing resources, like OData or S3XML, rather than the reverse practice. 

The philosophy of letting everybody do their own thing and yet be interoperable is simply more adequate than the idea of making everybody do the same in order to be interoperable. However, there is some level of consistency required with the emergency data exchanges. Relating the concept to disparate spoken languages – to foster a harmonized meaningful conversation requires an “interpreter” to manage the conversation between two people speaking in the two different languages. Human beings, to date, are far more intelligent than machines and are capable of processing with incomplete information to take on the role of an effective Interpreter. However, machines are relatively inept to allow them to do their own thing and yet expect them to interoperate without some level of coherence.

Conclusion

Interfaces can be semantically incompatible even when they implement the same syntactic EDXL standard. Still, there are cases of people interpreting EDXL elements differently in different contexts. Some argue that this is due to the lack of rigor in the standard. It may be a consequence of the top-down ontology approach in EDXL.

EDXL doesn’t force people to adopt them and say this is the bible you should practice the religion. However, what their intention is to provide a set of elements and a data structure that allows an implementer to think through to ensure their messaging is coherent to a certain extent. I think that’s why most of the elements are set as optional which allows the implementer to build their own policies around them; meaning work flows.

Introducing the Sahana CAP-enabled Messaging Broker to ITU-D Asia Pacific Community

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The International Telecommunications Union - Disaster (ITU-D) conducted workshop in Thailand, introduced the utility of the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) standard, to the delegates, through a the Sahana CAP-enabled software and a series of hands-on exercises. The CAP ease-of-use and utility were appreciated by those delegates. Participants experienced the efficiency gains of the single entry of a message being simultaneously disseminated through multiple technologies to multiple recipients, acknowledged the CAP message consistency removing ambiguity that may, otherwise, lead to false responses, and realized the capabilities of brokering multi-agency publishers and subscribers for improved situational-awareness^.
 

ITU-D hosted a session on the topic: “Introduction to Operationalizing the Common Alerting Protocol” at the workshop: “Use of Telecommunications/ICT for Disaster Management¹”. This hands-on CAP session was resourceful in producing positive outcomes. Delegates had the opportunity to assess the capabilities of the standard using the CAP-enabled Sahana broker software.

Click to view the workshop report available on the web and the slide deck .

Evidence points to the growing need for a CAP-enabled ITU-D Module (CAP-ITUM). The CAP-ITUM would foster the wider-scale adoption of the the CAP standard and the policies it offers. The ITU branded module would advance the member states, lagging in implementing CAP, with facilitating multi-agency all-hazards all-media warning, alerting, and situational-awareness capabilities, to effectively coordinate hazard events. Since the first release of CAP in 2005, only a handful of member states: North America, Australia, and Germany have adopted the standard. Sri Lanka, an early adopter, has carried out several research projects involving the standard but has not progressed beyond with institutionalizing it at a National level. Other member states have failed to realize the full potential of CAP beyond simply accepting as an interoperable XML schema.

Closing the voice-enabled disaster communication project but looking to do more

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Summary of the VoiceICT4D project outcomes

• LIRNEasia, through a stakeholder forum, advocated the Sri Lanka Disaster Management Center (DMC) to move towards a multi-agency situational-awareness platform by creating a register of alerting authorities and then sharing it's call center and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system resources for emergency communication.

• The “Do you Hear Me” video, communicating the need for voice-enabled Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), to empower community-based emergency coordination, was visited by 496 viewers, of which 48 or them shared their knowledge on the subject. UNISDR debut film festival on DRR, selected our video as as one of the best three in the category of “best human interest story”

• Peer-reviewed scientific articles presented the realization study evidence emphasizing the practical technical instabilities and deficits in those technologies. The message was news to most researchers and practitioners. IVR-based solutions are gradually gaining momentum.

“Clickto here read full report”

What next?

A common consensus by various stakeholders are that the Freedom Fone IVR and Sahana disaster management system integration must be completed. The integration would serve non-latin scripting language and lesser computer literate communities. Moreover, develop an off the shelf implementable comprehensive crisis management solution that can be integrated with main stream media or other emergency management organizations.

There are three broad emergency communication use cases that were discovered through the VoiceICT4D activities:

1. a radio station would manage a missing persons registry comforting concerned citizens of who are missing and who were found
2. citizen journalists would share risk information of incident reports to effectively coordinate and respond to those troubled situations
3. community-based disaster management organizations would coordinate their rescue and relief efforts using interactive voice.

The VoiceICT4D project intends to seek resources to complete the integration, implement, and pilot the comprehensive end-to-end crisis management system. The pilot study would investigate the utility and robustness of such an implementation when applied to the three use cases above. Moreover, the pilot would consider implementing them in diverse environments to better understand the adaptability of the technology. VoiceICT4D would transition from the invention stage to an implementation stage; where the technology would be field tested to offer a stable solution to the global crisis management community.

Beyond Tsunami Warning in a Vocal Society

My first public lecture: the 3rd LIRNEasia Public Lecture was conducted at a time when the Sri Lanka National Disaster Management Center (DMC) was being questioned for it's reliability. The Public Lecture follows two major hazard events: 1) 2011 November 21 Matara Mini Cyclone and 2) 2012 April 11 false tsunami evacuation.

The Government of Sri Lanka failed to warn the fishermen of the deadly mini cyclone that lead to 29 deaths. Detection theorist may label this incident as a missed alarm but essentially it is a true alarm with failed actions. There was a lot of finger pointing between agencies for one denying the responsibility over the other. Such a tragic situation could have been over come if a register of alerting authorities with a profile and procedures and a multi-agency situational awareness technology platform had been in place. The DMC held a stakeholder workshop to discuss a way forward.
With respect to incident 2), the tsunami evacuations continued even after the threat was called off, which insinuates a lack of competence. Decision theorist, from the eyes of a Policy-maker's loss function (i.e. government bureaucrats and politicians prospective), would consider this as a success; thus, the ability to warn of any tsunamigenic earthquake. However, from the eyes of Stakeholder's loss function, such as fishermen not going out to sea anticipating a tsunami, the false warning deprive them of a days house hold income.

The Public Lecture was partially funded by the Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) through the VoiceICT4D project. The aim of this action was to strategically address the public at a right time when the message was sure to be heard by those who should hear it. The lecture presented the formula for removing the aforementioned uncertainties. The Director General of the Sri Lanka DMC, himself, was present at this lecture and was appointed the task of moderating this event. His words following the main presentation was “thank you Nuwan this is an eye-opener.”

The public lecture message intended for the Director General and the audience to hear was that the inter-agency rivalry and reduction of false warnings can be achieved through the adoption of interoperable emergency standards along with the policies and procedures that wrap around those standards. The VoiceICT4D project was designed to educate society of the power of voice-enabled technologies and interoperable data standards. A summary of the Public Lecture talks, on LIRNEasia's blog, outlines the key points.

Sri Lankan's, like most other Eastern societies are accustomed to talking to one another over the phone whether it be personal, business, or informing each other of a crisis, more so than text-ing. The video “do you hear me?”, which was produced through the HIF grant, was screened to remind the public and the DMC of the local requirement. Coincidently, the DMC had invested in a call center and an IVR for emergency information collection and dissemination. LIRNEasia has offered to share the lessons learned from it's voice-enabled ICT for Disaster pilot.

Making Emergency Communication Effective

3^rd LIRNEasia's Disaster Risk Reduction Public Lecture

19 June 2012 15:00 – 17:00

Sri Lanka Foundation Institute, 100 Independent Square, Colombo 07

Please join us to discuss how to improve disaster risk reduction practices.

There is a growing need to dilute inter-agency rivalry and foster lateral integration for sharing of risk information for effective response. To that end, the public lecture will focus on actions to improve alerting and situational-reporting between agencies. Thereby, reducing the decision-maker's loss functions; namely, reduction of false and missed alarms, stakeholder losses, and policy-maker losses. A proven action would be to establish an emergency communication profile for Sri Lanka and and implementing a multi-agency situational-awareness software tool. Such a tool and procedures can help bring organizations together to better communicating risk information and ease them away from unproductive silo thinking. It will also allow the national Disaster Management Center to better regulate those communications.

The main speaker is LIRNEasia's Senior Research Fellow: Nuwan Waidyanatha. He has strong credentials in disaster management, especially with emergency communication and early warning systems design, development, and experimentation. His research is highly regarded and continuously promoted by international organizations such as the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), International Telecommunications Union (ITU), Organization for the Advancement of Standardized Information Systems (OASIS) and the United Nations System for Influenza Coordination (UNSIC). Additionally, disaster management researchers and practitioners from the North Americas and the Asia Pacific consult to benefit from his first hand knowledge in the subject

The Panelists: Prof. Dileeka Dias, (Director, University of Moratuwa Dialog Mobile Communications Research Laboratory), Mr. Mifan Careem (Chief Executive Officer, Respere Lanka), and Dr. Buddhi Weerasinghe (independent Regional Disaster Management Consultant) will complement the main talk with their contributions in strengthening Sri Lanka's disaster management capabilities.

LIRNEasia’ s premier CSR activity intended to advance knowledge about good disaster risk reduction practices in Sri Lanka and the region.

Interactive voice for a volunteer organization to manage disasters

Crowd sourcing emergency information with Interactive Voice:

"CERT members call one of the four telephone numbers to access Freedom Fone; then press the “reporting” menu item number on their phone keypad to record a “field observation report”. That report is received and stored in the Freedom Fone inbox as an audio file (MP3) at Sarvodaya’s Hazard Information Hub (essentially the data center belonging to the Sarvodaya Community Disaster Management Center). Trained HIH Operators (HIHO) listen to those local language spoken incident field observations, then transform them in to English language text to feed in to the Sahana Eden, Emergency Data Exchange Language Situational Reporting (SITREP) application."
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