Digital Story - Empowering Communities with Voice for Crisis Management

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Empowering Communities with Voice-enabled Technologies for Crisis Management on Prezi

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.

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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.

Naturally Interactive Voice works for Emergency Communications in Sri Lanka

It's not just Sri Lanka but most developing countries where voice is the predominant mode of communications can be easily adopted for emergency communications. This is my interview with Freedom Fone.

Knight Foundation selects Citizen Journalism via Mobile Services concept

Each year the Knight News Challenge Contest funds innovative projects that couple media with information communication technology that empowers local communities. The Mobile Service Platform (MSP) revenue share model for Citizen Journalism was selected for the second round to submit a proposal for the 2010 Knight News Challenge. The timing couldn't have been any better. I'm really excited in making this happen. The project partners are - Lanka Jathika Sarvodaya Society, Center for Policy Alternatives, Uniphore, Rural Technology and Business Incubator, Internews, and LIRNEasia.