humanitarian.info

I’m digging into disaster telecommunications, behind which there’s a huge body of knowledge which I won’t bore you with. I will scream if I hear the words ‘Tampere Convention‘ again this year. Instead, here’s a short list of what all the kids are using in Pakistan:

• Voice. Well, duh. The main finding so far of this assessment is startling – aid workers prefer talking to each other.
• Landlines. In some places, service was uninterrupted; in most places, service was resumed within 1-2 days. Many NGOs are using dial-up internet service from various towns, although there is plenty of residual distortion due to earthquake damage.
• Cellphones. As above, the network was disrupted for a couple of days. Most people report satisfactory and consistent service, although I hear it’s very patchy around Bisham, and when travelling on the road. Yet this remains the primary means of communication for a lot of people, which ties in with the findings of the GSM Association, who have just released a report on mobile communications in emergency response. (Interesting aside: Oxfam have started equipping laptops with GPRS, giving individual staff access while mobile.)
• Thuraya. I wish I had shares in Thuraya. As the lightest and easiest satellite phone on the market (and the easiest to get past customs), it seems to be indispensable – which is why it was worrying to find that there still weren’t enough of them to go around, even in the biggest NGOs. Having said that, there still seem to be some problems with registration, and besides, who wants to stand outside in a snowstorm just to make a call?
• RBGAN. This fella comes into its own in the early stages of response; it’s frequently the only means of deep field communication. It’s still far too expensive, although hopefully the prices will come down as Inmarsat rolls out the new BGAN units.
• VSAT. Licensing and customs regulations in Pakistan – holy heck. The UN was able to get them in fairly quickly, while NGOs have been stuck for weeks. However VSATs started to clear about two weeks ago, so they’ve now started springing up left, right and centre. More co-ordination needed, please. VSAT is still the best technology for more stable environments, particularly as you can determine your own level of bandwidth, and the market is open enough that you can choose from a range of providers.
• Two tins with a piece of string tied between them. Face it, nobody can beat it for a “communications solution.”

Every single person I spoke to in Pakistan said the same thing: that the Pakistani military had done an amazing job on the earthquake relief. So it’s good to see some acknowledgement of their capacity, and also an interesting analysis of the problems they face, in a BBC article. The earthquake zone is the most sensitive area in South Asia, on the disputed border with India, placing the army in a difficult situation:

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Nothing to do with information management or technology, but still quite amusing:

Many of the aid agencies have temporarily re-assigned their national staff from Afghanistan to the earthquake response (it’s all Pashtun, all the time up there). So these Afghan staff are going up into the mountains of NWFP to carry out assessments, and coming back down shaking their heads, saying “Boy, they’re really conservative up there!”

Note to self: don’t visit the mosque this weekend in shorts.

After enjoying the delights of Tunisia during the World Summit on the Information Society, it’s time to get back to field work. The Pakistan earthquake happened just as I arrived in the USA, where I was carrying out an assessment of ICT capacity to respond to emergencies for the Interagency Working Group (IWG). The IWG comprises CARE, Catholic Relief Services, Oxfam, International Rescue Committee, Save the Children, Mercy Corps and World Vision. Although they vary in size, this combined group ships at least 50% of the world’s non-governmental humanitarian assistance – so it’s a real challenge to work out ways that they can improve their game.

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The notes from my presentation at the recent NTEN conference are now available. I concentrated on the practicalities – where the gaps are in our responses, and what approaches are going to fill those gaps effectively. Talking to people at the conference afterwards, I realised that I was right to emphasise joint approaches, rather than efforts by individual organisations. The organisations involved in humanitarian responses are so varied in backgrounds, mandates and approaches that there can be no single “right” way to implement ICT projects that applies to all. Instead, we need to focus on building liks between organisations and sectors in a way that improves the flow of information so that they can get on with their work.

Oh, and to remember that, in the end, all of these activities are only useful if they help the beneficiaries. Notes are here.