|
No Indian who has seen the live action on television can ever forget the
black day of Mumbai, when terrorists took control of two large hotels, an office
complex and created mindless violence in other public places, including the
airport and railway station. The loss of more than hundred lives, including
those of brave police officers, cannot be compensated for. But the question that
everyone is debating is: for how long can we continue to suffer like this?
The obvious question to ask is: with all our technology prowess, cannot we do
something to minimize, if not completely negate, the impact of such incidents?
Take situations like the Mumbai attacks. The first line of defense in such
situation is the first responder community ie the local police, fire fighters
and emergency medical professionals. Wireless applications can be of great help
to facilitate real-time communication, which in turn would make the operations
far more efficient.
Wireless hand-held computing has evolved as the first line managers answer
to obtaining real-time intelligence from the field. Today, emergency managers in
India can get access to affordable and effective wireless hand-held technologies
and applications allowing him, incident commander and field personnel to capture
and communicate urgent information to Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) in near
real-time basis.
The wireless applications running on hand-helds reduce double entry of data
and help the emergency manager focus on coordinating response, activities and
resources. A similar initiative is launched by non-profit Emergency Management
and Research Institute (EMRI) in partnership with Nortel and Satyam Computer
Services to create the telecom infrastructure for emergency services with timely
and effective response. The Andhra Pradesh state government has also extended
its support to the initiative where a single-number works across fixed-line and
mobile phones and provides access to fire, police, medical and other emergency
services.
Enhanced Disaster Management
Building on the traditional system, the enhanced disaster management
information system (EMS) has the following characteristics:
- Rapid real-time collection and communication of disaster information:
Hand-held computing devices with a catastrophic event scenario and rapid
damage assessment application, can collect and communicate damage data for
display on an emergency management mapping system located in an operations
center
- Wireless communications: Multi-mode wireless data transmission between
field and EOC personnel is critical. Beside Wi-Fi mesh and satellite network
other broadly-used wireless networks such as WiMax, iDEN, CDPD (cellular
packet) and CDMA/GSM/GPRS (radio packet) are used. The GIS data plus radio
information goes through view shed analysis to quickly plan initial sites
for the base station and remote units.
- Spatial decision support applications: Integration of data from multiple
GIS (electronic) mapping systems and predictions in near real-time. Decision
support centre, National Remote Sensing Agency, Hyderabad has developed number
of such applications with multi-institutional support.
Beside the customized products, few commercial products available in EMS
arena include iTALK (Rapid damage assessment application to collect and
communicate geo-referenced critical infrastructure or building damage data to be
displayed on the emergency management mapping applications), ArcView with
earthquake hazard model (generates predicted damage maps based on Modified
Mercalli Index (MMI) and Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) to help responders
prioritize assessment areas and response/recovery activities), Crystal Reports
(a Web-based reporting tool, used to publish damage summary reports in formats
useful to the desktop users in the emergency operations centre and the field
users) and ruggedized terminals from Mitsubishi, Motorola, Garmin GPSV, HP
palmtop, Melard Sidearm. Page(s) 1 2
| 
Print
Comment
Email
Digg
Del.icio.us
Reddit
Twitter
