News items about flood victims have been the highlight of
media in the past few weeks. Despite all the loss of life and property, nothing
substantial seems to have been done in this regards so far.
As a result, the damage in terms of infrastructure and
casualties is escalating. This situation is due to the fact that the flood
management systems in Pakistan have always been more focused in the
rectification of the after-effects of flood disaster rather than building up
community resilience through participation and by setting up
people-centered-flood early warning systems.
In this respect, the use of Information Technology can play
a crucial role during the flood season. We can remember that mobile phones
proved helpful in providing early warnings during the floods of 2010. SMS or
calls proved to be an efficient and cost-effective way of disseminating early
warnings during the monsoon season.
Since monsoon is a yearly occurrence in Pakistan and floods
can’t be prevented entirely, a lot can be done to lessen the damage. For this
reason, important changes are taking place the way floods are managed around
the world, for instance, in United States of America, United Kingdom,
Netherlands, and Switzerland, and Asian countries like Japan and Bangladesh
have advanced IT-based flood early warning systems installed.
Information technology has been further developed by an
Environment Agency, Halcrow, (UK) which is a licensed flood-warning service
provider. They have developed Flood Alert, smartphone flood warning
applications, which enable the users to get real time updates on flood warning
in England and Wales.
In Pakistan, mobile phone use has quadrupled in the last
decade both in urban and rural areas. One of the effective uses of mobile
technology in flood early warnings was observed in Muzaffargarh district during
2010. Ameer Pur of Muzafargarh Tehsil faces frequent flooding because it is
situated along the eastern bank of river Chenab.
Doaba Foundation surveyed this area and conducted a workshop
to educate the locals about early warnings. As per the requirement for the
area, the foundation formulated early warning committee that was responsible
for issuance of warnings during flooding events.
An inhabitant of Ameer Pur, Sajjad Hussain Bhatti, reported
that he got flood early warnings through mobile phone and was able to take
necessary measures well in time to save not only people’s lives but also their
crops by making dykes of 6 feet height and 8 feet width (this became possible
with the collective efforts of 5 villages).
He further added that the people of his locality were given
proper training to use the people-centered flood early warning system. Some of
the people were given responsibilities to get information about the water level
and in case of any emergency report back to the people via mobile phone.
As compared to previous techniques, the integration of IT in
flood early warning systems proved to be more effective and less complex.
There are many proposed and on-going projects on the use of
mobile phone in flood early warning systems. One such example is the FloodSMS,
a modular flood early warning application proposed by ekgaon technology.
Such a technology would be able to give flood early warnings
to a number of people that are in the range of/access to mobile phone/networks.
The range of the network could be improved by making use IT-based technologies
discussed above. The system would be able to handle multiple languages to
overcome the communication barrier in the way of flood warnings.
There are number of mobile phone companies working in
Pakistan. The government and the concerned authorities should encourage and
support these companies in this venture of issuing flood warnings through
mobile phone. This would not be a difficult task because the cell phones are
equipped with number of applications and Internet facility as well.
There is need to install flood warning software which is
most commonly used in the smart phones and ipods. There is diversity in culture
of Punjab therefore; things could be further simplified by integrating a flood
alarm bell in the cell phones so that illiterate, blind, old people, etc could
understand the warnings.
Moreover, the PMD should enhance the potentiality of the
existing commercial cellular network by increasing the storage for data and
voice, introducing new handsets that have long-battery lifetime, more data
capacity, and advance functions. For instance, 22 new sets of HF radio sets
have been installed to improve communication of the meteor burst telemetry
stations however, this could further be improved if technically advanced
cellular network in installed.
In Pakistan the weakest element in the flood management
activities is the dissemination of early warnings. In many areas warnings were
either not issued or didn’t reach vulnerable population on time. The flood
warning system could be further enhanced by integrating IT in the flood early
warning system as people are now more familiar with different shades of
technology.
So to speak, every other person have the availability of
camera phones, internet availability on the cell phones, ipods, electronic
gadgets, wikis, the web, voice email, voice messages, and text messages.
Channeling these resources properly can proved to be a
valuable source of information and possess a great commitment for providing
early warnings (particularly in initial response stages) to disaster managers.
People could be actively engaged by recruiting them to assist in disaster
response; keeping them informed as how to and when to relatively act. In
addition, they could be vital auxiliary IT resources as it’s evident that
traditional sources are mostly banged by a disaster.
IT mechanisms that amalgamate disaster response agency
information systems to interactive public communications channels such as
internet, or wireless communication could collectively provide an information
gathering and dissemination mechanism that could give a considerable space to
the agency being overload by the affected population seeking situational
information.
The above given approach would increase the reliability of
the communications, improve the performance of assistants, and develop public
perception of appropriate actions. Some of the genuine concerns about the
authenticity of information have restrained any major mileage towards
integrating entirely the mentioned changes. Some important part of usage of IT
technology may be missed as various individuals are involved in improvement of
technology and during the filtration process some quality of technology may not
be applied as the public officials usually have limited resources.
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