The Internet of Things for India

This presentation is prepared for a brainstorming session at Department of Information Technology (DIT), a division of Ministry of Communication & IT, India.

The internet of things

View more presentations from Syam Madanapalli

The Next Generation Emergency Warning System

Some background

Sometime ago I was reading Times of India, there was an interesting news article Twitter made a 4.2 quake become a 6.6 one. On on September 8, 2011 Delhiites observed tremors (a lower magnitude earthquake). It looks like somebody tweeted the earthquake's magnitude is 6.6. Apparently, he misread this information from some website and posted on the twitter. This tweet is picked up by the TV channels and news agencies, and broadcasted this information. An hour after the earthquake occurred, Indian Meteorological Department released its preliminary report on the earthquake, putting its magnitude at 4.2. Apparently, the difference between the two magnitudes is huge; a 6.6 earthquake is 251 times more powerful than a 4.2 quake.

Looking into the future

Now imagine, if the guy could get the exact information instantaneously form the source of the information Generators (in this case Indian Metrological Department), how about the twitter itself getting such information from the source, similarly Facebook, TV channels, news agencies. This what I call the Next Generation Emergency Warning System (EWS), wherein various alerts/warnings/information are seamlessly delivered to citizens, media and other stake holders including the public authorities. The emergency warnings, alerts and other public safety related information is sent seamlessly to any device the end user is using under the supervisory control of respective public authorities. India with very diversified people, the information is delivered in various formats depending on the user device capabilities, location and language preferences.

Introducing the New EWS

The new EWS requires seamless integration of various systems that generate alerts/warnings/information into the Telecom/private IP network (typically built on heterogeneous networks) for providing emergency information. However the current bottleneck is the lack of standardized method of this integration. IEEE Standards Association currently studying this subject to take up this standardization work.

Figure 1: The new EWS Architecture

The need for the new EWS: Real-time information for better control

Seamless information delivery

Different users have different types of connected devices; seamless information deliver is a challenge.

Information loss

As the information traverse through various parties, the information is being modified.

Better safety and comfort

A seamless EWS is required for the citizens for assuring the safety and comfort.

Requires unprecedented collaboration

EWS requires unprecedented seamless collaboration across government, hospitals and other service providers for providing timely service to the citizens.

How it works

Figure 2: The information delivery from source to they citizens

The detection systems (anything that can detect/predict emergencies or provide useful information) need to be authenticated by the public authorities and these systems register with the public authority system to provide certain type of warnings/alerts/information. The detection systems typically include but not limited to meteorological department, sensor networks installed to detect emergencies and other information, pollution detectors, structural detectors, poisonous gas detectors etc. installed for providing better public safety.

The public authority system maintains predefined database for various warnings with typical information to be sent to the citizens and other stakeholders. The public authority system may allow the end users to subscribe for certain events (e.g. You may want to receive emergency information in your village when you are living somewhere else); such users receive the alerts (push information or an email) even if they are not in the affected location. Based on the information received from the detection system, the public authority system forms a warning/alert message with the following information: source of the information, emergency type, severity, affected locations, typical effects, precautions to be taken, and where else the citizens can get more information. They government officials and service providers (hospitals, fire department etc.) may be provided with more information so that they can get ready to provide timely service if required.

The public authority system utilizes Telecom and Internet Service Providers for mass delivering the emergency information for a given geographic location. The telecom and ISP network provides interface for the public authorities to push notifications. The telecom network pushes the information to end users based on the criteria set by the public authority system. Subscribers with different device capabilities would receive different types of information e.g. a basic phone receives only a text while a smart phone is pushed with a link for more information

For any given event, there can be multiple types of information consumers. These include but not limited to citizens in the affected areas, subscribers from other areas, local authorities (police, municipal, district and other officials), emergency service providers (fire, hospitals, ambulance services etc.), and Media (TV, Radio, websites etc.). The end users might receive different types of information depending on who they are, for example, local government officials and emergency service providers may receive more information on actions they should be taking in case of emergency event occurs. The media might receive a text that needs to be put as the scrolling text to be displayed on the TV channels and websites to alert the citizens.

Bhopal Gas Tragedy

December 2^nd 1984, 11PM, a leak of methyl isocyanate gas and other chemicals from the plant run by Union Carbide India Limited, resulted in the exposure of hundreds of thousands of people causing 25,000 deaths and 5,58,125 injuries; considered one of the world's worst industrial catastrophes. Apparently people who ran to escape this inhaled more gas and even more by the children due to lack of information from the public authorities to the citizens.

Figure 3: Bhopal gas tragedy photographs (collected from the Internet)

How is EWS can help during such accidents? Government requires the installation of gas sensors, which will continuously notify the respective authorities for any leakage. Let us take the situation of December 2^nd 1984, 11PM:

The detection system detects the leakage of the gas methyl isocyanate and notifies the public authorities (of course it does notify the company staff and activate other systems that might neutralize this).

The public authority system, that maintains predefined information on what action the citizens, local government officials, and emergency service providers should be taking in such cases, sends out the information containing about the gas leakage and precautions to be taken through every connected device including but not limited to mobile phones, Laptops, Tablets, TVs, Websites, Social Networking sites. Apparently the information the people needed on that night was to use a moist towel for inhalation and stay high, as methyl isocyanate is heavier than the air as well as to provide wind direction and provide the direction they should be moving. For more information about the lack of information to the citizens, go here.

Public Authority system informs the local hospitals about the incident including type of gas and severity so that they can get prepared for the type of treatment required.

Local officials are provided with the information to evacuate the people using available buses and trucks to safe places.

Resulting in saving tens of thousands of lives and saving hundreds of thousands of people from injuries.

Here is my original presentation for IEEE for developing interoperable standard for the EWS. If you would like to contribute this standard, currently under study at IEEE, please mail me.