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.

Three Lessons from Telangana Agitation

If you ask me to describe Telangana agitation in one sentence, I will say "Operation Success, but Patient Dead". KCR and other politicians are very successful in taking the agitation to the hearts of the Telangana people, but they have chosen the easy method to do so, ‘blame the others’ and create regional feelings. As the basic rules of physics work for the human life as well, this created a strong opposition from the other parts of the state, making the Telanagana issue a much more complex one.

So the first lesson: Avoid blaming. Blaming only serves to agitate and increase the intensity of the anger. Blaming will not solve problems.

In this 21st century, what KCR should have been done is actually to work with few intellectuals in Telangana as well in the other regions, and see how the two different regions would benefit if they were separated, may be better utilizing the natural resources as well as developing industries at various places instead of just accumulating these in Hyderabad alone etc. Instead KCR and others have taken offensive methods and became heroes in their region but achieved zero for the region. If there is a one big reason for not getting Telangana state that is the way the movement has been taken up. If at all Telangana is given a s separate statehood, this would be for political benefit and will never be on merits.

The second lesson for us is heroes cannot achieve much in this 21st century; only teams can do wonders.

The politicians are for building the parties not for the state. This is rather evident from the Telangana politicians. Everybody tries to put their party or their political career ahead of the need for the state. A triplet of MLAs have joined TRS recently from Congress, I am sure they did this because they might not win next elections from Congress and TRS is their best bet for now. This change in parties does not influence the formation of state other than strengthening of a political party.

I always have a problem on approximating the common-man behavior in India; whether they are good or bad, but I am sure, they are smart, but short sighted The people rally behind the political parties but not from the others like Gaddar Praja Front and people like Konda Lkshman Bapuji as the later are not politicians. They do this mostly for short time benefits from the politicians for petty things and essentially loosing a lot to the politicians.

The third and important lesson that we will never learn is Indian politicians are not for the society development, they are for their individual benefit, and it is a profession for them to make money.

A win not necessarily a defeat for the other

I liked the introductory voice in the Telugu movie Jalsa, especially the statement “Winning does not mean killing the other person”. I put this sentence in other words to make it useful for real life “A win not necessarily a defeat for others”.

For a long long time, I never understood why the people in Kashmir wanted to be separated, I was thinking that they are really bad people, of course this is based on the media reports.

I vaguely understood from the media that a Pakistani exhibits his patriotism by hating India. Apparently leaders in Pakistan give hate speech against India when they want the local people support.

I am pretty much aware the kind of energy levels a student would exhibit especially tendency to break something. Adding irresponsibility to these energy levels, makes the students very powerful. And if these guys get used to enjoyment, and get an idea of becoming a leader overnight while there exist many TV channels without any work nor any ethics; it is disastrous. A student publicly speaking about taking law and order in his hands, talking about a woman leader using vulgar language, beating a fellow member publicly on a live TV show; these are the easiest things a student can do. But a challenge for a good student is trying to get 10% or even 1% more marks compared to last year score.

I expect a good student to take up the tough job (it is easy to throw a stone, talk vulgar) e.g. preparing a report with supporting data why the Telangana region should be a separate state and viceversa. Do not think many people have done it, there can be many aspects and new way of putting the things. A student with open mind and out of box thinking can really make a big difference. Such things can be a good academic projects as well.

Breaking is easy, making is difficult but useful

The professors should advise students in these lines. This makes a better case for the Telangana or Samaikhrandhra while the students improve their knowledge and can become useful leaders rather the typical Indian Political leaders.

M.K. Gandhi - Propounder of Satyagraha and Ahimsa

Gandhi adopted Satyagraha (civil disobedience) and Ahimsa against Britishers for freedom for various reasons over 60 years. Any human society would sure go forward from this, if we are exhibiting civil disobedience after 60 years Gandhi era, it means we have still not moved up. What Gandhi has done in 1940s is not necessarily correct now. There was a reason for Gandhi to adopt civil disobedience as there were no listeners, no law, no civil rights etc. Today we have the biggest democracy, constitution, law & order and courts for resolving any issue, we do not even need civil disobedience today. Instead of using the above instruments (may be difficult for the common man to use them, but not difficult for heavy weight political leaders) for resolving the Telagana issue, our, so called, the leader try to use violent civil disobedience in the name of Gandhi, I am sure this behavior take us to the era before Gandhi, over 200 years back.

The bad people (mostly the political leaders) are not based on regions, they exist on any part of the land, of course they are plenty in India. It is not reasonable to expect Telangana would be clean after separating from the state of Andhra Pradesh. A bad guy continues to be bad guy even if Telangana is separated or not (analogy Newton’s first law of motion) unless we fight on the root cause. To counter a bad guy, you do not need a separate state, use the constitution. It needs to be proved if the constitution was not effective, in this case the constitution requires amendment first before the separate state.

Think Win-Win

And the outcome of the Telangana issue will not be a victory for the common man in either case in either of the regions, we keep moving backward if we do not change the way we think. When somebody expect something, obviously somebody else should yield the something (analogy Newton’s third law of motion), hence both the parties should start think of win-win situation for both parties keeping the common man in the mind.

Today technology can solve most complex problems (may be except the problems of the married man), in my views Telangana issue can be easily solved if it is treated as techno-economical problem rather than socio-political problem. The needed tools are very simple tools like Fish-bone diagram, Excel and PowerPoint for the cause and effect analysis, data collection/plotting, and presentation/expression respectively. Now the Telangana is a more complex problem as the political leaders wanted power and created social differences among the people.

Divided, we fall

For me, the “self rule and self respect” slogan for Telangana definitely provides an understanding of Kashmir issue at a broader level; but I do not support any view either on Telangana or Kashmir unless somebody proves something technically.

Note: All images are downloaded using Google image search.