Emergency Broadcast System: A Reverse 911 ...

2016 26th International Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (ITNAC)

Emergency Broadcast System: A Reverse 911 Tsunami Information Dissemination System Prototype Joe Yuan Mambu

Jairo Gutierrez

Universitas Klabat Manado, Indonesia [email protected]

Auckland University of Technology Auckland, New Zealand [email protected]

Abstract—When an earthquake hits, the dissemination of tsunami warnings can be crucial in saving lives. Unfortunately, some dissemination channels may be insufficient as they may be affected by the earthquake itself (damaged, loss of power or overloaded), may be expensive to build and are not available at certain places. In this research we propose a tsunami warning dissemination system that can serve as an additional channel to the existing systems. The system is lightweight, affordable, and can be powered autonomously. It disseminates messages to the commonly used GSM handsets and may reach numerous at-risk civilians. This paper also reports on the suggested integration plan of our proposed system within the current disaster management operation procedure in Indonesia. A set of experiments were carried out and they showed that the system has adequately met the users’ requirements. It also shows the feasibility of the system to be integrated within the existing operational system and its associated early warning dissemination channels.

II. DISASTER MANAGEMENT & ROLE OF ICT A. Disaster Management According to Khan, Vasilescu and Khan [2] there are three main phases of a Disaster Management Cycle (DMC): a “during a disaster” phase where all the immediate necessary actions and provisions are taken to save lives, a “post-disaster” phase where follow-up response and recovery activities are carried out, and lastly a “pre-disaster” phase where we perform activities that aim to lessen all the associated risk of unforeseen disasters including prevention, mitigation and preparedness [3, 4]. B. Role of ICT Several known technologies that had been used by various organizations for tsunami warning disseminations are Radio and Television (TV) broadcasts, Telephones and Cellphones, Sirens and Internet [5]. While radio and TV have been used for decades, telephones and cell phones have recently caught up in several incidents such as the San Diego wildfire in 2007 [6] and the Haiti Earthquake in 2010 [7]. A siren is another tool that is simple to operate and can cover a wide area very quickly. Lastly, Internet provides several platforms such as social media, as in the case of the Greek riots in 2008 [8], and dedicated software such as the Ushahidi project [9].

Keywords—disaster management, disasters, emergency network, warning dissemination, GSM, mobile communications, OpenBTS, USRP

I. INTRODUCTION A typical tsunami may reach the coastal area within minutes, thus getting the warning message to those at risk civilians at the right time is very crucial. Such circumstance means a reliable and effective system is an absolute necessity [1]. Warning dissemination utilize several media and networks such as sirens alarms, radio, and broadcast television. Unfortunately, there is a possibility that these channels may be unavailable due to overloading, loss of power or they may be damaged by the earthquake itself [1]. This research aims to provide a system for a warning dissemination system that can act as an additional channel, improve the existing ones and may be integrated within the existing disaster management operating procedure in Indonesia.

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C. Case Studies There are several case studies and lessons learned from earthquake and tsunami incidents that involve ICT aspects. First is how earthquakes could trigger blackouts, produce damages and overload networks such as in the case of Bangladesh in 2011 [10], Haiti in 2010 [11] and New Zealand in 2011 [12]. Secondly is how poor earthquake warning propagation may cause more casualties as in the case of Mauritius in 2004 [13] and Chile in 2010 [14, 15]. Lack of regular updates to inform the community also made a substantial difference as seen on the case of Papua New Guinea in 1998 [15]. Thus, the authors’ believe that another channel for warning dissemination may be useful and even vital to propagate

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warnings and reduce casualties. One of the technologies that may be used is a system to disseminate warnings to ubiquitous GSM-compatible handsets.

technologies such as the Rescue Base Station (RBS) [25], Beacon [26] and Emergenet [27]. While these systems are not explicitly designed for warning dissemination purposes, they offered inspiration for our proposed system.

III. TECHNOLOGY INVOLVED & RELATED WORK

IV. RESEARCH QUESTION & METHODOLOGY

Typical cellphones nowadays that utilize the GSM standards are owned by over 90% of the population across 219 countries [16]. Analogue elements can now be converted to digital using Software Defined Radio (SDR) techniques. This type of solution produces a low-cost, easy to use, customizable and interoperable system. An example of implementations made possible with this innovation is the creation of a GSM Base Transceiver System (BTS) that utilizes a Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) motherboard paired with a Radio Frequency (RF) daughterboard and combines them with software such as GNU Radio and OpenBTS [17]. The interaction with the USRP hardware is made possible through a host driver and API called the USRP Hardware Driver (UHD). The UHD links the software and USRP hardware components. Once the interface becomes available a software called OpenBTS can be used to interact with the connected GSM handsets [26] [27]. Additional software components that are used are Smqueue to process SIP MESSAGE requests, SIPAuthServ to manage the SIP REGISTER requests [28], and OsmoTRX which is the radiomodem/transceiver that captures the radio-burst and demodulates it in layer 1. The proposed system architecture is shown Figure 1.

Fig. 1. Proposed system architecture based on the ITP schema OpenBTS architecture.

Overall, we would like to answer the following research question: “How can first responders set up a communication system for tsunami warning dissemination purposes for the exposed population that fits within the disaster response’s Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) of a certain area?” The research aims to provide another channel of warning dissemination and also to examine how it would be integrated within the existing tsunami disaster management SOP in Indonesia. This project adopted the multi-methodological approach to information systems research [28] where the main system development activity is connected to three hub strategies: theory building, observation and experimentation. Each phase allows feedback and complements all the other phases which contribute to the development of the proposed system. V. DATA COLLECTION The data collection was divided into two main activities: the first task was to gather data to investigate how the proposed system would fit within the existing disaster response standard operating procedure (SOP) in a particular location in Indonesia; this data was obtained mainly from secondary sources. The second activity included gathering data from primary sources (e.g. interviews with key personnel) who could tell us about the current system and how they assess a disaster, and how the existing early warning (EW) dissemination system operates. Due to this research’s anonymity commitments, the name of the organization and individuals involved are not disclosed. The organization and staff would be called “Alpha” and “Alpha’s staff” respectively. Some documents also provided by Alpha’s staff were sourced from another organization that works together with the Alpha organization. This organization is referred to “Beta” in this paper. A. Current Disaster Response System The country has a national centralized tsunami early warning system called the Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (InaTEWS) and it connects multiple monitoring and warning devices and authorities. If activity is detected, any earthquake-related data is sent to the analysis systems to be analyzed and processed through the InaTEWS Decision Support System (DSS) which will produce the warning level of a tsunami: “Warning” for evacuation, “Advisory” for evacuation from coastal area, and “Watch” for people to be alert and stay away from the seashore. According to existing procedures, the system will disseminate, at least, three Early Warnings (EW) before the 5th, 10th and 60th minutes after an earthquake hits; newer EW will update the previous ones. Updated EWs are important as they may show more accurate earthquake (EQ) parameters and most importantly reflect the updated warning level (Beta, 2012). EW message contents are

and the

Several work related to this research are the Network on Wheels (NOW) system that enables communication that is mobile or floating. 911-Now [18], AirGSM [19] and High Altitude Platform (HAP) [20] are examples of NOW-based projects that may be used for disaster response. However, in the case of an earthquake there’s a chance that the back-haul connectivity, which all of them heavily rely upon, may be damaged or unavailable. Some other projects adopt a MANET-based emergency communication and information system. Wi-Fi [21] and WiMAX [22] are being used to build this type of solutions. Unfortunately, Wi-Fi has a limited range of 200 meters and WiMAX is not widely implemented [23, 24]. There are also proposed systems that use GSM

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varied on the format (Long, Short and Media version) and mode (email, wrs, fax, SMS and website). The EWs are disseminated by the Indonesian Agency for Meteorological, Climatological and Geophysics (BMKG) and are forwarded to the Indonesian National Board for Disaster Management (BNPB), National TV/Radio and the Police/Military. At the provincial level EWs are forwarded to local TV/Radio stations, provincial governments and the Regional Board for Disaster Management (BPBD). Lastly they are forwarded to district/city governments and the Local Disaster Operation Center (PUSDALOP). All these stakeholders have the responsibility to forward the messages to the community at risk. Media and channels used for EW dissemination are sirens, local/national TV & Radio as well as web, fax, email, SMS and Warning Receiver System (WRS) via DVB or Internet. Both media outlets and stakeholders can be seen on Figure 2. The decision whether to evacuate or not should go through an assessment process that is managed by the local government, by an officer such as the governor, who needs to consult with her/his local disaster board. Several checklist items that may affect the local assessment are: a comparison with data received from other sources such as the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and an assessment of how stable the situation is at the moment as ambiguous information may cause social unrest.

straightforward, and as easy to use as an ATM. It should also include a user manual for quick reference. In terms of required capabilities the system should be able to reach 2.5-3 kilometers which will cover the coastal area of a small town. Though its reach may be similar to that of a siren, the proposed system cost is much more affordable and the system is portable. Thus, having it on several points would be the best deployment scenario. Another required capability is its function to immediately connect and disseminate messages to GSM cellphones within the coverage area as this is important in the case of EWs with mass evacuation messages. VI. EXPERIMENTS Two experiments were carried out at different locations. The first experiment was held inside a closed lab. An executable file had been created to run all the software for an easier operation of the system. The program will first prompt the operator to compose the EW1 which will be received by the GSM clients right away when they connect to the system using an unoccupied frequency used was ARFCN: 761 [26]; due to the presence of commercial signals from the BTS we needed to switch the carrier manually to receive the message. The second experiment was held at Bethells Beach, West Auckland, New Zealand where there was no commercial signal and it is a location within reach which allowed us to emulate a situation where this infrastructure is unavailable as mentioned on section 2.3 above. Both handsets connected to the system within seconds and received the EW1 immediately up to 100 meters away. VII. ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSIONS Through a comprehensive literature review and data collection analysis we could see that there’s a gap for tsunami warning dissemination that can be filled by the system proposed in this paper; a system which has the flexibility and capabilities to be incorporated alongside the existing media and channels employed within the existing tsunami warning dissemination systems. In terms of operational aspects, the proposed system is quite straightforward and, due to its portability, it is available to be deployed at different spots in the field. In short, there would not be much problem incorporating the proposed system within the existing InaTEWS scheme used in Indonesia. The experimental outcome, while still having some limitations, also shows significant potential. The prototype met most of the user requirements gathered from Alpha users. The system is quick and user friendly, and it is able to connect and disseminate EWs through different GSM providers. We believe this research confirms that the operators may able to set up and manage the proposed device to be able to reach the exposed, and possibly “disconnected”, community. We also firmly believe that the proposed system is compatible and will be able to be integrated within the existing SOP along the other channels and media currently used.

Fig. 2. Warning Dissemination Media/Channel Flow & Stakeholders. A modified flowchart from Beta [29]

As shown on Figure 2, if there is an important decision taken after a local assessment has been done, the only EW channels controlled by the local authorities are sirens and local TV/Radio stations. Local TV does not have a broad reach as people tend to watch national TV. Therefore, local radio might be the most effective way in addition to sirens which are limited in giving information. B. Assessment and user requirement The proposed system integration for broadcasting EWs is not complicated as it follows the existing EW dissemination plan. The following are several aspects, gathered via interviews with Alpha’s staff, which informed the user requirements for the proposed system: operating requirements, required capabilities and characteristics. In terms of operating requirements, the system should be easy to operate,

A. Drawbacks and Future Work One potential flaw is related to the GSM mechanism on typical handsets. When a commercial network is down, a

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GSM handset would automatically connect to the proposed system’s network if it is within reach. However, a manual switch may be needed when the commercial network comes up again. A solution that needs to be tested is to shut down our network and allow all the clients to get connected back to their respective carrier. Such situation requires a clear communication channel with the cellular carrier. There are also two aspects that are still untested on the current setup. The first aspect is the potential range. Due to our limited budget we were unable to utilize an amplifier to reach the ideal range of 2-2.5 kilometers as suggested by Alpha’s staff. The second aspect is the expected capacity of the system. To simulate a real disaster the system should be able to disseminate to more than 50 clients. These two untested tasks form part of future work to be explored.

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