Taking hazard warnings to the grassroots
New project to mix technologies and training

What is the most efficient and reliable way to disseminate a credible, timely hazard warning to communities spread over a large geographical area?

How best can communities be prepared to respond to such warnings, through an understanding of different hazards and their impacts?

What value addition role can information and communication technologies (ICTs) play in this process?

These are among the key questions being addressed in a major new action research project that has recently been launched in Sri Lanka.

This multi-partner, civil society initiative brings together four Sri Lanka-based organizations that value the role of information, communication and community mobilization in disaster preparedness and management.

TVE Asia Pacific is a lead partner in the ‘Last Mile Hazard Information Dissemination Project’, together with the Sri Lanka’s largest development organisation Sarvodaya, and leading regional ICT research group LIRNEasia, and Sri Lanka’s largest telecommunications company, Dialog Telekom.

The project is supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada.

The project, launched in January 2006, aims to complement other action being taken at national and regional levels. Following the Asian Tsunami of December 2004, the United Nations and development donors engaged governments around the Indian Ocean to build a high-tech tsunami early warning system, to be operational by 2007.

But project partners recognise that even the most advanced early warning system can only do half the job: alert countries at risk about an impending disaster. The far bigger challenge is to effectively and credibly disseminate that warning to largest number of people in the shortest possible time.

As an action research initiative, this 2-year project will study, experiment and understand which ICTs and community mobilization methods will work most effectively in disseminating information on hazards faced by Sri Lankan coastal communities.

The exercise is not confined to tsunamis alone; among the other hazards addressed are coastal erosion, cyclones, drought and floods.

Focusing on the crucial ‘last mile’ dissemination, the project will:

• test five different ICTs (see box) to deliver timely warnings to local people immediately at risk; and
• build community capacity to respond to such warnings rapidly and systematically.

Testing ICTs for early warning The participating villages are being provided with different configurations of training and information and communication technologies.  The ICTs being investigated in this project are:
	Very Small Aperture Satellites (VSATs)
	Disaster Warning Response & Recovery (DWRR) units based on addressable satellite radio
	fixed telephones;
	mobile telephones; and
	GSM-based disaster communication devices.

In the first phase, the project will involve 32 selected villages from eastern, western, northern and southern coastal areas of Sri Lanka – all impacted by the Asian Tsunami. Different combinations of ICTs and community mobilization will be tested out in the participating villages.

 From 3 to 9 April 2006, a residential training  programme  was conducted for  25 youth leaders drawn from the Sarvodaya  Shanti Sena (Peace Brigade) -- a countrywide  youth force consisting over 100,000 persons dedicated to peace building and community development.

It was held at Sarvodaya Development Education Centre in Bandaragama, an hour’s drive south of Colombo. Field activity was carried out at Thalpitiya, Wadduwa, a coastal area impacted by the tsunami.

The training, customized by TVE Asia Pacific, sensitised them on disaster education and preparedness. It covered topics such as understanding vulnerability and hazards; community-based hazard identification using Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) techniques; communicating risks and hazards; understanding and responding to early warnings; and community response planning.

This training was delivered through multi-media presentations, group activities, field work and simulations. The course director was Dr Buddhi Weerasinghe, an educational technology expert who earlier worked with the Bangkok-based Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC). He is also a member of TVE Asia Pacific’s international Board of Directors.

Training material was drawn from TVE Asia Pacific, Open University of Sri Lanka, LIRNEasia, ADPC and other national and international sources. The Children of Tsunami media project’s output formed part of the course material.

Click here for full agenda of the training workshop.

From May to August 2006, the youth leaders thus trained will return to their districts to mobilize one or more coastal villages. Each community will decide on the most appropriate methods to communicate disaster warnings they receive.

Parallel to this, Sarvodaya is setting up a Hazard Information Hub at its headquarters in Moratuwa, just south of Colombo. It will maintain close links with official disaster warning agencies of the government.

After a few months of community training and mobilization, the project will test and evaluate the preparedness and the response capacity of villagers to a carefully simulated disaster warning. The efficacy of different ICTs will also be tested at that time. 

“As a regional communications organization working on development, we were astounded that the Asian Tsunami arrived without any public warning, says Nalaka Gunawardene, Director and CEO, TVE Asia Pacific. “This happened in spite of mass media and ICT proliferation in Asia, reminding us that better management of information is critical. This project goes further, by building community capacity to respond to hazard information and warnings.”

This project expands the training horizons of TVE Asia Pacific, which had   hitherto concentrated on training mid-career TV and video professionals   on communicating development.

TVE Asia Pacific is hopeful that the Sri Lanka experience, when evaluated,   would be of interest to other developing countries across the Asia Pacific.

Click here for 4-page project summary