Joseph Galbraith
Lesson 4 Reading Summary
Reference: Musavi, S., Memon, A., & Chawdhri, B. (2011). MODELING AN INTEROPERABLE INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION NETWORK FOR DISASTER MANAGEMENT FIRST RESPONDERS. International Journal Of Academic Research, 3(2), 17-25.
Theme: Major issues exist in the communications system in Pakistan in spite of their history of natural and manmade disasters.
Summary:
• Communication before, during and after a disaster is crucial to the survival rate.
• The two main communication problems discussed in this article are early warning systems and interoperable communications for responders.
• Issues perceived in this geographical region (South West Asia) were lack of both of these systems.
• Most emergency personnel depend on local cellular networks.
• Along with interoperability comes the importance of a centralized communication center such as an Emergency Operations Center and Joint Information Center.
• The region is very familiar with disasters both manmade and natural and still does not a have an adequate communication system.
•Early warning systems are crucial for storm, flood, tsunami, and volcano events.
•Some issues identified with combating the advent of early warning systems are; lack of political will, weak communication among various actors and publics inability to realize vulnerabilities to disaster.
•The following are optimal for a good communications interoperability system and its planning for responders;
- More sophisticated Vital Equipment
- Backup Subscriber Management Center
- Emergency Hot Lines
- Paging Systems for Spreading Disaster Warnings
- Rapid Up gradation Techniques for Base Stations during Response
Application to the lesson topic:
Communications is not only the most important thing for emergency services in dealing with disasters but it is also the most vulnerable piece of the emergency management framework due to our dependency on electricity. Innovative techniques need to be developed to either develop and advance interoperability system or revert to primitive forms of communication in the event of loss of power.
Application to emergency services:
Emergency services have many communications interoperability problems in normal day to day operations. A disaster will magnify these issues drastically. In my place of work we have many problems that we need to work out in order to communicate with local public safety responders. Exercises are key to working out these bugs and coming up with solutions that are resilient and that will work in the worst case scenarios.
