The recent events in Uttarakhand, India where floods have wreaked havoc destroying thousands of lives and livelihoods, sweeping away whole villages, roads and mobile towers leaving thousands people stranded and in need of rescue, highlights the importance of preparedness, mitigation and meticulous planning for disaster management (DM). One aspect of this planning is emergency communications.
India is now beginning to take cognizance of areas like single emergency number and priority call routing. However, instead of a piecemeal approach, a more holistic approach would be far more effective.
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) analysis as seen from its consultation paper was as follows;
TRAI’s reasons for the need for priority call routing during disasters include inter alia:
- The wide variety of radio equipment used by various public safety organisations is frequently incompatible, preventing communication between responders.
- In extreme circumstances, official public safety systems may fail.
- Civil networks often provide greater capability for data communications than their public safety counterparts. The latter are often provided with very limited transmission capacity which is not upgraded as quickly as civil networks.
- NGOs and private sector responders play a critical role in response but may not have access to public safety networks. Often during disasters the civilian telephone networks are not so much destroyed as congested into uselessness. This can paralyze official response during disasters.
Based upon on the above premises, the consultation paper focuses primarily on network congestion issue and attempts to find ways and means to ensure that network congestion bottlenecks are eased for official and unofficial agencies involved in response and recovery.
Solutions suggested by TRAI: TRAI has suggested that one possible solution is network dimensioning (core network, POI circuits) in a manner that facilitates handling of increased volume of traffic during disasters. Needless to say, while telecommunication networks are dimensioned to meet mandated quality of service (QoS) standards keeping in view normal estimates of peak traffic, dimensioning to handle disasters would involve extra costs which telecom service providers may be reluctant to bear. The second option the TRAI has suggested is priority call routing for personnel involved in response and recovery.
TRAI's analysis accepts that a resilient telecommunication networks (so as to cater to communications during disasters/ emergencies), would include (a) proper network dimensioning, (b) emergency communication alternatives like satellite radio, ham radios and (c) a comprehensive strategy to rebuild or repair lost infrastructure. This is however considered to be a time consuming and costly exercise and hence priority call routing is suggested as an immediately implementable and less costly solution.
TRAI goes on to describe:
a) The United States Government’s emergency phone service for the National Security for emergency preparedness community to communicate over the existing public switched telephone network (PSTN) with a high likelihood of call completion even during network congestion or disruption with the help of enhancements based upon existing commercial technology. This is called Government Emergency Telecommunication Service (GETS) in case of landline systems. A similar system for wireless networks is the Wireless Priority Service (WPS). GETS and WPS are authentication based priority call routing systems but do not pre-empt on-going calls or preclude public use of the civilian network.
b) Canada too has a WPS system similar to that of USA.
c) U.K’s Mobile Telecommunication Privileged Access Scheme (MTPAS). This system restricts civilian access to cellular phone networks during emergencies. It actively prevents civilian use from congesting the cellular networks, thus allowing emergency services personnel priority for communications. Entitled users are provided with special SIMs to enable communications, while normal users will receive a beep indicating that the network has been reserved for MPTAS –aware phones.
d) Certain other models of priority calling such as that based upon a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) concept or enhanced multilevel precedence and pre-emption (eMLPP) have also been discussed. While the former would entail dedication of part network resources to the virtual emergency operator during crisis, the latter pre-empts radio resources based on assigned priority.
My Comments are as follows:
Regarding TRAI’s assumptions about present shortcoming of DM communications systems and remedies thereof:
(i) Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) and National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) are already making efforts to expeditiously establish and enhance disaster communications networks by way of National Disaster Communications Network , National Emergency Communications Plan Phase I and II schemes. This is to be backed by Disaster Management (DM) information systems such as National Database for Emergency Management (NDEM)and National Disaster Management Informatics System (NDMIS) (with inbuilt Vulnerability Analysis & Risk Assessment and Decision Support tools).
(ii) Given the existence of the above mentioned schemes, the establishment of a high capacity, resilient, comprehensive and inter-operable (compatible) DM communications network cannot be assumed to be time consuming and beyond immediate financial capability of the Government. However, due care must be taken to ensure inter-operability of networks and devices.
(iii) It may be noted that these schemes provide for communications facilities for District authorities National Disaster Response Force personnel and other field level functionaries who are the first responders. It is felt that all government agencies expected to be involved in emergency/disaster relief must mandatorily use/have access to inter-operable NDCN elements and post disaster, they must switch over to this system to free up the public telecommunications network to others. Further, reliance should be placed on pre-planned network augmentation and ad hoc networks as already provided in NDCN, rather than planning for preemption of the PSTN.(I discuss this further below)
(iv) In the light of the above, it would be appropriate for NDMA, MHA and TRAI etc.to align their respective approaches to Disaster related communications. It would be advisable to prioritize the expeditious roll out of these schemes ensuring adequate capacity and inter-operability, rather than to plan for procedures to take over public communications which are critical means of alerting normal citizens/potential victims of disaster and can greatly aid in rescue and relief operations.
Regarding the importance of public networks for victims of disasters and hence need for a holistic approach
(i) The overall teledensity in India is 79.58% (July 2012). Urban teledensity is 169% and rural teledensity is 40%. Internet/broadband penetration though not high (23 million internet and 14.57 million broadband subscribers), is increasing rapidly (18% growth of broadband subscribers over previous year). Along with availability and affordability of telecommunications services, basic mobile usage literacy and e-literacy is on the rise among Indians no matter which economic strata they belong to. Ordinary citizens either as victims or others are the first to be present on the scene of the disaster. Needless to say, communications are critical to their survival as it becomes a lifeline to obtain help. Modern technology also enables caller location facilities which are invaluable for rescue and relief workers to locate injured/trapped individuals.
(ii)
Rather than restricting public access to critical communications facilities, congestion on networks can be avoided by having efficient and reliable disaster warning and information systems including internet based message boards which the public would rely on rather than relying on interpersonal communications to make (anxiety) calls. We should also be considering early warning systems like
IPAWS as an integral part of emergency communications .
(iii) Government should plan to make effective use of TV and radio and internet enabled social media forums and message boards to this end. service providerss can play a critical role through message boards and SMS broadcasts. Community education is also an important facet.
(iv)
TRAI can play a critical role in recommending/mandating the specific duties and overall cooperation of service providers in this regard. TRAI has not analysed the
Telecommunications Service Priority (TSP) programme under USA's Office of Emergency Communication's for emergency communications. This needs to be put in place as a part of licensing conditions of service providers.
(iv) Relief and rescue agencies should be able to receive emergency calls from public on the public network but should use dedicated communications resources to interface with each other.
Thus some concrete measures for the present would be:
(i) While most telecommunications infrastructure is necessarily designed to withstand normal climatic conditions of an area, TRAI could carry out an analysis of specific area-wise vulnerabilities in conjunction with NDMA and DoT, and accordingly mandate special technical standards for network resilience and dimensioning of telecommunication networks in highly vulnerable areas. DoT’s Telecom Engineering Centre has already prepared draft guidelines in this regard which could be used/refined. The additional cost borne for retrofitting or supplementing existing network elements could be borne by the Government. All future infrastructure, networks and services after a specified cut off date would however mandatorily comply with revised technical specifications.
ii. The Universal Service Obligation Fund of India is administered by an USOF Administrator and functions as an attached office of Department of Telecommunications. As USOF is mandated to provide telecommunications services to the people in rural and remote areas at reasonable and affordable prices, it follows that the existence of robust and disaster resilient networks falls within USOF’s mandate. Thus a USOF scheme could be designed for one time upgrading of existing networks in such vulnerable rural areas.
iii. TRAI should take into cognizance the fact that world over, increasing importance is being give to universal access to emergency services (across platforms, including IP networks) and caller location services are being mandated.
iv. The availability and accessibility of emergency communications to the aged and disabled is also something that even developing countries are according increasing priority to. These fall in the purview of Universal Service in most countries and TRAI may recommend necessary action to DoT.
v. It may be noted that the USOF Administration is funding a nationwide rural optic fibre network (NOFN) (through an SPV namely, Bharat Broadband Network Ltd) to connect 2.5 lakh village panchyats (local self government offices). NOFN can serve as a valuable backbone in times of disasters/emergencies. With a view to provide high capacity DM related connectivity, NOFN can provide fibre in the last mile to critical rural structures such as schools, hospitals apart from local administration. While redundancy is most likely an inbuilt design feature for NOFN, it should be specially ensured that NOFN has the necessary disaster resilience to extent possible.
vi. TRAI may consider making recommendations to DoT on a national Disaster Management Plan for Telecommunications Infrastructure and Services. This is mandated under Section 37 of the Disaster Management Act 2005. This would cover every stage of the Disaster Management cycle from mitigation to relief and early recovery. Business Continuity Planning for service providers should be a part of the same.
vii. Finally a holistic approach may be adopted rather than picking up only one segement of international best practices for emergency communications
