[Telecentres] RE: [CI] Southeast Asia Tusunami and Community ICTs

[Don Cameron]

Hi Mike, all,

(I hope this cross-posting across multiple forums is in the best interest of
readers. Apologies in advance for those receiving several copies of this
thread).

Where you write that: "Don Cameron has indicated considerable scepticism of
the value of ICTs in this context where the need for water, shelter and food
are so pressing." (and) "But what of "Community Informatics"... Is this
something to be left to a later stage when other matters have been dealt
with and as Don suggested there is some resources and time available for
"recreation"?

Mike may I clarify what might have been poorly worded posts on my part -
Rather than voicing scepticism of the value of ICT's or CI, I am rather
promoting a literal interpretation of the acronyms to highlight the enormous
value of ICT's/CI in disaster prevention/mitigation, if and when we
acknowledge that an ICT's and an "information-rich society" are not
inherently societies enabled by computers, mobile telephony or any other
expensive and resource intensive ICT. 

An air-raid siren supported by a loud-hailer alert sounding on a beach
conveys exactly the same message as 5,000 mobile telephones all beeping
simultaneously; the people are just as informed; one system is just as
demonstrative as the other of "community informatics". The only differences
are that one system is affordable for the economically disadvantaged, the
other is not - One requires very little training, the other requires
intensive training and user familiarisation. One is inherently reliable, the
other linked to transmission towers that by design cannot cope with 100%
saturation and will fail during emergencies at the expense of all users of
the system (experience teaches us that mobile technologies are usually the
first to fail during environmental events such as Tsunami's, wildfires,
cyclones/hurricanes, earthquakes and floods). 

I am certainly not discounting the enormous value of high-tech solutions but
we do need to view these in the context of environmental circumstances
during an environmental disaster. It would be foolish to base a system
solely on the very technologies we know will fail - Underpinning the very
concept of emergency management is building redundancy for all systems
classified as 'civil communications' because these will and do fail. A
second aspect is that by design all networked infrastructure is
'dumbed-down' at the user interface because this enhances reliability (the
more basic the user interface, the more reliable the network is). In the
case of Tsunami's, high-tech certainly belongs at the level of seismic and
oceanographic monitoring. Networked sensory systems, satellites, fibre
communications nodes etc. are all essential in providing timely advanced
warning to national disaster centre's - yet these are not technologies to
reach the masses impacted by a disaster because they are known to be
unreliable when operating within a disaster zone. They have a place; they
may well work in the field depending on the scope and scale of the disaster;
they may also fail meaning redundancy system are urgently required.

All I am suggesting is to build redundancy systems first because these are
the cheapest, the easiest to deploy, the most effective and most reliable...
Once this is done, once we have built a basic pre-warning system for people
in disaster-prone areas we can worry about the cost, deployment, management
and promotion of more expensive and technically advanced ICT's. It is really
just a matter of priorities. 

Rgds, Don