[Telecentres] The Tsunami as a Wake-Up Call to Bridging the Digital Divide

[Andy Carvin]

I've just posted an essay on DDN that I wanted to share with you. It 
addresses, among other things, the role of telecentres during times of 
natural disaster.

Here's the full text. -ac

The Tsunami as a Wake-Up Call to Bridging the Digital Divide
By Andy Carvin, EDC Center for Media & Community

http://www.digitaldivide.net/articles/view.php?ArticleID=84

As everyone knows by now, the last week and a half has been a trying
time for the people of South Asia. Tens of thousands of people are dead,
millions of lives ruined. Being thousands of miles away from the
epicenters of destruction, it's sometimes hard for me to fathom the
scale of how awful things are.

It's times like this I step back and begin to wonder about the work I do
on bridging the digital divide. Sometimes I ask myself, does any of this
really matter? Is bridging the digital divide really that important when
compared to rebuilding the lives of millions of people, let alone
protecting them in the first place?

But as we learn more about why some people survived and others didn't,
it's made me realize that bridging the digital divide is more important
than ever. Bridging the divide -- particularly in terms of promoting
technology literacy and e-government for all -- could have actually
saved lives.

One of the first stories to hit home for me was that of Mr. Vijaykumar,
a former volunteer at a telecenter in Nallavadu, India, run by the M.S.
Swaminathan Research Foundation. Vijaykumar, who's now living in
Singapore, received word of the tsunami well before anyone in southern
India did. He called his family in Nallavadu, then called the
telecenter. Another telecenter volunteer living abroad, Mr. Gopu, did
the same thing. Immediately the community sprung into action. Using the
telecenter's public address system, local volunteers alerted fellow
villagers. Among the 500 families in Nallavadu, 150 of their houses were
destroyed -- yet no one died, because the telecenter responded to the
imminent crisis at a time when no other local or national warning system
was in place.

The Nallavadu telecenter is fortunate because it is a part of the Open
Knowledge Network (OKN), an initiative that provides communities in
developing countries the tools and skills they need to become content
producers. In the case of Nallavadu and other local OKN communities in
southern India, they're using the initiative to collect weather data and
distribute it to fisherman in order to protect them when they're out at
see. Because Nallavadu's telecenter volunteers had the information and
communication technology (ICT) skills to gather information and get it
out by all possible means - including mobile phones and public address
systems -- they saved thousands of lives. The telecenter became a
lifeline for the entire community.

Most other villages were not as fortunate: across south Asia, millions
of people are mourning the loss of family, friends, livelihoods. Much of
the blame, perhaps, should point towards the lack of an early warning
system for the Indian Ocean, as there is in the Pacific. But even if
such a warning system existed at the international or national level,
would the information gotten to the village level in time? We'll never
know for sure, but I imagine the answer is probably no.

Why? Because most villages lack the technological infrastructure and the
ICT skills needed to get the information quickly, assess it and respond
appropriately. In some cases, it's not even about technology skills:
simple oceanography skills could have saved more lives. A young girl
named Tilly Smith saved scores of people when she saw the tide suddenly
vanish and recognized it as one of the first signs of an impending
tsunami - something she had just learned in her geography class. And
then there are the Morgan Sea Gypsies of Southern Thailand: their elders
had taught them that when the tide rushes out, they should run to the
hills. They managed to escape, while others who lacked this knowledge
went to pick up fish on the beach or watch the low tide -- with
disastrous results.

In these cases, it was wisdom and geographic know-how that saved lives.
But in other cases, technology access and ICT skills could have played a
major role. And I'm not talking about computers here. While in-home
Internet access is still a rarity in many villages, mobile phones are
much more common. SMS text messaging could have been used to send
warnings to millions of mobile phone subscribers, who in turn could have
used community resources to alert their neighbors.

For example, after the tsunami, the Swedish government sent text
messages to all Swedish citizens whose mobile phones had recently been
used in Thailand. These messages have helped the Swedish government pare
down the list of who's missing and who's not.

But what if SMS had been used prior to the tsunami? What if there had a
been a system in place in which millions of mobile phone subscribers
could have received SMS text warnings over their phones? Taran
Rampersad, an Internet activist in Trinidad & Tobago, posed this
question last weekend on his blog (which is also available here on the
Digital Divide Network). Within 72 hours, a small team of programmers
responded with the creation of ARC: the Alert Retrieval Cache. The idea
is simple: a person sends a text message to a particular phone number,
including key words on a particular subject he or she wishes to be
addressed. The system then sends the SMS text to every phone number that
subscribes to the system, based on each subscriber's interests.

Right now, a practical application could be a relief worker sending out
an SMS because she needs access to more antibiotics: using the names of
those antibiotics as key words would then route the text message to
people and organizations who might be a source for those antibiotics.

But imagine if this tool had been used prior to the tsunami? A geologist
who picked up the initial tremor could have sent a text message to alert
municipal authorities and community leaders, as well as ham radio
operators, telecenter volunteers and anyone else who subscribed to the
ARC system, so they could all receive the warning on their mobile
phones. How many lives would have been saved if this had been in place
two weeks ago?

Tools like ARC will hopefully play an important role when the next
disaster strikes -- it's just a matter of when. Volunteers like Taran
Rampersad and the dozens of people working on the TsunamiHelp blog are
making a real difference when it comes to setting up emergency response
systems in which all Internet users may do their own small part. But
this doesn't mean that governments don't have a role, of course. There
are few, if any, governmental tasks more important than protecting the
lives of the public, and sadly, the system failed millions of people
this time. In many countries, for example, it's possible to buy cheap
emergency radios that automatically activate in times of crisis. Other
governments have elaborate emergency systems in place so that national
authorities may interact with municipal and region officials. Emergency
broadcast messages are sent automatically through the airwaves. Here in
the US, "reverse-911" systems like the one funded in Orange County,
Florida by the U.S. Department of Commerce's TOP program can blast out
thousands of automated emergency recordings to every household that owns
a telephone.

While not every type of disaster may be predicted, some can be
predicted. And in this particular case, precious minutes and hours went
by with no warning -- no emergency television broadcasts, no community
sirens, no alerts to ham radio clubs -- nothing.

There is no excuse for this. Disaster warnings for the public should be
a right of all people and the responsibility of all governments. Whether
it's through community radio, television, Internet access, SMS text
messaging, or knocking on doors one at a time, governments must do their
part to alert and mobilize communities during times of crisis. That's
why the notion of e-government for all is so important. It's not just
about providing every government agency with a Web page and an email
address; it's about creating straightforward systems that connect
government officials with all the people they serve, no matter their
income or education level, disability, ethnicity or the language they
speak. When it comes to warning people about pending disaster, no one -
no one - should be left out of the loop.

So the next time you think about bridging the digital divide, put aside
the academic debates of how many people have email access or which
communities know how to use a search engine effectively. Instead, think
of it this way: does everyone have access to the tools and information
they need to keep their families safe and sound? If the answer is no,
then you'll know that we still have a lot of work to do.


-- 
-----------------------------------
Andy Carvin
Program Director
EDC Center for Media & Community
acarvin @ edc . org
http://www.digitaldivide.net
Blog: http://www.andycarvin.com
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-- 
-----------------------------------
Andy Carvin
Program Director
EDC Center for Media & Community
acarvin @ edc . org
http://www.digitaldivide.net
Blog: http://www.andycarvin.com
-----------------------------------