Category: Research & Action
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Cleanup your CAP: towards a decentralized, immutable, and trusted alert network
Picking up from the discussion on Alerthub, back in 2016 in Bangkok, we developed a hook to update our repository whenever the WMO Register of Alerting Authorities had change; the data can be visualized on our website. The parsed data, from the Register, gave us the CAP feed URLs. Those Atom/RSS feeds were activated in…
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Sahana First Response acceptable for Seychelles
Sahna First Response (SaFiRe) prototype was designed, for simple and small Emergency Operation Centers (EOCs), with the intention of looking for potential opportunities for implementations. The wish came true when the Seychelles Department of Risk and Disaster Management (DRDM) invited a Sahana team to work on implementing a version of SaFiRe for their emergency information management needs. A…
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Inclusive Public Services for Linguistically Challenged presented @ CPRsouth2018
Smart Governments, as part of their Smart Cities programs, must include linguistically challenged in public information and services. Pictographs (pictograms or symbology) can play an important role in disaster communication. Our recommendations, presented at CPRsouth2018 in Maputo, Mozambique (208-10-05), were: NATIONAL POLICIES AND PLANS – Amend national emergency communication plans and policies to include modalities…
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“ShaRe” for bridging Social Capital during Crises
During the immediate aftermath of a disaster, it’s the neighboring communities or unaffected people in the area that activate to assist the victims with the basic needs of food, water, and shelter. However, the local community response cannot cope beyond the first 24 hours and need to reach out for external support. Often it is…
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SAMBRO would have prevented the Hawaiian human error nuke scare
An early-morning emergency alert mistakenly warning of an incoming ballistic missile attack was dispatched to cellphones across Hawaii on Saturday, setting off widespread panic in a state that was already on edge because of escalating tensions between the United States and North Korea. read the NYTimes Full Story To safeguard from such mishaps that can…
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Building capacity on Common Alerting Protocol for Nepal
Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM) Nepal is in the process of operationalizing the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) v 1.2 – enabled Sahana Alerting and Messaging Broker (SAMBRO): DHM Nepal Warning and Situational-Awareness System. I have been working closely with friends from DHM in helping to get the system up and running. DHM is expected…
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Beyond text translations for the displaced and marginalized
Policy and Plans for Linguistically Challenged The European INTERACT project is part of a Migration Policy initiative. The project is studying how nations set emergency communication policies and plans in support multi-linguistics and crisis management. Findings are not promising and there is a severe need for intervention. Observation was that the studies had left out…
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Extending SAMBRO for HydroMet Warnings in Nepal
Sahana Alerting and Messaging Broker (SAMBRO) has been accepted by Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM) for disseminating warnings in Nepal. I am setting up the system in their office and customizing it to meet their needs. SAMBRO will be hosted in the DMH main office in Kathmandu. National Emergency Operations Center (NEOC) will also…
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Push Messaging Big Topic at CAP Implementation Workshop
At the annual CAP (Common Alerting Protocol) Implementation Workshop in Rome, many speakers talked about how to disseminate messages on the last mile to end users. As Elyza Jones of OASIS pointed out, SMS only provides short text, is expensive and has the potential to take down the whole GSM network unless it is cell…
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SAMBRO Usability and Acceptability Presented at CPRSouth2017
It is coming close to an year since the Sahana Alerting and Messaging Broker (SAMBRO) was operationalized in Maldives, Myanmar, and the Philippines. A challenge was for authorities, in those three countries, to coordinate warnings across disparate communication systems and autonomous organizations. The CAP-enabled SAMBRO was designed to overcome those issues by providing a Common…