On April 24, 2009, just two months shy of the 4.5 year anniversary of the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, delegates from the five most affected countries – Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, India, Maldives – gathered in New York for the Tsunami Lessons Learned event. Reporting on their continued relief and recovery efforts in the years since the disaster claimed almost a quarter of a million lives worldwide, these countries met with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, UN Development Programme Administrator Helen Clark, and Bill Clinton, former President & UN Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery. Below is a rather choppily-edited video featuring remarks from each of these officials as well as images of recovery in the severely-affected coastal region.
Without a full transcript of the report, I can’t be sure how often the delegates discussed their use of information communication technologies. What is clear is that all of the countries have worked toward better and quicker disaster management (which includes disaster reduction/early warning and preparedness, with the aim to decrease the need for emergency response).
Perhaps my favorite part of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s speech is his acknowledgment of the countries’ shared strength: coordination.
The tsunami recovery was unique in this respect. All Governments have emphasized coordination.
India has established a National Disaster Management Authority.
Indonesia has created a Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Board.
In Maldives, the Government set up a National Disaster Management Centre, while in Sri Lanka, the tsunami was a catalyst for the creation of the Ministry of National Disaster Management and Human Rights.
Thailand enacted a Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Act and a high-level command for disaster response.
The United Nations matched the effort by establishing a “One UN” office for Recovery Coordination in Aceh and Nias.
Coordination is not a luxury. It is an absolute necessity.
Coordination therefore seems to imply the use of ICT for communication between State officials, local communities, and NGOs. That is, not only can ICT facilitate coordination in an immediate way but it also does so to an exponentially larger scale. After Googling each of these government’s disaster management initiatives, I came up with the following: India’s National Disaster Management Authority website declares the NDMA a “holistic, pro-active, multi-disaster and technology-driven strategy for disaster management through collective efforts of all Government Agencies and Non-Governmental Organisations,” whereas Indonesia’s Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Board (BRR) seems to be using geospatial software to rapidly share the data needed to rebuild neighborhoods’vital infrastructure and communications systems. Sri Lanka’s Ministry of National Disaster Management and Human Rights asserts a comprehensive approach that focuses on information management and collaboration between all disaster management actors, and from what I could glean, Thailand’s Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Act appointed a Permanent Secretary of Information and Communication Technology.
My hope is that States are quickly realizing the potential effectiveness of ICT tools in preventing, or at least responding to, disaster situations. With NGOs like InSTEDD and TSF doing their work in emergency areas such as Italy and Indonesia, disaster-prone countries should increasingly collaborate with these organizations in order to adapt and adopt life-saving ICT tactics.
