Path: trc.rwcp!rwc-tyo!news.iij.ad.jp!vcmei!ced.mei!panasonic.com!newsserver.jvnc.net!news.cac.psu.edu!news.pop.psu.edu!hudson.lm.com!netline-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov!nntp.et.byu.edu!news.provo.novell.com!news.cs.utah.edu!cs.utexas.edu!news.sprintlink.net!uunet!in1.uu.net!spcuna!news.columbia.edu!merhaba.cc.columbia.edu!ajw6 From: Alex Wolfson Newsgroups: alt.disasters.earthquake,tnn.disasters.earthquake,fj.misc.earthquake,alt.current-events.kobe-quake,alt.disasters.planning Subject: Proposal for 811 Emergency Communications Date: Wed, 22 Feb 1995 22:19:40 -0500 Organization: Columbia University Lines: 320 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: merhaba.cc.columbia.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Sender: ajw6@merhaba.cc.columbia.edu In-Reply-To: Xref: trc.rwcp tnn.disasters.earthquake:468 fj.misc.earthquake:1371 VERY ROUGH DRAFT FEBRUARY 22 [THIS IS A DRAFT FOR A PUBLIC ARTICLE ON THE EXPERIENCE OF KOBE, LEADING US TO RECOMMEND A FUNDAMENTAL REFORM IN EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS, BASED ON AN INTERNET-TYPE OPEN SYSTEM. WE WOULD APPRECIATE IF YOU COULD SEND US COMMENTS, FACTS, CORRECTIONS, AND ANY OTHER OBSERVATIONS THAT WOULD IMPROVE THE USEFULNESS OF THIS ARTICLE. COMMENTS MAY BE SENT TO OR . TO BE USEFUL, WE MUST RECEIVE THE COMMENTS VERY QUICKLY. MANY THANKS.] KOBE'S LESSON: DIAL 811 FOR "OPEN" EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS Eli M. Noam1 and Harumasa Sato2 ___________________________________ 1 Professor of Finance and Economics, Columbia University, and Director, Columbia Institute for Tele-Information. Former Public Service Commissioner, New York State. 2 Professor of Economics, Konan University, Kobe, Japan, and Visiting Scholar, Columbia Institute for Tele-Information Tranquility and routine were abruptly shattered on January 17 in the Japanese port city of Kobe, when an earthquake struck at dawn, killing more than five thousand people and leaving many more homeless. The dazed survivors, together with their families and public safety agencies, immediately faced an information problem. What was going on? How could help be organized? What was the fate of their loved ones? A month later, we are able to assess how well modern communications and information technology helped in producing answers to these questions. The lessons of Kobe, as well as those of the less severe quakes of Los Angeles and San Francisco, are important for a world that is always at the edge of natural or manmade disaster. The basic lesson from Kobe is that the usual approach of disaster communications, traditionally based on military-style public safety agencies operating in a top-down manner and sharing information with "civilians" only on a "need-to-know" basis, should be replaced by an open-access emergency system -- open to inputs from a wide variety of public and private participants and with open to access to that information. Not only would such a system be more efficient as a tool of information and organization, but it would also be more resilient to the shocks of disaster. There are always two ways to protect vital information. One is to design and build elaborate and hardened technical systems. This is expensive, and will always miss unforeseen mishaps. The other approach is to decentralize the information system so that even if many of its parts are damaged the whole will continues to function. A historic analogy: in the early days of the American republic, important public documents were protected in archives and other storage facilities. Thomas Jefferson, here also ahead of his time, argued instead for protection by decentralization: "Our experience has proved to us that a single copy, or a few, deposited in MS in the public offices cannot be relied on for any great length of time. The ravages of fire and of ferocious enemies have had but too much part in producing the very loss we now deplore. . . This leads us then to the only means of preserving. . . that is, a multiplication of printed copies." Today, electronic information and communications technology makes it possible to organize emergency communications in a similarly decentralized fashion. To explore this approach let us look at the experience of Kobe, both the positive and the negative. 1. Phone networks are not easily destroyed. Service was temporarily interrupted to about [X %] of subscribers in the damaged areas, mostly due to power outages (285,000 subscriber lines), destruction of buildings (100,000 lines), and cut transmission links (about 100,000 lines). Above-ground lines were eighty times more likely to snap than underground cables. 3,400 dedicated lines were damaged. For long-distance service, the trunks of NTT, Japan's traditional dominant domestic carrier were fairly resilient, and re-routing reduced problems of cut lines. Among its competitors, DDI's microwave transmission proved robust, while those fiber links along the rights of way of Teleway Japan were temporarily cut because of destruction of the highway. One of the priority needs for service restoration were ATM cash machines and other financial networks. Survivors needed cash to buy food; credit cards needed verification; and interbank transfers were urgently needed. Almost 500 ATM host computers and terminals, as well as the system management itself, were damaged. Remote diagnosis was not possible, necessitating labor-intensive site-visits. The cost of destruction to NTT alone will reach $1 billion - including $400 million to reconstruct the network, $350 million to modernize it and $120 million in lost revenues. Following government guidelines, the telephone companies installed 2,500 free public phones, 350 free fax stations, handed out more than 2,000 free cellular phones, and set up mobile earth stations, videotext and voice information and information hot-lines. A 900-line for donations was used by 3,400,000 callers who donated almost $4 million in the next several weeks. As in Los Angeles, Japanese companies set up free voice mailboxes where callers to parties in a damaged building would reach and leave recordings. 2. Networks are not crippled by shock but by congestion. Because everyone was trying to call at the same time, nobody got through. Networks are designed to handle about ten percent of its subscribers at the same time. In Kobe, traffic volume on the first day was 50 times the usual peak, way above capacity; next day, network demand was still 20 times of normal. This is not a short term problem for disaster areas. Experience shows that the volume of calls stays much heavier than before for a long time. In most economic activities, increase in the demand while reducing supply in a scarce resource would lead to a higher price. But in a public emergency this would not be acceptable. In fact, phone companies tend to drop charges for many calls as part of their contribution to disaster relief. This leaves the problem of contingency planning: How to suppress less important calls? In the California emergencies incoming long-distance calls were blocked in favor of outgoing calls. In Kobe, NTT blocked 95% of incoming calls and gave priority to calls from police stations, government agencies, and public phones. Congestion quickly emerged when too many people called from payphones. Emergency service (911, known in Japan as 119 and 110) service received priority, but it congested almost immediately due to inadequate network capacity and an insufficient number of operators, and became a source of frustration rather than help. No network can be designed economically to withstand the gravest and rarest of disasters and congestions. This is not to belittle advance planning. Disaster mitigation meets the prepared. An emergency is no time to set up backup operations, fix a network, or create a database. Long in advance of disasters, the public should be educated on using telephones only minimally in such situations, and encouraged to pick a message meeting point. Collaborative agreements among otherwise competing carriers, such as exist in New York and California, should be reached and tested in advance. 3. Mobile communications proved enormously helpful in bypassing destroyed landlines. But they, too, were vulnerable and congested. In heavily damaged areas, one third of NTT's transmission towers were damaged or stopped working for lack of electricity. For some of the cellular companies, damage to towers was even higher. Emergency batteries proved inadequate. Adjacent towers often maintained coverage, but at the expense of capacity. And mobile networks were affected by the congestion of the local landline networks into which they interconnect, unlike amateur operators of ham radios that are self-reliant. Mobile traffic volumes were seven times greater than the usual peak loads. To keep traffic manageable half the incoming calls were blocked. Even so, it was easier for a caller in Tokyo to reach a party in Kobe by dialing a mobile number because these incoming calls were less blocked. 4. Television proved the big picture, often from the over- dramatized perspective of hovering helicopters, but not the little-picture details which people need. See TV networks could release only verified official information on the number of the dead and the magnitude of the earthquake, which, due to their inadequacy, delayed a public recognition of the magnitude of the problem. A Kobe congressman called several members of the Japanese Diet in Tokyo, pleading for a declaration of national emergency and the dispatch of troops, but was disbelieved for hours, because early TV reports were much less disturbing. In California, the usually much-maligned talk radio shows provided a tension-reducing two-way link and countered false rumors. In Japan, the number of calls to radio stations was large. FM Kobe, a local radio station, received 20,000 calls in four days. The public NHK radio and television station received 30,000 calls and responded to 11,000 inquiries in the same period. Radio has the advantage in that it can be easily battery- powered. (The humble battery becomes a critical commodity in emergencies. It seems impossible to have too many.) 4. A major lesson from Kobe is that computer networks and bulletin boards can be much more effective than voice phone networks once the immediate calamity is over. They are also more effective than radio and television for specific information. The advantage of computer networks is that messages need to be posted only once but can be read by many, and at different times. This facilitates coordination enormously. Also, network transmission time can be kept brief since messages can be written out before connection time, and downloaded rather than read on-line by recipients. In Kobe, the "Nifty" computer network, a national Type -2 (VAN) carrier backed by Fujitsu, and the trading company Nisho Iwa, quickly became a major meeting point. Nifty established a special earthquake bulletin board on the earthquake. During its first week, 5,000 messages were posted, and read by 140,000 people, with a total number of references [* ?] of 650,000. Usage of the board was free, and Nifty encouraged pledges of donations by matching them at the rate of 20 %. The donation collected on the network [* during which period?] amounted to over one million dollars. The first messages that were posted about disaster and transportation conditions. Soon inquiries appeared by friends and families outside of Kobe. Initially only few messages were sent by survivors since many of them had lost computers, phones, and power. Furthermore, the access nodes in Kobe and Nishinomiya were disconnected, and the local networks were congested. But some Nifty members soon reached an access point in an adjacent prefecture and succeeded in getting into the network. They had experienced the earthquake, or had arrived in Kobe and observed the devastation, and realized that broadcasts did not provide a full account of the devastation. 5. One of the most interesting things to happen in Kobe was the emergence of "information volunteers." These were mostly people living around or outside the central Kobe area who came into Kobe carrying their portable computers. They visited shelters, collected messages about survivors (some taken from handwritten notes attached to ruins), and sent out specific information about what survivors needed in various locations. Through bulletin boards, they created a meeting point between needs and help. They helped coordinate supplies among shelters. Later, they offered information about jobs, schooling, and housing. They obtained regional data about food, water, and hot bath opportunities, and put it on a regional map. Many of the volunteers organized themselves over the network. For instance, a Nifty forum for railway enthusiasts delivered a message "Let's meet at the Osaka station at 8 O'Clock this weekend and then go to Kobe to help people. Each member should bring food and other supplies for survivors." One software company volunteered and designed an information system to track and register survivors. It was ignored by official agencies, but received nevertheless 3-4,000 inquiries within one day. It is often feared that "unofficial" information is inaccurate and not updated. However, once the Nifty bulletin board information grew in volume, it tended to be self-verifying. While some messages may have been inaccurate, their sum-total offered a better picture than the official information collected in the traditional way. Since the sender of the message was identifiable and information was periodically reviewed by a Nifty monitoring committee, the messages on Nifty seems to have been generally informative, responsible and often quite interesting. [*example]. Feedback among network members, as well as messages of thanks by those benefitted, further encouraged reliability. 6. Government authorities are just as much at a loss in a catastrophe as individuals are. During the Los Angeles quake, President Clinton's early information sources were his brother and the TV news. In Japan, too, Prime Minister Murayama could not get information quickly. At its noontime meeting, the government still believed the number of dead to be about 200. To get a first-hand report, the military sent a helicopter to videotape the damage, but it lacked telecommunications facilities to send the recording to Tokyo. Most information travelled up the hierarchical chains-of-command of rival ministries and were slowly coordinated to assemble a full official picture. Public notification was correspondingly late and incomplete. Emergency communications often failed. At Ashiya fire department, only two telephones out of six functioned, so that most incoming calls got a busy signal. Fire fighters could not reach their own department, doctors, or hospitals. The usual response to problems of this sort is the call for a technological fix, typically the design of a still better communications system. Kobe illustrates the ultimate futility of this approach. Kobe's Prefecture had installed, at considerable expense ($80 million), a satellite communication system to connect it to local and national government, offices and public safety agencies. But in the crunch the costly system proved useless. It stopped working after three hours when the backup batteries overheated due to the failure of water cooling, which in turn required power. Also, the public safety organizations did not know how to take care of the system. For example, they had no training in how to adjust the angle of the satellite dishes once they had been upset by the quake. Only two calls were logged in on the entire system on the morning of the calamity. 7. None of this should be surprising. Governments usually get an incomplete and often slow picture from their field agents. Emergency systems can never be built to be fool- and disaster proof. It is time to learn from these experiences and revise the basic philosophy of emergency communication. Emergencies are no time to maintain the attitude of military-style emergency operations that keep information close to the official vest. What is needed instead is a robust, decentralized, and open physical information system where individuals and emergency workers can deposit and collect information about the state of their block, family, business, and whereabouts. Public safety agencies could send messages and instructions to targeted individuals, groups, or areas. All this could be accomplished by a new type of emergency information system. Such an "811" system (the number is available) would permit access to an emergency computer bulletin board information system on a priority basis, with automatic cutoff after a few minutes. There could be a schematic display of a city, block by block. Individuals, rescuers, and information volunteers would login information, which would also be available to distant parties. The system would give news organizations detailed information, link world- wide donors with actual needs, provide "how-to" information, and reach specialized data bases, for example about toxic substances. Certain information might have to remain confidential or private and would require special access authorization, but that could be easily accomplished. Of course, most people do not have access to computers, especially in an emergency. But once the immediate calamity is over and problems of coordination displace those of physical survival, they could call in by regular or mobile phones to receive and to leave information and messages, and talk to volunteers supported by automatic equipment. In Kobe, the beginnings of such an information system are being introduced by equipping shelters and other public places with access to computer networks. The Kobe city government joined the network by providing public information on housing, transportation, and schooling. A Kobe teacher posted messages and pictures. They were retrieved by a high school class in New York, which collected donations. Who could set up such a system for a city or region? Commercial and non-profit software developers providers would provide the shell that would be put by computer networks on the net; telecommunication carriers would provide multiple access points and links; information volunteers would adjust the system once a disaster strikes; municipalities, community groups, and volunteer rescue organizations would provide the basic municipal grid information which is the main expense. Unlike the 911 service (which would continue), an 811 system requires no costly operators on duty because it would not be a dispatch service but simply an information meeting place into which emergency agencies can plug in. What is important is that, unlike the 911 system, the 811 system would not be a one-way, top-down, communications system of civilians reporting to the authorities, but a genuine interactive and horizontal communications medium connecting citizens, their friends and relatives, and rescue efforts. The technology is available and affordable, the user base is strong and growing, and the time is here and now. ***************************************************************************** * CITI * 809 Uris Hall * NYC 10027 * phone 212 854 4222 * fax 212 932 7816 *