The state of Kerala is in the midst of dealing with the worst floods ever after relentless rains, and the toll on human life as well as property has been tremendous. At last count, 147 human lives had been lost in seven days. This just seems to be the newest chapter in what seems to be a constantly unfolding steam of natural disasters, both in India and around the world. As the human element grapples for survival, there is a tendency for chaos, incorrect information and sometimes even complete information blackout having a detrimental effect on the rush for safety as well as the subsequent rescue and relief process. That is where technology can play a huge role, including the smartphone in our hand.
1839 Coringa Cyclone. The Coringa Cyclone was one of the 10 big disasters that shook India,struck at a tiny village of Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh. The Great Coringa Cyclone killed around 20,000 people in the ancient city of Coringa. Aug 20, 2018 Kerala has 223 deaths have been reported and 10.28 lakh people are staying in 3270 relief camps, of which one lakh are kids below 12 years of age.
Perhaps the most powerful, and perhaps the most accessible tool in these times, are the social media platforms. Facebook posts, Twitter updates and WhatsApp groups can be used to get information across quickly and to a large demographic. From Kerala, we saw numerous tweets from people who were stuck in homes and schools, calling out for help, by sharing their location and coordinates. Rescue teams, who may be monitoring particular keywords and hashtags at that time, would be able to pin-point the location quickly. The same goes for Facebook too. With WhatsApp, it is more of the community, the people you may know or the people who may be in your locality, coming together to help, inform and support.
Google has activated the Person Finder tool for Kerala, which can be very useful if you need to find a loved one who you are unable to connect with at this time or report any information you may have about a missing person. The Google Person Finder page is currently activated for the Kerala floods and the Japan rains. The page also suggests that Person Finder is tracking around 14,800 records, at the time of writing this.
Kozikhode-based Qkopy is a social networking app released earlier this summer. Qkopy is playing a very critical role in getting information out to people stranded in the still flooded parts of Kerala, or attempting to know about the current status of flooding, waterlogging and traffic movements, for instance. You need to save the Kozhikode City Traffic Police phone number (9497975656) in your phone, and the Qkopy app will send you instant updates as shared by the police. These are one-way communications alerting users about the areas that are safe to visit and areas that should still be avoided. The app is available for Android and iOS devices and is free to download and use.
Despite allowing people to call out for help, technology does face significant challenges as we speak. Power failures post a natural disaster means that your medium of getting your message out to the world will last as long as its battery will allow. And you may not necessarily be able to charge your phone, for instance, for quite some time once it dies out. Then there is the issue of last mile connectivity. In the case of floods, mobile network towers as well as internet service lines also go silent once their battery packs run out, or the power supply to them stops. In many cases, the network infrastructure itself can get severely damaged during the natural disasters.
According to data released by the World Economic Forum in January, more than 700,000 people died as a result of disasters between the years of 2005 and 2014, and 1.7 billion people were impacted globally. China suffered the most disasters (286), followed by the US (212), Philippines (181) and India (167).
Globally, a lot more technology is being deployed in times of natural disasters, not just to identify the vastness of the impact, but also for rescue and relied and subsequently for the clean-up and redevelopment.
California based OneConcern is building what it calls a disaster-intelligence platform. This relies significantly on artificial intelligence (AI) and can help emergency management teams understand the impact of disasters such as floods and seismic activities, to help them plan and prepare better. The key to this is the advanced modelling of the city’s infrastructure, which then provides real-time impact updates, cascading effects of every hazard and possible recourse. The detailing of the human element is extremely fine too, including how many people are estimated to have visual impairment, how many are senior citizens, how many are from a low-income group and more. OneConcern’s solutions are being used by the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco. The modelling includes man-made elements such as infrastructure and buildings, natural environments including local geology, climate and vegetation as well as live data including weather and on-ground monitoring.
While OneConcern’s solution may require smarter infrastructure and demographic data which may not be available everywhere, unmanned aerial vehicles can come to the rescue instead. These flying machines, also known popularly as drones, can be used to map terrain more effectively particularly in inaccessible areas, allow authorities to assess damage in real time or monitor a rescue mission, provide greater feedback with mapping and imagery and the more powerful drones can even be used to move items from one point to another. These cost lesser than a traditional helicopter mission, can be deployed in terrains which may not necessarily be the most usable and can be automated to do certain tasks as well. If infrared cameras and advanced listening systems are mounted on drones, they can be used to hunt for hints of survivors from beneath tonnes of rubble.
Technology can really be useful when it comes to getting all the help necessary. The result of all this would be simple—more human lives saved. That perhaps makes all the investment in the new tech, completely worthwhile.
Progress in a World Bank-funded project to mitigate cyclone risk in states along the western coast of India has been “moderately unsatisfactory” largely due to poor performance by Kerala and Maharashtra, according to a World Bank mission report from September.
![Kerala Kerala](/uploads/1/2/5/6/125659081/910620474.jpg)
An estimated 178 fishermen from Kerala have reportedly been missing at sea after the state failed to issue adequate warnings to fishermen to stay away from the sea as Cyclone Ockhi passed through the waters off the Kerala coast. Large parts of the Lakshadweep archipelago, which is not a part of the World Bank project, were also devastated in the wake of the cyclone last week.
As of September, Kerala and Maharashtra were still drafting detailed project reports and conducting environment and social impact assessments, the report said. If the works are not tendered by April 2018, these states run the chance of not completing their work by 2021.
The National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project is a project with the Government of India, the National Disaster Management Authority under the Ministry of Home Affairs, the National Institute for Disaster Management and participating coastal states.
The project began seven years ago in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, where the international finance institution funded the building of roads, cyclone shelters and saline embankments along the coast. This phase was to be completed by the end of October, though Andhra Pradesh may get an extension until March 2018 after delays caused due to its bifurcation in 2014.
The second phase, with a planned budget of Rs 2,361 crores, of which the World Bank will contribute Rs 1,881 crores, shifts the focus to states along the western coast and to West Bengal. This phase began in 2015 and is still in the planning stage. Kerala has committed to building 27 cyclone shelters under the project, while Maharashtra will build 11 cyclone shelters, 50 km of saline embankments and underground electrical cable works in three districts.
According to the report, West Bengal, the only eastern state to be included in this second phase of the project, and Gujarat have tendered more than 50% of the planned work and begun to implement them. Karnataka and Goa have also issued tenders to build cyclone shelters.
Cyclone map delayed
There are other delays in the World Bank project, including a comprehensive risk atlas developed by RMSI, a geospatial data company. This atlas was meant to “provide a risk management framework for decision makers in the 13 States/UTs [Union Territories] and the Central Government to take mitigation steps to protect the people and assets of the country.”
The atlas assessed the vulnerabilities of different areas to cyclonic winds and flooding, and to the storm surge that frequently accompanies cyclonic storms. According to RMSI, 40% of India’s population lives within 100 km of the coast, and only a fifth of India’s coastline is not exposed to cyclones.
Six months ago, RMSI transferred the entire project to the government-run National Informatics Centre server. The government was supposed to open up the atlas to the public at that point, but this has not yet happened.
An expert involved with the project who asked not to be identified said, “The site was transferred to NIC [National Informatics Centre] servers about six months ago. Right now access is only available with [National Disaster Management Authority] through password protection. It has not gone live. It should have by now.”
The authority had, as of October 2016, given usernames and passwords to the participating states, the World Bank report said.
Cyclone frequency
The RMSI atlas classifies states into different levels of risk based on the frequency of cyclones in that region, the number of people living there and how well those places are able to manage disasters. States on the western coast – except Gujarat – and the Union Territory islands of Lakshadweep and Andaman and Nicobar are less vulnerable to cyclones than states on the eastern coast.
As Cyclone Ockhi shows, this does not mean that they are immune to any cyclones at all.
Ockhi began to develop as a deep depression at around noon on November 29 near the South-West coast of Sri Lanka. This rapidly turned into a severe cyclonic storm as it passed Kerala on November 30 and battered the Lakshadweep Islands over the next two days as a very severe cyclonic storm. It then moved northwards towards Maharashtra and Gujarat where it reduced in intensity into a depression and then to a low pressure area over South coastal Gujarat by the morning of December 6.
Cyclones typically pass over the Bay of Bengal far more frequently than over the Arabian Sea. On average, the Bay of Bengal has experienced nearly six cyclones each year since 1891, according to data from the India Meteorological Department. By contrast, the Arabian Sea experiences only an average of 1.5 cyclones each year.
Since 1891, however, there have been five years where the Arabian Sea has seen more cyclones than the Bay of Bengal. Four of these have been after 2000.
Anger in Kerala
On Sunday, members of the fishing community blocked Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s car when he visited Vizhinjam, a fishing village near Thiruvananthapuram. They claim that the state did not do enough to warn fishermen on November 29 – when the cyclone was still forming near Sri Lanka – not to venture out into the sea.
Officials in the Kerala Disaster Management Authority attempted to shift blame to the India Meteorological Department, which they say only issued a fishing advisory and not a cyclone warning on November 29.
Sekhar Kuriakose, member secretary of the Kerala Disaster Management Authority, issued a press statement on December 1 claiming that the Met department could not have issued a cyclone warning on November 29 because the cyclone was still a deep depression till noon on November 30.
Kuriakose did not respond to an earlier request from Scroll.in for an interview.
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