Transition from Disaster to Development through ICT

Author : Hemang Karelia
Date added : 2002-04-15

Brief Project Background

After the dreadful earthquake, persistent need was felt by all the three main agencies viz. Kutch Nav Nirman Abhiyan, UNDP and GSDMA (Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority) that the collaboration within these three organizations is must for information collection and processing. Usually the personnel from these organizations worked together and shared the information. But it was realized that this slows down the process and all of them are duplicating the same efforts. So it was decided to set up a joint information cell for these organizations with a clear and focused objective to speed up the process of information collection, collation, processing and dissemination. As a result Kachchh Rehabilitation Information Cell (KRIC) emerged. This cell is having the best possible team of professionals excelling in various fields like Social development, Management, Planning and architecture, Software development, GIS Technology, Computer hardware and networking.
The team of National UN Volunteers IT specialists were playing key role in KRI

Lack of right information was one of the awful aftermath of the massive earthquake, which hit major areas of Gujarat state of India on 26th January ‘2001. The epicentre of the quake was in Kachchh district, falling in seismic zone V, which terribly devastated the district. The UN response team rushed to Bhuj and set up an emergency office in a tent at collector office’s premises. UNDAC (United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination) team started to keep track of all rescue and relief activities carried out by various humanitarian agencies.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and United Nations Volunteers (UNV) planned to recruit National UN Volunteers to bridge the gap between the relief and development phases of the disaster.These UN Volunteers were supposed to liase with humanitarian organizations in the affected area through a network of local coordination units and assess needs in the earthquake stricken area, help mobilize communities, and establish partnerships for rehabilitation and reconstruction between development agencies.

I joined as the First NUNV in mid February and took the charge of the data and information related activities from then leaving UNDAC team led by Mr.Jesper Lund. A simple database was developed to keep track of all agency’s relief activities and for generating vital, user-friendly reports. The database was very useful as we were collecting the contact details, geographic area they were covering, area of activities, work accomplished and planned activities. This information proved to be very vital as this was the first intervention by us to redirect the relief efforts to some rural areas which were deprived of any assistance and prevent the duplication of efforts in the same areas.
It was very cumbersome to work with the bulk of information for the whole 950 villages of Kachchh and the only feasible solution we could think of was GIS ( Geographic Information System) technology which is very useful in rehabilitation and development work.Recognizing the potential of GIS technology , we brought such system from Remote Sensing and Communication Centre,the state govt. agency. This Gujarat Geographic Information System, was having approximately 80 pre-earthquake amenities per each village of 5 worst affected districts of Gujarat. The post earthquake attributes were added regularly to the system and updated maps were generated and distributed to the leading agencies including GO and NGOs.
To fulfil the urgent need of the information,we desidned and hosted a website http://www.undpquakerehab.org soon. This site started to cater latest reports, damage assessments, govt. policies, rehabilitation packages, minutes of important meetings, GIS maps etc., which attracted International donors, funding agencies and policy makers.Considering the insufficiency of internet connectivity at the important office premises at Kachchh, we started to disseminate the information updates in printed copies as well as on CD-ROMs.Mean while we procured a high end server and a highly sophisticated GIS software package for dynamic internet mapping which started to serve the query based dynamic GIS maps on our website.
Kachchh Rehabilitation Information Cell

To centralize all information related activities, UNDP , KNNA and GSDMA (Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority) decided to establish a single point information centre at Bhuj, capital city of Kachchh district. Our IT team of four UN Volunteers was instrumental in setting up and then functioning of “Kachchh Rehabilitation Information Cell” (KRIC).
Keeping long term development perspectives in view, UNDP and Kutch Nav Nirman Abhiyan ( a network of 28 leading member NGOs) felt the need of a centralized database comprising each Setu and village profiles up to beneficiary level. A Setu is a nodal point for facilitation for the rehabilitation process underway in kutch which works by establishing a link between the community,the government administration and the non governmental sector for a defined geographical cluster of 15 to 20 villages.The Govt. Has mandated Setu as Earthquake rehabilitation support centre . There exists a network of 22 such centers covering more then 360 villages throughout the district.
I along with NUNV Mausami Soni were stationed to KNNA, Bhuj for this mission. After analysing the situation and requirements, we started developing an internet database application, RIMS (Rehabilitation Information Management System).

Rehabilitation Information Management System (RIMS)

RIMS came in the existence to process the data of different sectors ( like shelter, health and education ) coming from different Sources (like GSDMA, SETU and Other NGOs) in the single relational database and to generate the different combined query reports and maps to distribute to any organization related to Kutch Rehabilitation Work.It was developed to furnish all Stake holders and setus through a centralized database connected to various setu offices and important govt. offices on a common network.

Objectives
1. To store, compile and analyze the data coming from the sources like NGO, Setu, GSDMA.
2. To generate the reports for various sectors( Shelter, Education and Health)
3. To generate the relevant maps with the reports as RIMS back end database supports two front ends (RIMS & GIS) simultaneously.

The vision behind this was to interconnect all offices including Setus, Govt. offices, other agencies to a centralized database and provide a common baseline for monitoring and evaluating the rehabilitation process and decision support to the policy makers. The relational database model developed for the system is adaptable to multiple data sources and generates versatile reports/maps.

To bridge the gap in coordinating activities of all agencies working for rehabilitation in Health and Education sectors, HEIMS (Health and Education Information Management System) was developed on the request of DDO(District Development Officer) and UNICEF. This system prevents the duplicate allotments of villages to concerned agency and provides latest status of health or education reconstruction in Govt. approved format. All agencies are authorized online to update their status on Internet.

Results

KRIC has been instrumental in providing IT consultancy ,support and training to all Setus and Govt. offices like collectorate , District Police department.
All these systems, RIMS, HEIMS, Contact system are hosted on http://www.undpquakerehab.org and updated regularly with the latest information .

Different applications developed at KRIC includes:

§ Development of http://www.helpindisaster.org to maintain demand and supply chain of resources on occurrence of any disaster.
§ Extended the RIMS system for other districts.
§ Designed and developed an internet application “Health and Education Information Management System” to assist UNICEF, Save the Children and other sector specific agencies.
§ Developement of “Plot allocation system” for randomising the allocation of Land plots to the earthquake beneficiaries.
§ Design and development of “Emergency contact roster” for contacting personnel based on their skill set, expertise and vice versa.
§ Development of ‘Project management system’ for monitoring UNDP’s undertaken projects and relevant office accounts .

Achievements
§ KRIC has the richest data bank in Kachchh, which is readily available for various organizations.
§ Developed a website for Disaster preparedness for GSDMA , http://www.helpindisaster.org
§ Prepared DDMAP (District Disaster Management Action Plan) for Kachchh district with the consultancy of Mr.V.G.Panvalkar which was inaugurated by Chief Minister of Gujarat Mr.Narendra Modi on 19th October ’01.
§ Developed a website for Kachchh Police department.
§ Provided technical assistance for Collector’s website.
§ The information is available on all the sectors like shelter, health, livelihood and handicraft, education etc.
§ The information includes damage assessment, relief and restoration and progress in rehabilitation and reconstruction programs.
§ The maps generated on various parameters has helped all the organizations including Government Bodies to locate the villages for sending rescue teams, supplying relief materials, managing survey teams for assessing damages and in various ways for rehabilitation.
§ The maps also helped to analyze damage pattern, spatial allocation for the resources and planning rehabilitation and reconstruction program.
§ KRIC produces various documents to help people of Kachchh and the organizations for technical guidance. Most of the documents are printed in both the languages Gujarati and English to help people and organizations. Updating database for permanent shelter from NGO’s at regular basis and developing different reports from them as (talukawise and NGOwise).

Lessons

Getting right information at right time matters a lot in a critical situations like post-disater relief and rehabilitation efforts. Employing Information Technology for disaster preparedness may bridge the gap between the demand and sources.Important resources may no more remain unutilized though available. Effective use of ICT speeds up the transition from relief to recovery and recovery to development. Vulnerability of multi-hazard prone areas can be considerably mitigated.

Development Impacts

The computerised networking of remotely located areas for data banking and information exchange can be projected to larger scale , so as to cover all relevant govt. Offices. Converging all important offices on a common information backbone can lead us to e-governance.
Currently The Setus have been instrumental in:

· Collection, compilation, and dissemination of rehabilitation information
· Coordination between the agencies involved in the rehabilitation processes
· Advocacy
· Village to village awareness campaigns about the scientific reasons behind the earthquake and other natural calamities
· Community based preparedness to such calamities through instructions on proper shelters, water management systems and such
· Local level training and construction that is seismically safe

These means created for disaster management and preparedness can be further extended to support govt. in their day to day work. IT provides new possibilities for public services and democracy. Governments, local and regional councils now have an opportunity to create excellent democratic platforms with on-line citizen services 24-hours a day, cyber-voting and on-line discussions between general public and politicians.

Project Information

Organisation : United Nations Development Programme
URL : http://www.undpquakerehab.org
Total budget in US$ : 25000
Country of activity: India [IN]

Are there any partners involved : yes
What is partners role?: Any organisation availing information services from this project can be identified as our partners. Data is collected/disseminated from/to all of such organisations/agencies.

Contact Information

Hemang Karelia
hemang.karelia@undp.org

Disclaimer: No stories on this website shall be reproduced or stored in any other retrieval system without the written permission of the infoDev/IICD. Although every precaution will be taken in the preperation and maintenance of this collection of stories, neither infoDev, IICD or the submitting parties assume any responsibilities for errors or omissions. In addition, no liability is assumed fordamages resulting from the use of the information supplied in the stories.