FINISHED TRANSCRIPT
EIGHTH INTERNET GOVERNANCE FORUM
BALI
BUILDING BRIDGES‑ ENHANCING MULTI‑STAKEHOLDER COOPERATION FOR GROWTH AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
OCTOBER 22, 2013
8:30 A.M.
WS50
POWER OF INTERNET FOR DISASTER AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL
* * * * * * * *
This text is being provided in a rough draft format.
Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided
in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may
not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
* * * * * * * *
>> IZUMI AIZU: Good morning. My name Izumi Aizu. I'm the organizer or coordinator of this session and this is my ACE IGF. How many people are the first time coming to IGF? Wow, about half. Welcome. How many has got all eight? Myself only. I guarantee there is no reward, no money, no nothing. More than three times? Not that many. Anybody last near in Baku? One, two, three, okay. Then I think without losing much more time, although I'm expecting one more speaker to come, but I haven't seen her yet. The title of this workshop has been modified. I added two words for us. Maximizing the power or maximizing the ‑‑ because the official submission, the number of words or characters were limited to 50, so I had to delete Maximizing The Power into just The Power of the Internet.
But original intention or intent was how to really make full use of the internet to deal with such large natural power for a disaster of any kind or the growing environmental or climate change. And actually we were asked two original proposals, one from my end and other from the ITU's end and we happily accepted that. So there are many, many organizers on the screen. Some of them sent their reps for speakers. Others are sitting behind the scenes or happily supporting us.
I'm not going to go into details. These are all on the website. The agenda of this session is divided into three or largely two sections. The first section is divided, session one and two with the two presentations for each subject, the first one Using the Internet and Big Data to Manage Large Scale Natural Disaster or Disasters, and the second is Using Internet‑Based Services to Manage Global Climate Change. And I asked the speakers strictly stick to the ten minutes of the presentation which would give five minutes for two in each slot of the question and answers.
We have the remote moderator, Sheryl Haristya. She volunteered and will try to read the screen from the remote hubs. If any question or comment comes up, you can signal us and in the appropriate context we will pick it up and add to our dialogue. And then if we manage this we will have 50 minutes for open discussion. The session is yours. Unless you come up with burning questions or interesting observations, this workshop will become very boring, I guarantee you.
So sometimes I ask you to take notes during the speeches. Don't think of the questions after the presentation is over, but while it's progressing. Especially for those first time comers to the IGF, we try to make it as interactive as the internet itself is. So, and if the session goes well, I will wrap up in five minutes. If not, forget it.
So this workshop will provide an overview of the use of internet based services and ICTs for climate change, adaptation, disaster risk management or reduction, and policy legal and regulatory frameworks, and then we may hear something interesting use of the big data, but most of these activities are actually guided under something called multi‑stakeholder participation. Government alone cannot deal with natural disasters.
Businesses are often asked to go support them. And a Civil Society may go to the site or stay behind and give additional supports as are observed many times. Likewise for the climate change, none of the Government has enough budget to deal with that, first of all, and we need technologies, we need technicians or academics on all of us. So that's why we felt this theme really fits with the IGF under the multi‑stakeholder discussion. So I would like to introduce some speakers today.
Here, Ms. Ambar Sari Dewi from Jalin Merapi. Jalin Merapi was established in 2006 by three community radios in the slope of Mt. Merapi, which is about three hours flight from here. It's a big volcano which erupted in 2010, and a few hundred people were killed, I believe.
But there were some works with the civil NGOs, and I think, so it's before the eruption it was formed. We will hear from her later. There is our second speaker is Fumi Yamazaki and she is the programme manager, developer relations at Google. You are sort of an evangelist. And before moving to the U.S. this year, she has been very active in supporting the ‑‑ how do I say? The recovery or rescue works at Google. And we will hear very interesting stories how Google and many people together try to deal with this issue, Japan earthquake and tsunami disaster that happened two years ago. I have also been working on that.
Now, we have Thomas Lamanauskus, the advisor on environmental change in ITU, Lithuania. That's a lovely country and hosted IGF three years ago. I was there. I'm expecting Ms. Nevine Tewfic, head of research studies and policy at the MCIT from the Egyptian Government. I haven't seen her yet. She is the first speaker so I hope she will come in time. Remote moderator is Sheryl Haristya. She is one of the main drivers of the IGF in the nation. Now, she is studying at Technology University.
And myself, I work for the Institute For InfoSocinomics. Don't ask for what it is. I have been working on this policy, on the governance of internet for 10 or 15 or 20 years. Without further ado, I'd like to give the floor to Ambar Sari Dewi. I hope this works.
>> AMBAR SARI DEWI: Good morning, everyone. My name is Ambar Sari Dewi. You can call me Ambar. I'm the under staff when Mt. Merapi in 2010 erupted. Jalin Merapi is a provision for telling and information in Merapi information network. For those who don't know the Mt. Merapi location, Mt. Merapi is located in three regions, Yogyakarta, Central Java and Macklango. It is in a very dense population.
The most dense is in Yogyakarta, and 200 people were killed when Merapi erupted. Mt. Merapi is one of the most active volcanoes in the world. It has specific behavior related to its eruption. So it didn't blow up like a bomb, but it just melted, it's lava just melted in a way, but they also ‑‑ I'm sorry, Mt. Merapi has in our language called pyroclastic clouds that are very dangerous for people because when it flows, it can reach speed up to 100 kilometers per hour. That's very fast. So the pyroclastic clouds are the most dangerous. They killed 200 people in 2010.
So about Jalin Merapi was established in 2006 by three community radios. Community radio and then the MMCFM and then KFM in Maclong. The three community radios that established Jalin Merapi was by people in Merapi because they wanted to inform and make people in Merapi to be aware of the dangers of Merapi so that they can be prepared for all of the time.
And also in 2006 the radius of pyroclastic cloud is not very wide, but when Merapi erupted in 2006 with its magnitude of eruptions and also the image it caused by Mt. Merapi, Jalin Merapi decided to use more of various technology, ICT, Information Communication Technology and media to inform and to distribute especially to distribute information to a wider public.
Next slide we will explain type of technology, type of ICT used by Jalin Merapi. Here is the summary of our ICT which is Jalin Merapi use. I have counted there are 14 types of ICT and media used by the Jalin Merapi. As you can see, we put it on our website. The website is combining all of the ID and you can tell Merapi by ID. We use community radio, broadcasting to communications radio, fixed telephone, SMS, and, et cetera.
Why we use different types of ICT I will explain in the next slides. As you can see in the table, we have different technology with different pattern and different user and content. The left row is the content and function. For example, two way communication radio, its format is audio and communication. We understand that the two‑way communication radio users is widely used by our volunteer and then by our police and military team or especially rescue team because of the users, and so the two‑way communication radio was used for team coordination and also we used it for live audio streaming source especially for television Merapi. On the other hand, Twitter or Facebook, as you can see, especially in Facebook we can upload and download text, a photo or videos with minute‑to‑minute communication patterns.
For your information, Jalin Merapi has four Facebook groups which consists of 250 people in it, so we almost have 1,000 members in our groups in four different groups, and with very wide range of users, from volunteers, displaced people, public, and then agency or persons who became, become a member of on Facebook group. So we have different content and function with the Facebook, so we use Facebook to update our latest situation.
Our volunteers use it for coordination between headquarters and coordination posts and sometimes the coordination between the people, agency or person. So why we use 14 types of ICT, because we know and we understand that different type of technology serves different users with its different content and function. Okay. At the time we have 45,000 followers at the time. We now have almost 55,000 followers.
We managed to distribute 4,000 volunteers during the eruption and after, and as you can see, this is a map of the world. And followers of television Merapi, most of them is from Indonesia and 45% from outside Malaysia. As you can see in Indonesia, 61% is from outside Yogyakarta. We learned that the followers was parents who worried about their children who go to college in Yogyakarta or sometimes children who have parents who live near Merapi worries about their parents' situation.
Next slide is Merapi on Twitter, I capture it from the research in 2011. As you can see in November, the number of Twitter is very high, and traffic of Jalin Merapi is very high also during the October to November. The big eruption is on 5th, November, and then popular words for volunteers about the team, about Merapi and Bosco, and also numbers. One more.
This is about the classification of challenge Merapi has. It has four categories with different hashtag that they collected. What can we learn from Jalin Merapi? We believe that public participation is very essential, but what type of ICT technology could engage public participation? As you can see that we have 14 types of ICT, so we strongly believe that it's not really enough to relay only one type of technology, so we have to conference it, because every type of technology has its advantages.
For example, two‑way communication radio is only two, audio and minute‑to‑minute, but when everybody wants to hear the information traffic by two‑way communication radio, it can be challenging. So different people in communities use different types of technology because in my, in our experience, lower, middle and lower class of society use Facebook more than Twitter because they think that Twitter is more complex and hard to understand, so they tend to use Facebook because they can upload photo easily and just type the status.
One thing, the most important thing is we know that it's not that new technology that matters, but familiar and widely use of technology that counts on disaster recovery. Thank you very much.
>> IZUMI AIZU: Thank you very much, Ambar. Sorry to rush you, but that's my function, not my personality. Just one quick question before moving to Fumi. Has the technology saved the lives of the people?
>> AMBAR SARI DEWI: Yes, it has.
>> IZUMI AIZU: Could you tell how or why?
>> AMBAR SARI DEWI: Yes, of course. Lives of people, okay, in my experience of Jalin Merapi and as administrator, we have one night we have men from our survivor, 6,000 arrives because they just moved from the peak of Merapi to the shelter at 9:00 p.m. at night and they haven't ate for a day and they want to eat before they get sick. There were 6,000 people there, and they need food immediately. And one of our volunteers called headquarters and she asked me how can we find 6,000 rice for the survivors.
>> IZUMI AIZU: The food, yes.
>> AMBAR SARI DEWI: And then we Tweeted in Twitter and in just one hour we can collect 6,000 food for the survivors.
>> IZUMI AIZU: Twitter was widely used via the mobile, I believe, and with youngsters, they made all of the breakfast the next morning for 6,000. I heard it was more than 6,000, but it may not.
>> AMBAR SARI DEWI: In one place, 6,000.
>> IZUMI AIZU: Because another friend of mine, Valence, told me also that they set up some FM radio station to share the early warning to evacuate. Otherwise, more hundreds of people would have been killed and in the second evacuation areas. So sometimes the technology works, but sometimes they don't. So Fumi, could you tell what you did or what they did after the Egypt great earthquake and tsunami?
>> FUMI YAMAZAKI: Okay. Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, my name is Fumi Yamazaki and I'm from Google and I will talk about the power of internet for disaster. As many of you may know, in 2011, March 11th, a big earthquake magnitude 9.0 hit Japan, and which ended with a big tsunami and power plant accident. So we as Japanese, not just me, not just Google, but a lot of people in Japan started helping and a lot of the technology industry people started helping using technology, and I would like to explain with four phases that we did.
So one is respond, rebuild, remember, and prepare. So the first, respond, right after the earthquake hit Japan, a lot of technology, engineers and web masters started working on what they can do while they were shaking in the buildings. And two hours after the earthquake hit Japan we launched something called person finder, a service that you can find people or you can tell people where they are.
And it was very simple, as you can see, I'm looking for someone, I have information about someone, and the launch speed was really important. And it actually helped a lot of people, but one thing that we learned is that in reality, in the places that has a disaster, people were not using the internet. So people are writing their names in evacuation centers and put it up on the walls. So they didn't have it, they just put the paper. It was very analog. And we can't search that.
So we quickly thought, we have to adjust to the reality of what's happening, so we had the people in these areas take photos of this paper with camera phones and upload it. We know they can't transcribe and they don't have a lot of power in the first place, so people all around the world including many in Japan, started transcribing and making it available on text searchable so it's not just the picture, but it's searchable.
When you do that, we were sort of like thought about would there be spans, like we are inviting all of the people in the internet to contribute to this project. We are initially concerned, but we just like thought we should go for it and what happened was there was no spams. Actually people started discussing is this A or B or some of them were very hard to read, but people started discussing and organically solved these problems and we thought it's really important to trust people in this situation.
And we had like 5,000 volunteers making 600,000 records of these names. It was incredible. It wasn't actually overnight because people were throwing information all of the time. It was a process. And the other thing that was interesting was that the police, the local Government, broadcasting, all of these companies or organizations had their own database of people, and it was not searchable in one shot. So we actually talked with all of the people so that we can put this data in Person Finder and when the users come they can search all across police, local Governments, mobile carriers, all of this information in one shot which is very powerful for the users.
So that was the respond part which I have three more examples, but let's move on to the rebuild part. Because after some time passed, Japan thought about rebuilding the economy, rebuilding the cities and recovering from the disaster. And in that phase, we started doing other things such as creating online presence and creating online businesses for the small and medium‑size business you. So it was not a web savvy area so they did not have eCommerce sites so we started helping them learn to get this started. We started something so they can learn the code, learn how to make applications, and make the next industry for the younger generation.
And the academia, local business and local Governments, all of these different people are focused on making this happen so we can recover from the disaster. So it's a very multi‑stakeholder type of effort happening in Japan. The other thing is remembering, as you can imagine, people forget, and it's really important that we keep the memories for the future. And this memory for the future in Japanese, and when you go to the site you can see actually pictures and videos before the tsunami and after the tsunami, but this specific screen shot shows you one same place which is on street view, so we had the cars go around and take the Google street view images before the tsunami which is the building is intact, and four months later when there is all of these rubbishes and then two years later when it was cleaned up.
So you can see in time phases how things changed and keep the memories. I think it's really important that we remember and until Japan recovers, we keep helping, we keep packing, we keep contributing. Hack more Japan is an organisation I started. It had community developers trying to use technology to help people. So we had a lot of hack‑a‑thons through disaster recovery. While Japan is recovering we will hack and continue to contribute. The fourth element we are doing is prepare.
As you know, Japan has earthquakes all of the time, and Tohoku which was hurt by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake. So they have, every 30 years they have a huge tsunami, so they knew it was coming and now that we have this huge earthquake and tsunami we know it's coming. So we need to learn from what we experienced this time and prepare for the next disaster because we know it's going to be coming.
So a year and a half after the earthquake we started something called project 311 Great East Japan Earthquake Data Workshop, that's a long title of a project, but what we actually did was we had a lot of data providers provide data. For example, Google, Twitter, newspaper companies so all of these companies and organizations provided databases on what they had from one week from the earthquake and led the researchers and analysts and everybody analyze these data so we can learn from what we did.
The actual data provided by these companies was travel roads data provided by Honda. So they knew based on GPS which cars were moving and which roads were blocked based on the GPS. Railroad operation information, real time population estimation, this is based on mobile phones. So you don't know where people actually are, but you know where the mobile phones are.
So they estimated that based on where the mobile phones are and how they are moving, they estimated where the population is in that area. And then used paper articles, TV summaries, all of these Tweets, data were provided so researchers from academia, bureaucrats and ministry joined in and started analyzing and journalists and hackers, all of these people got together to learn from the data that they had from the earthquake, tsunami any and nuclear power plant accident. I have 50 projects coming out of this research data.
I will just explain two of them. One is called project Hianu. It's made by professor Hianu. He wanted to know where the people were when the nuclear power plant accident happened. The reason is iodine has half‑life of eight days. So when the earthquake and tsunami and nuclear power plant hit Japan they didn't have the Geiger counters so they didn't have the data of what was happening. And after things had calmed down, it's too late because eight days have past. So they can't calculate how many people are getting all of this iodine radiation.
So what he did was getting all of the radiation stimulations overlapped with the human congestion data, the population data and tried to figure out how many people, especially youngsters, were there based on this data. And his ultimate purpose is when this younger generation gets cancer in the future, they can get this evidence as a proof of the radiation and cancer without the victims have to prove that there is a causal relationship because otherwise they have to prove in order to get compensation from the Government, so getting that bill into the Government is actually his purpose.
The second example is ‑‑ this is the last one. The second example is called media coverage map. This is done by professor Wataagi. He took the data from mass media where mass media was reporting based on TVs and newspapers and where the social media was reporting. So you sort of see the gap between what the mass media was saying and what the social media was saying and what they were missing. So it's sort of like, you know, energize that they can know where the gap is and start thinking about how to fix this mass media coverage.
So that was the second example. And last thing I wanted to say is so many people from the global community helped Japan recover and respond and we would like to thank you for supporting and I think it's our responsibility to share with you what we learned and so that we can be, like, together we can make the world a safer place. Thank you.
>> IZUMI AIZU: Thank you, Fumi, what are your continued efforts going forward?
>> FUMI YAMAZAKI: So the recovery part is actually, you know, it's not there yet. We are continued effort to recover is the biggest thing, I think. Are you going to be speaking about the Conference? So there is a Conference, ongoing Conference that is talking about how can technology contribute to the disaster and we are still discussing, learning and sharing.
>> IZUMI AIZU: Unfortunately people often start to prepare after the big disaster they experience, which happened in Indonesia after 2004's tsunami. There is another organisation lead by Mr. Valence Ratoi which is not part of this room, started to fly into areas with Wi‑Fi and there were recent eruption cases. Now, I think I would like to open the floor for about five minutes if you have any questions or comments, any comments from the remote participants? Net yet so far. Okay.
>> Hello, my name is Jenny from the University of Toronto. My question is what's your opinion on privacy when this data is used for emergency response? During the disaster, a lot of things the priority sort of changes, whether getting privacy information, like name of the people on the paper on the walls, like usually you don't put people's names on the walls, but because you want to find people and its priority for a lot of people, I think it's a combination between what is important, what is priority in that situation? For example, Person Finder, when we had the launch and people were still trying to find people, we kept the site launched or live.
When the importance decreased, we took down the site so it's a balance between what is important and what is the privacy concern.
>> AMBAR SARI DEWI: We really protect the privacy especially for our victims. And, for example, when there are pictures of people who really have blood and everywhere, we send protest to the media. But in origin and emergency situations like in my slides as you can see, we have to put mobile telephone number so that they can in one way and another we use it to verify and to make sure the information sent to us is valid so that we can verify the information, but the private data from our volunteer and from aid agencies is only for us, and if someone wants to know and see it, they have to ask for permission first.
>> IZUMI AIZU: Thank you. One more question?
>> Good morning, my name is Zola. I'm with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I'm curious, you gave a long list of some of the stakeholders you used to disseminate the information, and I'm curious if you thought about using public libraries as an access point for this? They are often connected to many of these stakeholders, they have access to the technology as well as trained staff to help people use the technology all the way from getting on line to doing the coding, and they are trusted by their communities.
>> FUMI YAMAZAKI: I think the public libraries, we are doing things as well, but even the libraries were hit by tsunami, and then from far away, they were not very involved. Although the national library of Japan, I think they had like an archiving project that they were doing. So in different dimensions they were doing things, but in terms of immediately getting that information, they were not that responsive in that aspect.
>> Is there more that public libraries could do to work with you in that situation?
>> FUMI YAMAZAKI: I think so, yes.
>> IZUMI AIZU: My colleague or friend has organized one thing called safe MLACC, Museum Lively Archives and Community Centers all together in the divested areas. However, the penetration of public libraries in Japan is maybe one‑tenth of that of the U.S. or Canada. They are not that much outreaching to the people. So it's different country local situation has different weights for these public institutions.
>> FUMI YAMAZAKI: I think tapping into libraries makes sense, but there is a limit to what they can do in technical sense. So in most libraries they were not tech savvy so they can contribute although there is certain levels of contributions.
>> IZUMI AIZU: One more, I said, five minutes, but it's getting a little bit more, and, please, indulge with us, one more quick question.
>> DON HOLLANDER: My name is Don Hollander from PIP and my question is what do you do if the infrastructure, if the link to the internet outside of your community fails? So in terms of the issue in Indonesia, if you lose your off island link, do you have enough robustness to keep your local web servers up and running?
>> AMBAR SARI DEWI: Okay. In my experience maybe my friends from Jalin Merapi can also help me to answer, we have help from as Izumi said, from places who were the satellites, the facade to prepare the internet infrastructure in the shelter, but that's why we don't really rely on internet actually. That's why we have 14 types of ICT because we understand that when disaster occurs, we can pick which one, which technology that really should work with the situation, current situation at the time. We know that two‑way communication radio is very effective and then the mobile phone SMS is really effective until we can set the internet infrastructure. We can do it in immediate time.
We need to, we need days to set up the internet connection, but during the time, we still have to inform people at Merapi in what happened in the situation. So that's why we use different types of technology.
>> FUMI YAMAZAKI: To add a little bit of ‑‑ so I think there is three layers, mobile, and phone it was mostly done. And the internet, it was flaky, but sometimes alive and sometimes like dead. So internet was a bit more useful in that sense, and then there is a web server type. So the local Government's web server went down because they didn't expect access normally, right, and then they had a huge amount of access when the disaster happened. So there was a lot of efforts to back up the Web servers of local Governments and keep it running so that people could get access. So there is several layers about getting the connections.
>> IZUMI AIZU: From what I heard from Valence in Indonesia, the Government is preparing 200 vehicles with satellite dishes to be there in the community and once disaster happens they will become sort of hubs. They not only have the proper antennas, they have web servers, mail servers, printers, engines, generators, so it's sort of self‑sufficient vehicles that can be moved from the non‑affected areas to the affected areas relatively quickly, which I haven't seen many other countries doing that.
>> FUMI YAMAZAKI: Japanese minister of internal affairs started doing the satellite connections after the earthquake.
>> IZUMI AIZU: But Japan has similar idea, but means of finance, we don't have the money for 2,000 vehicles. Without further ado, I would like to move to the second part of our session if you allow us while the speaker is preparing, he is Mr. Thomas Lamanauskus, advisor on ICT environment and climate change and International Telecommunications Union or ITU. ITU has been fairly active in dealing with global climate change. I actually sort of co‑proposed this workshop on the climate change and internet in Kenya's IGF.
Before that, they organized a big symposium in Japan. And they are trying to deal with some data centre thing and the consumption of energy and something like that, but I think Thomas will give us much more detailed things and because unfortunately we don't have Miss Nevine Tewfic is she in this room? No. So you have slightly more than ten minutes, fifteen if you like, a bonus.
>> THOMAS LAMANAUSKAS: Thank you very much, Mr. Moderator. I'm from the International Telecommunications Union. I'm humble to speak now after hearing these examples of people who worked on the ground and responded directly to disasters. We just try to think of ourselves as the people who do the helping. So it's not that glamorous, but I think that's actually sometimes good to think of the broader picture, and as we cannot do the preparation after the disaster, but do the preparations before it happens and also to think in the longer term, especially when you think about climate change, and also how we can mitigate that now rather than wait until it becomes something that it brings more disasters.
So, of course, disasters is not something we can totally avoid. And we can see we can do a lot about that. We can prepare, mitigate and then try to respond, but it's very unlikely we will be able to totally avoid. So we need to find ways to use our resources and make the necessary actions to kind of make losses as least as possible and we can recover as soon as possible.
In terms of ICTs, and I wouldn't surprise anyone here to demonstrating the ubiquity of the tools we use ICTs for everyday life. It's not only in developed world, but developing world basically now every number of mobile devices reach the number of the people in the world. And we have a broadband penetrations also increasing even though we still have 4.4 billion people, which who are unconnected, and that's a bigger challenge. So it's outside the narrower topic of this discussion, you know, how we make sure that those tools are available for everyone because many of those people actually ‑‑ many of the disasters happen actually in the places where people do not have their tools to respond.
So also to some case examples show that especially in the places this is the media that people like, want to use and need to use when they want to communicate to their loved ones and want to broadcast to the world what's happening when a disaster strikes. That means that it's not, you know, this is a clear demonstration that we need to be prepared also to use that technology because people are there.
So then some of the simple examples, just a demonstration examples, why it's important to talk about internet, and why it's important to talk about data, networks and disasters because some of the example here shows that in some cases networks can provide more resilient way to provide help for disasters when internets are clogged. Networks can actually provide ways to inform other people and to communicate on certain areas faster and this is just one example of that.
So we need to talk about that. So just a bit now, back to the bigger picture, so what is ITU and why we care about this topic? It's a United Nations agency for ICT covering radio communication and covering development. As you will see in presentation, when we talk about this topic all of those different areas come together when we need to respond to disasters and to climate change.
We had 193 Member States and we also have 700 private sector members and 63 academia members. It's not only about Member States it's been cooperation of various stakeholders. And this is just some examples on this slide that I will expand further how we also, we have capabilities and we do respond on the spot, you know, when the events happen.
And we do provide equipment to the countries, and including air time, and like in 2012 we had an organisation in Cape Verde, and we do respond to countries in need when the disaster strikes. And we also have, you know, we help the countries to prepare for emergency, to have emergency plans. From our radio, from the perspective of radio communications, so ITU's work is general worldwide coordination of the user allocation of radio spectrum, and in that context also radio spectrum that is used for climate monitoring or climate change prediction for also census.
So everything wireless and radio needs to be coordinated and that usually happens on the very highest level happens in world radio conferences, the next one we have in 2015, and then, you know, it happens regional radio conferences and it's further developed in standards and implemented into Member States and countries. This is crucial to make sure that those devices can work and those devices can be allocated.
Also in this context, to use the depository of information and people know about that that allow countries to use equipment easier and specially radio equipment easier when disaster strikes, and especially when we talk about bringing equipment from overseas. So it helps multi‑stakeholders through the disaster timeline establishing the baseline, establishing risk analysis, monitoring the warning and assisting as we said directly.
So we have, so wide use, a lot of work in ITU is being done through so‑called study groups. So that means the groups that Member States and other stakeholders are sector members are called which is private sector members and academia meet to develop standards, develop recommendations, and then to find ways how that could be best implemented.
So where you see ICT this is ITU or ITUDBT is development sector so we have specific study groups that deal with the locations for disaster relief and early warning, network resilience and recovery. We have five which is climate change and some of that is covered in study group on security. Study groups are 17. We have in the development sector a study group that deals with emergency preparedness especially of developing countries.
Part of our work is also, part of ITU's work is also international telephone numbers so coordinating the numbering scheme worldwide. So that part of the work related to disaster recovery is assigning country code 888 to OCHA which can be used for equipment during the disaster time when all networks, country networks are down and communications need to be very quickly rebuilt and re‑established.
So now I'm on the resilience and ICTs and climate change. So first of all, we have as well questions so‑called study group 5 which is working on that, and our standards, so‑called sirus L standards, look at both, how to reduce climate change effects from ICTs and how ICTs could help reduce climate change in other sectors. 2% versus 98% question or before it was 1% versus 99% question, which is because ICTs currently contribute 2% to the climate, to the greenhouse gases. At the same time they can have an impact of at least 15% reduction in other sectors, in the 98% sectors so sometimes it's a balancing act and we can say, okay, greenhouse gas emissions might increase and various predictions, but maybe up to 3.5% isn't bad, but if every increase means we decrease much more in other sectors, maybe that's worthwhile taking. It's always about balance and having a big picture.
And our work takes both. Also our study group 17 has standard which deals with security, common alerting protocol that is XML based data format and protocol allowing exchange of messages and alert public and that's important in disaster environment. We have focus groups which establish in the study group which are more flexible instruments to have a discussion on new topics and to find and identify what are the new things that need to be discussed and sometimes standardized or reflected to.
So we have study group of disaster relief, network resilience and recovery and smart sustainable cities that looks at various issues that (Lost audio). They have power, so they can be used for something else as well, so the work we are doing together with UNESCO, International Oceanographic Commission, so we establish a joint task force which has more than 18 internationality experts from various fields and this commission looks how those cables could be equipped with sensors and be used to actually do the work in the climate monitoring and disaster reduction.
>> IZUMI AIZU: Three moments.
>> THOMAS LAMANAUSKUS: Thank you very much. And how that could add more work. We have five groups and topics. We have so far issued three reports and strategy and road map for that type of work and engineering visibility for this type of tables and legal framework for deploying them. So we have next, so this year, this assembly in Lima, quite a few activities in Peru on ICT and climate change and smart sustainable cities and our study group 5 meeting.
Next year in 2014 we have UNESCO, ITU and UNESCO sustainable cities. If you want to hear more about climate change side, there will be not so much disaster, but climate change side, tomorrow morning same time will be the meeting of international climate change and those standards which are briefly mentioned will be discussed in much more details, and also, you know, you can ask even further questions on that.
So way forward. So we need to ‑‑ this work, as we said, it requires inclusiveness, and as our moderator very nicely started, not one stakeholder can deal with that and respond to those challenges. We need Government, private sector, Civil Society, we need everyone on the ground and everyone responsibility to help themselves. So what some people can do is just to help people to help themselves so we need to work together in that regard.
We need participation and political commitment. We need strength of national corporation and especially in terms of sharing experiences just from workshop who participates and we see the value of seeing various examples and we need to bring in some discussion on these best practices and both in disaster relief and climate change.
So thank you very much. These are some of the links to discover more information, what ITU is doing in that regard, and feel free to talk to me after that. I can share my contacts and connect to my colleagues that have more details if you are interested in very specific area on that. Thank you very much.
>> IZUMI AIZU: Thank you very much, Thomas. Before going to Q and A with you, is there anything from the remote participation? Not much. Maybe it's too early for Europe. Too late for the U.S. or Americas. I would like to ask you if you have something to share in addition to your questions or comments, please be prepared. So after finishing this short question and answer session with Thomas, we will open up the floor. It's not only question and answer but sharing best practices and knowledges or other activities. But first things first. Any questions to Thomas? Question.
>> Thomas you speak very quickly and I have very old ears so I listen slowly. But you said 888 which is a magic number. Tell me more about what that is, please.
>> THOMAS LAMANAUSKUS: So thank you very much. Yes. You are not the first person to note that deficiency of mine. And so I will try now to just to explain it on this specific topic. So 888 is ‑‑ so 888 allows OCHA so ‑‑
>> IZUMI AIZU: Which is Office of Coordinating Humanitarian Assistance.
>> Which is UN agency for disaster management.
>> THOMAS LAMANAUSKUS: It's an agency that coordinates other UN agencies. On the field when they respond to disasters or respond to emergencies, whenever assistance is needed. Every UN agency including ITU, world food programme, UNICEF, when they work on the ground in any multi‑stakeholder assistance is needed on the ground, it would be held by Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance to make sure they all work together that they don't step on each other's toes when needed and they can do the work in the most efficient and effective manner.
So number 888 means, for example, when you call Switzerland, you dial plus 41, and then you dial the national number. I haven't checked the number for Indonesia, but so every country has a national ‑‑ so Indonesia is plus 62. So 888 means, and OCHA establishes on the ground when the disaster happens so their numbers would be plus 888 and the number they assign to the specific device that they could coordinate and establish network on the ground.
That allows them to establish network on the ground quickly without reliance on national coordination system and national metrics. So that allows them to come with their equipment, set up the network and start communicating. No. This 888 number is the number of the public network. It's international public network number so that allows access from the public networks.
>> So if there was a disaster here, you would not plug into the local phone company. You would have your own network here that somebody could just call plus 888 and get you.
>> THOMAS LAMANAUSKUS: This is a complimentary of that. If you are able to use local networks, you request use that and there is a lot of work done on resiliency of local networks to be able to respond in disasters and to prioritize calls when disaster strikes. This facility is a separate or complimentary facility given to this UN agency so that if they cannot rely on the local networks, they can bring in the equipment and respond. Once the local networks are again available, they can use local networks. So this is let's say the way to say if something is, you know, if we have a situation where local networks are not there, you cannot respond. This allows them to bring the equipment, start communicating quickly and then start rebuilding the, start rebuilding on the ground.
>> By then establish a dynamic numbering plan underneath that country code? So I will decide I'm number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and John is 2, 4, 5, 6, and Walter is ‑‑ so it's a dynamically established numbering plan.
>> THOMAS LAMANAUSKUS: I will explain difference. What ITU does so I don't overstate my expectations about my own expertise. What ITU is we give this number and give this facility to coordination for humanitarian assistance. How they do the numbering with agencies, that's their responsibility and their ability.
>> When was this established? I'm sorry. It's Norel Clacky from the Internet Society. I should have said that first for the record. I'm curious, when was this number issued?
>> THOMAS LAMANAUSKUS: I would have to check that.
>> So my next question is how broadly have the surrounding networks, the rest of the world networks been conditioned to accept this relatively new number?
>> THOMAS LAMANAUSKUS: So, now, I'm happy to follow‑up on this question.
>> I will look it up then.
>> THOMAS LAMANAUSKUS: But just again to understand how the numbering works, generally on this type of coordination activity, so once ITU assigns that number, so it means this number is internationally accepted number. That means operators need to route calls to that number, but how is then established in physical terms that is then for the implementing agency to do.
>> I'm a telecoms engineer.
>> THOMAS LAMANAUSKUS: I'm a lawyer, so.
>> IZUMI AIZU: If I might just squeeze one quick one, at the WCIT last year, it was agreed we would adopt an international emergency code and I was wondering how the rest of the panel felt about the concept of using, you know, harmonized system, you know, one telephone number or one packet based number or some such for distributing information or signaling that I have an emergency.
>> Just, a clarification with what agreed and the WCIT because the difference between that and this is that the numbers that were agreed are harmonized international numbers so this is the same number you can dial in every country, but who will pick up that number is very different, it is a local agency that will pick up the number. So this number, this number, just quickly, this number is something that's specifically assigned to the one agency, so this is a bit of a difference.
>> IZUMI AIZU: WCIT, World Conference on International Telecommunications hosted in Dubai debated a lot of international Telecom relations whether including internet or not was an interesting topic, but that's off topic in the room. Thank you.
>> My name is Tushu ‑‑ Academy of Science. I have a question about information security. As Thomas mentioned, you have different study groups under the ITU, so about different security issues. So my question is on the internet you have different information from different source, many, many information providers. So do you have dedicated study, especially on the information validation or authentication of information provider because many, many people would like to publish for a result about earthquake or something else or some information you cannot discern the accuracy. So do you have a study especially something in a study group on this?
>> THOMAS LAMANAUSKUS: so, in terms of the specific documents, now, that will be adopted and I'm not aware of that in this moment, but I can follow up. But in terms of process definitely study group 17 sector is a proper place to discuss that. And sector members and academia are four members so we would invite your organisation, especially if you are, I would have to check if you are ITU member, but we could find a way to bring that topic into our discussion. And then with our other membership to actually move forward that process to ‑‑ so we would welcome those topics that are very actual and important to be brought into the discussion and agreed internationally.
>> IZUMI AIZU: Thank you, Thomas. And thank you all for the questions and your presentations. Now, I would like to shift the focus to the entire presentation or subject of workshop, how do we use the or maximize the power of the internet or largely the ICT to deal with natural powers, i.e., the disaster or climate change or both combined? Any take? Any burning comment, question? Yes, sir. And we don't have too much time, so be mindful of how much you say.
>> Hi, Breken from New Zealand. So one of the things that's been happening in New Zealand is we have had earthquakes and local emergency response groups are focusing on what to do in future cases, but one of the things we have been discussing a lot and I have been talking to them in some of my other roles has been the idea of disaster response being more than the day after or the week after, but also how fast you bring communities back up to standard and happy and doing what they were doing beforehand. And I think that's probably one of the areas where the internet can be even more useful and we do have that issue that it goes down and gets all bogged up on the day after and there is all of this other stuff that happens, but actually, like, the internet we can get back pretty fast and then looking at what we can do in the space of getting people communicating to helping each other really pushing resources around in the local community as being in some ways more key than the immediate making sure there is water and food on the day of.
>> So we have got a set of things in Wellington that are happening about sort of building the community experience beforehand, getting people meeting the neighbors, getting all of that data so they are empowered to connect with each other. I have got some involvement in geo based alerting and reporting stuff to say that stuff is there, that stuff is there, that kind of thing, but I would be interested in doing similar.
>> FUMI YAMAZAKI: I think that is one of the topics that is discussed globally because in Japan, we had the earthquake and we responded ‑‑ which would be a team of people who would respond to the next one and we have the forces now, but, for example, in New York when sandy hit, New York City group was organizing right after. And right now two weeks ago, there was a hack‑a‑thon called hack for good hack‑a‑thon so it was in 20 cities around Kathmandu and New York, San Francisco, around the world, and they were trying to get the community so that when something happens we can respond. And although there is nothing happening now in terms of disaster, people are getting together so that they can get ready to use their technological skills to respond to these incidents. So I think that's one topic that is discussed around the world and a lot of people are studying it.
>> Hello, my name is Miguel Wood, Australian IGF Ambassador and my apologies, I was not able to participate in the whole meeting, so this might have already been covered. You probably heard in the news there is a lot of bush fires in Australia at the moment. It's very worrying situation for many people. In Australia we have the Australian Government has developed a Common Alerting Protocol, a CAP, which is a standardized system allowing consistent way of transmitting emergency messages.
And it's an XML based system. It can ‑‑ it means that broadcasting can be done over different media, radio, TV, and it can be presented in a way that means that, for example, deaf people, if there is sign language involved, it can be preset messages to assist with that. So it's quite a useful system for the whole community. And as I said it's an international standard. It's been adopted in Australia, Canada, Sri Lanka has done some trials and I'm interested if there is other countries who are looking at the common alerting protocol?
>> THOMAS LAMANAUSKUS: So this is one of the protocols that we, so it was mentioned also and just for the benefit of other people on the slides, it's based on ITU recommendation X1303, but in terms of specific implementations, I don't have that information at the moment, so I have to come back to you on that, but we could connect.
>> JUAN MANUEL ROJAS: My name is Juan Manuel. In Colombia I work with early warning systems. I want to share a case where the importance of the data integration for the community is it very important. You can have seismic risks, you can have rain, flash floods, landslides and you need to have all of the information together. How can you make it some models, some numerical forecasting to help people?
>> IZUMI AIZU: Anybody on the panel or? The room?
>> FUMI YAMAZAKI: Can we clarify the question? Are you trying to get the data of the people or get the data of, like ‑‑
>> JUAN MANUEL ROJAS: Yes, data from many variables, not really one, like in your case was seismic, in his case was metallurgical but the integration of that information.
>> If I may there are two ways or two schools of thought for this. One is to have some common framework or standardized ways before it happens, such as CAP or other areas ITU has been working. To put it to some other extreme, perhaps, is ad hoc or flexible thing that Google and others coordinate on the fly. I think these are two complimentary ways not contradicting, but I invite your comments on this.
>> FUMI YAMAZAKI: So one thing we do at Google's crisis response page is we have like a map that can overlay gasoline stations or weather information or shelter information, where are the shelters, because they brought up ad hoc and the hospital information. So there is overlaying, like various data in one shot, and if you go to the crisis space, then you can, you know, select which data you want.
So we are already doing it when things happen, you know, we collect data and then map it. So I think we actually have the infrastructure for that.
>> By we do you mean Google or community?
>> FUMI YAMAZAKI: Google does have the infrastructure for that. And, for example, when the recent typhoon happened we scrambled to get the web site up and we had the data up. We did a lot for the Sandy as well. So when something happened we collect data and make it visualized so that people can find the data that they want.
>> There is open street map people who often prepares the platform of map and most people ‑‑ or they invite any information related to the disaster to be shared or using GIS technology.
>> FUMI YAMAZAKI: Open street map as well Aushuhiti and these people are crowd sourcing all of the information so that it's going to be visible. So there is several projects going on.
>> After the round of emergency, you sometimes discuss what worked and what didn't, and then you try to set up another framework for the next round.
>> FUMI YAMAZAKI: Right.
>> IZUMI AIZU: Internationally there have been several efforts, I believe you may be involved with. How many people, I would like to ask you, were really concerned about the disasters to come to your local community or your house or your, please raise your hands? Others are just ‑‑
>> FUMI YAMAZAKI: Who knows where to evacuate if this venue is hit by tsunami now? Do you know?
>> IZUMI AIZU: This building go upstairs, I think. But where I'm staying, I checked it out. It's scary. It's a two‑story building is not quite enough, but there is some evacuation or emergency staircases I found, and we can go to the top of the roof. Whether it's enough or not we don't really know. Those who went to the third floor of some cities in Japan didn't survive. If you had the fourth floor and up, they did, but that's for the particular tsunami. There is no guarantee for the next one. I just wanted to see the sense of. I will give priority to those who haven't spoken, so please.
>> From Sri Lanka we did some of the earliest CAP trials particularly multilingual trials after the 2004 tsunami. And from the Lanka Foundation there is a comment to the previous question which is we have spun off Sahanu as the disaster management software that has been even used in Manhattan. And that's another ad hoc approach. The idea is that the disaster managers in the various areas would populate it with the relevant information before hand ideally, but in many cases that doesn't happen.
What I would like to raise here is this general idea that the internet is resilient, the internet is robust compared to everything else. That may be true in the developed countries, but it's not necessarily true in some of the developing countries. Particularly you take a country like Myanmar or Bangladesh where until recently there was only one international cable linking Bangladesh to the world, an under sea cable, a very long one. And Myanmar is linked by sea maybe three. Something happens to that, you can say goodbye to internet activity because in the end the bits have to travel through something.
So with SCAP we are looking at doing a mapping and I believe ITU is also involved in this, mapping of the existing fiberoptic cable connectivity in the region, looking at the gaps, looking at the vulnerable points, looking at what can be done with some relevance to disaster issues, but also looking at it in terms of essentially moving the underlying physical network to more for mesh configuration that will involve both under sea and terrestrial components which we in Asia do not seem to have. We seem to rely excessively on under sea cables so I thought that would be relevant to sort of an underlying element to the whole question of optimizing the use of the internet. Thank you.
>> IZUMI AIZU: Just to take advantage of being the moderator who holds the Microphone. From what I heard in the September 21st earthquake that hit Taiwan in 1999, the under sea cable was cut off. Say few hours, eight, nine hours after the quake, not immediately, because it's the after quake, which cut off all of the traffic of at least Malaysia and Singapore for a few hours or even to a day. That's 10 or 13 years ago. But in the case of the east Japan great earthquake, very few lines survived actually between Japan and the rest of the world and those inside Japan.
They were lucky to have one or two lines and they were scared and a few days after with all of this problem with the nuclear power plant, the fuel was another problem. Many ISPs and data centers were trying to get additional fuel to run their generators because there is not enough electricity.
So if the demand goes up, you need to prepare the supply, and the demand curve is getting high for ICT. And how about to prepare the redundancy of the supplies is another question. But, okay, I'm sorry, I need to give the floor to you again.
>> You mentioned before about evacuation, and going to the third floor. Well, if electricity is cut and you are a wheelchair user I'm not exactly sure how you are going to get up there. And this is a problem when it comes to disaster risk planning that often people with disabilities have not been included in those planning processes. And in this region, for the first time disability was included in the Fifth Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction. It was last year. So there needs to be increased data in regard to how systems should operate and where people with disabilities are located and how the systems would work in regard to people with disabilities.
And any end to end early warning systems should really include people with disabilities in their planning. And also including disability organizations in the actual planning processes I think would be important as well.
>> IZUMI AIZU: Any comment from the panel on this matter? I saw you and him so please wait. You have something Thomas?
>> THOMAS LAMANAUSKUS: Something very quick. It is very topical, very important topic and I think for ITU, we are well placed to look at both sides because we have a lot of ‑‑ we have a separate two events of accessibility of ICTs and IGF and to discuss how people should, how ICTs could include people with disabilities and how ICTs could, how people with disabilities can access ICTs better. And in that regard, we also recently had an event on October 11th specifically in ITU specifically in looking at disaster management to preparedness for people with disabilities.
So just kind of bringing that and this is a topic that is really important. We can come back and we welcome further discussions and we can talk on that further afterward.
>> FUMI YAMAZAKI: Just a quick comment, so when the disaster happened in Japan, there was two discussions. One is can technology help people with disabilities evacuate, and the other one is can we get the community back? Because a lot of places have community separated, and when you actually have it, like, getting somebody who would help you, like old people, disability people evacuate is very important and in some of the really like places that really needs cars to operate like go wherever, these places were really like near the ocean, but they evacuated everybody and nobody was died although it was hit by tsunami because the community was really connected. Whereas in other places, people just didn't care and some people were ‑‑ so that's one thing.
The other thing is about after the disaster happens, so people go into shelters and they are sleeping in shelters, right, and some people can't speak, so when they are asking, like, does anybody want food or lunch or whatever, they didn't hear. So they couldn't like voice up, and also some people had specific like diseases or not diseases but traits that but they can't be vocal so they didn't know.
So what happened in Japan was a volunteer group went to do an assessment of each person about, can you speak or assessment of what is a trait that we should be careful about? So that used to be the community function, but because everybody evacuated to somewhere that you don't know where everybody else is, like who they are, so that was another thing that happened. I'm sorry. I'm talking too much.
>> Hi, everybody. Let me introduce, my name is Tiiki, I send messages for IGF from Indonesia. I might have one comment and might be one question. Regarding the question that was raised from this gentleman just now about how to respond to the emergency in the very first time, I came from ITU, I was born and raised in Achi. Even though I was not there in 2004, but I managed to get home on the third day after tsunami. So what happened, and I share some experience. Yes, on the first, second and the third day maybe technology was not there.
So why? Because we never expected this kind of disaster to happen. We have been living there for ‑‑ well, we had earthquake but not as bad as this. I was in Malaysia at that time and what I heard because of connection, because we don't have any communication at that time, what I heard was just a big flood. It's not tsunami. It was big flood. But when I got there on the third day, I found out that half of the city in Ben Achi was already turned down, destroyed, many facilities destroyed.
So technology at that time was really not there. So what happened was everything was conducted manually. So even for me, I have to find family, I have to go one by one, finding camp to camp like that. All manual. So it takes some time for technology to be set up, to be back up, right, at least one week, four days to one week. So, yes, so I was wondering, is there any ‑‑ during this time, during this, the first, second, and third days when the immediate response needed do we have any standard protocols for the relief workers, how to coordinate or how to communicate using very minimum technology? If the information is there, then it's easier for us to communicate with the rest of the world, but when the technology is not there yet, maybe, I don't know, if we have something. Thank you.
>> THOMAS LAMANAUSKUS: So, of course, admitting that my overall expertise is not overall disaster relief, but on that specific fact I think from our perspective what we try to do a few elements. First of all, to make sure the technology can reach people as fast as possible, can stand for a Convention that allows equipment to be brought from overseas much quicker and cooperating with local authorities much quicker. Hence this example for specific codes for office of coordinating humanitarian assistance.
So that's kind of one part of that. So making sure the technology reaches people much quicker. The other thing is there are different technologies, and in that way, for example, now, radio communication sector, we make sure that when radio spectrum is coordinated. So it's one thing, mobile networks and it's ubiquitous but sometimes we can rely on mobile networks so from ITU we coordinate spectrum and spectrum is allocated for specific emergency needs and for response agencies that they could use special, their own radio devices and own technologies that are more resilient and better protected.
And then the third level, of course, which is basically on the country level, country level, but we assist the countries is specifically to have the networks more resilient and be more prepared for the events that happened. So from my personal experience because there was a regulator and policy advisor at least in two countries who are prone to disasters, one in the Caribbean and one in the Pacific, so the national coordinating effort, the national preparedness effort plays a big role.
For example, about fuel, so whether there is enough fuel, whether the operators think about that. And some can wake up much quicker than other operators and whether coordination among the local operators or what level, you know, whether they need to rebuild the network separately and can coordinate that. These type of elements play a very important role. This is a national level, but ITU is happy to help and advise on those topics on a national level if needed.
Thanks.
>> IZUMI AIZU: Thank you, Thomas. We have two more minute. So maybe one final question.
>> MICHAEL KELLY: Michael Kelly from the American Bar Association task force on Internet Governance. And also professor of international law of Craton University. I have a book coming out on the international law of disaster relief. One of the questions we keep running into is the problem of sovereignty and sovereignty barrier. Myanmar and Cyclone Nargis was the example where we ran into where the government refused aid and caused hundreds of needless deaths. If the Government forces are deployed to block the ports and airports from receiving international aid, can increased internet activity between Civil Society elements within the victim state and international disaster relief groups be an answer to the sovereignty problem if they identify alternate routes of international aid delivery and go around the Government that is resisting aid? Does this solve that problem? Potentially?
>> THOMAS LAMANAUSKUS: It may take five minutes to answer. I'm not sure if it's the best place, but everyone, colleagues, maybe to your question, we are working with the Member States so Governments are our counterparts so we assume that the Governments want to help their people, and then our role is to, if they don't, our role is to work with them to, you know, to help them understand that they need to help their people.
But, of course, what was said in the very beginning, this is multi‑stakeholder effort, so we think it's always good if there are other, you know, whatever works, you know. And whatever works to help people is good.
>> IZUMI AIZU: I think I need to wrap up if I may, but before doing so, if you have anything, Ambar, being the local host in Indonesia. Microphone?
>> AMBAR SARI DEWI: No.
>> IZUMI AIZU: You are so humble. For me, you spoke a bit much so you don't have too much. But it's always the case that when we deal with disaster related sessions and climate change sessions, people who have real direct experience often tend to want to share a lot because they have such a devastating experiences and lessons to share. I'm sure many of you have the same experience, myself included. To me, this is sort of third or fourth time organizing this workshop around the disaster, one at APRIGF in Singapore, that's in 2011, another one in 2011 in ‑‑ I don't remember where it was, Vilnius or at the IGF. This is the most well attended workshop somehow. So I really thank you.
Maybe partially because being in Indonesia. Indonesia is well known for many disasters, but also I feel very strongly that Indonesian people have been working very hard to deal with it, especially using the ICTs, both in the prepared manner as well as ad hoc to answer to the last question, what I heard from my friend, again, was right after the tsunami he went there with Australian flight. He was specially asked to go there being the ISP member with some technicians with Wi‑Fi, but they coordinated different Telecom mobile operators to come up with single number four digit to be used for anyone to share any information as a bulletin board whereabouts of your family or, you know, question or, you know, this Person Finder using mobile with text message only, which didn't happen in Japan because the mobile operators couldn't really coordinate as fast as they should be.
So after awhile, they started to discuss maybe it's in place now. So but in any case, that's the national level, but to go beyond, one of the motivations, particularly myself, have been trying to organize this is the lack of international coordination, at least to reach a level of sufficient to the next really catastrophic disaster. We had a lot of help support came from outside Japan. The Japanese side were not really ready to work together, including translating, for example. So I found right after this large scale disaster, we really prompted to motivated to do some work together one year, two year, three years, five years it's going to reduce. Of course, if another disaster comes up and you are motivated again.
But I would like to see a little bit more sort of concrete efforts to talk to each other, but also set up some kind of framework beyond the intergovernmental body, not because only this is IGF, but some kind of larger scale disasters are so bad that no Government of a nation can really deal with the people. That happened in Japan. That happened in Ache. That may happen to your place next. So that you need real, you know, people power to help the Government as well as help the victims.
I think I'm talking too much. If anything else burning to come up? Otherwise, with my great thanks to the speakers and I would like to close this session.
Thank you very much.
(Applause).