Hazard Networking and the design behind it.

Any disaster be it natural or man made, puts people in a dangerous situation. This, danger, usually brings out the flight/fight response in us, humans. Most people run away from the hazard so as to save their lives and then there are some people that run towards the hazard so as to save other lives. These people that run into a hazard to save lives are usually trained professionals like first responders, fire fighters, EMT & relief workers. Then there are also people who are stuck in the dangerous situation and need help badly. They can't move to safer grounds and constitute the affected population. These people need to coordinate among themselves and ensure survival until help in the form of trained professionals arrive.

These two groups of people depend on communication and coordination so as to help and be helped.
Communication and coordination are the two critical elements upon which a community can provide their rescue, relief and rehabilitation efforts. Yet, sadly these two elements that fail regularly. There are many instances of communications failure like phone calls being restricted by phone companies, CB radios are incompatible and do not work across agencies and so on. Coodination among rescue teams and victims are also lacking. Situational awareness are provided using social media which is inadequate and the data is not trust worthy.

 In this post, I talk about how today's technology has provided a solution for the failing communications & coordination in the form of Social Media for Emergency Management (SMEM). Then I talk about the main design philosophy of Hazard Networking which, I feel is a better way to solve this problem.

Today, almost everyone is aware of social media because almost everyone uses social media. We all know the obvious uses of social media. However there are some innovative people that push the boundaries of social media and use them for situations that they are not designed for. Like people using twitter & face book during emergencies and .Social Media for Emergency Management (SMEM) today is pretty popular.

The following picture shows one of the ways SMEM is used.

Here is how the SMEM process works:

• Lets say a city is flooded due to a typhoon/hurricane. 
• People that are affected by the storm, take picures in their mobile phone and post the pics in a social media platform like facebook or twitter. 
• These pictures are then sorted and tagged by a group of  volunteers. 
• These results are then summarised in the form of a map.
• This map is then presented to rescuers and relief workers. 

Here is the problem with the above mentioned SMEM process:

• These trained professionals do not trust the data from the SMEM process. 
• The data has been created by victims, sorted and tagged by untrained volunteers for the consumption of professionals trained in Emergency situations.
• The process is one sided, linear, static and slow. 
• There is almost now communication between first responders and victims. 
• The victims are left to fend for themselves as they cannot communicate with each other. 
• Also, they do not have any situational awareness of their surroundings. 
• They cant ask for help and even if they are in a position to help, they cant really know if any one needs their help.

Now lets see if Hazard Networking provides a solution to the above mentioned problems.

The above picture shows a high level design for hazard networking.

Here are the main features of Hazard networking:

• Trained professionals from different agencies can create their own networks that are closed to outsiders 
• Trained professionals create data for other trained professionals ensuring integrity & trust of data created.
• They can communicate among themselves using voice similar to a CB radio over internet.
• Actionable information, social networking & situational awareness is provided using the maps. 
• Laymen are part of an open world wide network. 
• They can communicate using a similar CB radio over the mobile internet.
• They can coordinate using the location based social networking format. 
• The data that they create on the map can be used by trained professionals as a supplement to their decision making.
• People can ask for help and people that can help, is aware of who needs help.

We are working on a program that implements Hazard Networking.

Resquology, the Hazard Networking platform : High level Features

To understand what this platform will do, let me use the construct of the different phases of a disaster to better explain what resquology will perform.

The four phases of disaster are:

1. Mitigate - Identify the hazard and take preventive measures to mitigate the impact
2. Prepare - Plan for & practice various scenarios where the disaster is unleashed
3. Respond - Send relief to the needy and communicate with the world
4. Recover - Try and restore some normalcy to the affected areas.

Mitigate: 

Volunteers and various stakeholders identify various hazards and take the necessary preventive actions. 

Also, people needing assistance (the disabled and the elderly) will be identified in a way that protects their privacy but at the same time, providing the much needed information to the relief services about their condition and location. 

A simple user interface that marks ("pins") their location in a map, a sort of like a SOS message on the google map. This 'SOS message' is sent to the relief agencies and they get a list of all the people that might need help. The SOS message also acts like a notification to the rescue agencies and this can trigger a task list like "transport the person at this location to the relief location #1". This SOS message can 

Prepare:
Sizeup: how big is the problem and how bad is the problem

Planning is hierarchical and happens in two levels. Intially, locations are identified and at each location, victims are identified. For each identified location and based on an estimate of the casualty, a high level planning is performed. Then for each location, a lower level planning for the identified & triaged victims is performed. The triage category assigned to the victim is the single most influential factor in planning. 

Scenario Planning:

Various stake holders plan for possible scenarios. 

Various resources, personnel and locations will be inputted into the system so as to plan and execute.

Mock drills will be conducted to study the possible weaknesses of the planned relief efforts

Each and every personnel will have assigned tasks and will perform relief efforts as per the plan

Communication between all the stakeholders will be through Internet based CB radio that can transmit voice, text, pictures and video.

Situation information will be updated and available for easy access.

Victim identification feature will enable tracking and helping victims that need help 

Self Protection Information:

Stakeholders will put in the self protection information for the affected population. 

This information will be broadcast to the affected population within seconds of the confirmation of the disaster

the affected population will refer to this self protection information and take necessary steps to protect themselves and others

The self protection information will be of two kinds. The first self protection information is for preliminary and unconfirmed reports. Then when the incident & event has been confirmed, a more comprehensive self protection information is released.

Respond

Event Identification: When an disaster event happens, people notice it. When people witness the live event happening they enter information in the system. These can be unconfirmed and preliminary reports coming in. The symptom(choking) identified by the people along with the proximity of a likely hazard (large chemical tank) will trigger the self protection information inputted earlier during the Prepare phase. 

Symptom Identification

People also notice the symptoms of something drastically wrong. The symptom(choking) identified by the people along with the proximity of a likely hazard (large chemical tank) will trigger the self protection information inputted earlier during the Prepare phase. 

Confirmed Event Identification: Emergency Manager confirms the event, reviews the plans and changes it if necessary and then triggers the plan execution. Plan execution starts and  resources are dispatched to locations. This is a macro level plan. Every resource be it a doctor, First responder, an ambulance, or a helicopter will be notified with a list of tasks to perform. Then at each location, victims are identified and now the resources and personnel are planned around the victims. 

Affected Population and the Concerned Population: They can communicate with each other using voice, video or text. If anyone needs help or attention from the first responders, they can send a SOS notification that will be sent to the planner or the emergency manager. This ensures that no one is left unhelped or uncared for. 

Worst Industrial Chemical Disaster in the world - Bhopal, India

Bhopal is a city in the heart of India. It had a Union Carbide plant that manufactures the pesticide Sevin using Methyl IsoCynate(MIC). The chemical MIC was stored in large tanks, and there were 6 safety features that were supposed to keep the chemicals from spilling over into adjacent communities. On the night of December 2, 1984, water somehow flowed into the MIC holding tanks causing a reaction that would blow the tank and release 40 metric tonnes of MIC into the atmosphere. All the six safety features failed to contain the release of gas. The poisonous MIC gas escaped killing many thousands of people.

People were sleeping when the gas was released and they were woken up by coughing. The emergency workers lacked information or knowledge on what to do urged people to flee, but were not given a direction in which to flee. Many ended up fleeing towards the Chemical plant that was spewing MIC.

The acute symptoms were burning in the respiratory tract and eyes, blepharospasm, breathlessness, stomach pains and vomiting. The causes of deaths were choking, reflexogenic circulatory collapse and pulmonary oedema. Findings duringautopsies revealed changes not only in the lungs but also cerebral oedema, tubular necrosis of the kidneys, fatty degeneration of the liver and necrotising enteritis. The stillbirth rate increased by up to 300% and neonatal mortality rate by around 200%.

When MIC was released, the best emergency protection was to lie down on the floor, with a wet piece of cloth covering your head and face. This critical piece of information was not available to the people in Bhopal or the emergency workers. This information would have saved thousands of lives but was unavailable at that time. The world's worst chemical disaster would have been minimized had people known that information in time.

Critical life saving information provided at the right time to the affected people, will save lives. Hazard Networking lets emergency coordinators in various industries, storing hazardous materials, provide critical life saving information before an industrial accident happens. This timely and actionable information will automatically be released to the population and can save their lives.

London Bombing - Communications Failure

Londoners will remember 7/7 for ever. On this day terrorists detonated bombs on London's underground trains and a bus. These coordinated acts of terror killed 52 people and injured 700 people. Due to the coordinated nature of the bombings in quick succession, telephone networks were overwhelmed,  organized emergency response were uncoordinated and more lives were lost in the ensuing confusion. To add insult to the injury, it started raining right after the bombing.

In emergency medicine, there is this term called the 'golden hour'. This golden hour refers to a limited time window within which, medical intervention can help save a patient's life. During this very crucial golden hour, ambulances were dispatched to incorrect locations. Emergency personnel's radio network failed to work. They were unable to contact their main operations center and hence their response was not as effective as they hoped it to be. Telephone networks (both mobile & land lines) were overwhelmed as the volume of calls increased more than what the telephone network was designed to handle. In such situations, telephone companies start blocking "non-essential" calls, allowing only the emergency calls to go through. This stunted the communication and response even further.

Personnel from different first responder groups like fire, police & ambulance were not able to communicate with each other or with the doctors. They were also not able to locate each other physically and were unaware of each others locations and activities. Also, passengers in the trains that had been bombed were not able to communicate with the train drivers. The passengers had no means to communicate with the train drivers. Even the train drivers were not able to communicate with each other as their radio antenna was damaged by the explosion.

Situational awareness which is very crucial for dispatching necessary resources to affected patients was compromised due to the communication failures.

There were 6 major hospitals within half a mile of the site of the bus bombing. Yet, some hospitals were handling very high patient volumes where as some hospitals did not get any patients, resulting in an inbalanced distribution of patients. Ambulances were not dispatched to the proper locations due to the failure of communications.Despite communication failure, the heroic efforts of doctors, first responders & police helped save many lives. The relief efforts would have been effective had the communications network functioned as planned.



Instead of relying on CBradios and telephones, a much better solution would be to use internet based communication technologies. Also, proper software platform that provides HazardNetworking would have helped identify, study & respond to the crisis. It would also have provided much better Situational awareness  during the crisis.

Hazard Networking: Social networking for a hazardous world

Social Networking for a hazardous world......Lets, let that sentence sink in for a moment. It does sound paranoid, doesn't it? It does sound like fear mongering, doesn't it? I can assure you, that it is not some made up term designed to feed into your fear and paranoia so that I can sell you something. Instead, It is based on a need. A basic human need. The need to survive. The need to rescue and be rescued. 

Today's population increasingly uses one of the Social Networking platforms to improve their social lives or to spread a message. Also, people seem to try and use these platforms when in a dangerous situation or a disaster situation. These social networking platforms are meant for enhancing relationships be it casual or business. They are not meant to be used in a serious life threatening situation. They are not designed to save lives or help out a community in an emergency. They are designed to increase the outrage in a population after an event occurs. They are not designed to pass timely, meaningful and actionable information that can save lives. 

Hazard Networking has been born out of the realization that today's social networking platforms are not designed to handle neither  communication or networking in a life threatening situation. 

Hazard Networking informs people of the hazards in their environment so that they can take meaningful actions to mitigate the danger due to the hazard. 

Hazard Networking helps the First Responders, doctors and government agencies to help them identify an ongoing situation, analyze the affected population and to mobilize the necessary resources to save lives.

Hazard Networking provides effective communication between Emergency Managers, Relief organizations, Doctors, First Responders, Affected Population and the Concerned Population.