Narayan NeupaneITSERT-NP

GENERAL SECRETARY

Emergency Calls Handling in Nepal

7th April 2016

EENA Conference

Prague, Czech

Information Technology Security Emergency Response Team Nepal

Emergency numbers in place

100 (Nepal Police )

101 (Fire Brigade)

102 (Ambulance)

103 (Traffic Police)

1098 (Child Help )

197 (Free Call Enquiry Service Managed By Nepal Telecom through which any Caller can make a call and get the required emergency number )

PSAPs are managed by government authorities, answered by the entities assigned by the authority themselves,

There is no central body to coordinate among the agencies thus no supervision is made.

General information about Nepal

Land locked (Located Between India and China)

3 Geographical Reason- Himalaya, Hill and Plain reason

Population : 28,349,062 ( CBS)

Area : 147,181 km2

Population Density : 180/km2

75 districts , 7 provinces

Primary Official Language is Nepali

There are many languages based in community

Emergency calls handling system model

Caller calls in respective numbers

in emergency , mostly preferred

for 100 (Police ), Police

coordinates for other PSAP with

respect to the type of

emergency

Dedicated telephone lines

separated , and entities are

assigned to respond the callers.

Users can also report using

Mobile app named Hamro Police

Immediate record keeping , and

response to the Quick Response

Team is maintained by Nepal

Police

Number of PSAPs

Every district has their respective PSAP Centre for Police (100), Fire

(101), Ambulance (102), Child Help (1098) ( i.e 75 districts 75*4 = 300 PSAPs )

Landline or mobile users get connected to the local PSAP Center

through the emergency numbers

In case if mobile user of location X is roaming to another location Y

he/she will be connected to the location X

The ambulance service has maintained through a web portal

nepalambulanceservice.org for ambulance services

There are Hospital and community based ambulance services.

Level of emergency service integration within

control rooms

Every emergency services are isolated and do not share resources (software , buildings )

Separate departments established under different ministries (police and fire brigade are under ministry of home affairs, and Ambulance under the Ministry of Health.

No automated integration system , but can intercommunicate upon such events where collaborative response is required.

During earthquake 2015 April , Police and health workers team jointly worked for the rescue operation , in which communication was done manually.

Police are well integrated with Fire Brigade services , while user calls for such emergency can well manage to the rescue operation

Emergency call statistics

Police report ~900-1000 calls per day , tentatively 300-400TH

calls yearly, out of which ~10 % calls are observed as hoax calls

Fire calls observed more in dry season than the rest, it is reported

that 20-25 calls are received on daily basis out of which 8-10

(~40%) calls are hoax

Ambulance services are operated under community basis and

some of are from Hospitals thus data gathering is difficult

It is observed that largest calls are received at the evening time

than rest of the day as per the statistics from the police

Hoax Calls

Hoax in a sense are calls made with wrong information or

unnecessary calls, which required no response/action,

Hoax callers are tracked and made aware about the proper usage

of emergency numbers

No direct punishment has done till date.

There is no Policy to punish for Hoax call

Call-handling

Calls are received within a minute and call takers take enough time to hear the complete information of the incident from the caller,

Trained workers receive the call and respond according to the emergency situation, concurrent record keeping is done

The responders are dedicated to respond the emergency situation/incident .

Police has maintained the Control Room Vehicle (CRV) with GPS , after emergency call they will dispatch to the nearest CRV vehicle ,

No such guideline or legislation by law , but they have set their own policy to respond as soon as possible , preferably within 5 minutes of the call

The mission of the call taker is to receive the call and forward it to the dispatcher

Call Handling …….

The training for the call takers is done internally selected from the most convenient

The radio operator trained are preferred for call takers but due to

insufficient manpower, the educated persons within the authority

are trained and recruited.

Call takers have their own protocol , they will give the pre arrival

instructions,

Call takers are not dispatchers but forward after they get the information

More than one in a shift are multilingual , call takers when get calls in

different language hand overs the call to that particular call taker

Police in Capital City has got 24 persons in a shift and they divided in

3 shifts a day for call handling.

Transfer of calls and data sharing between organisations

No such system integration to automatically share / transfer calls to

other organization, thus manually calling approach is in practice,

In such case , call is routed within 5 minutes

Data sharing between PSAP of the same organization is not

managed , but seeking for managing by central database system

soon

As there are 15 dedicated lines managed by Nepal police in a

capital city and single line for each districts, the busy calls are not

answered by the different region, instead recalling should be done by a caller.

Caller-location (landline and mobile)

Free of charge call service are available for two major Telecom

Service providers i.e. for Nepal Telecom and Ncell , while rest are

pipelined for the service

Telephone numbers are identified through the system and dispatcher store the information.

Hoax / Fake calls are marked up in the list and tracked

In case of mobile calls , corresponding GPS location of the caller can

be traced upon request while landline phones are distributed

through Sector ID , which are easily traceable

Reports through Hamro-Police are traceable via GPS

No common accuracy and reliability criteria defined

Challenge, projects and/or reforms

Limited resources to serve large numbers of people (manpower,

infrastructure , policy, etc.)

Pipelined for free charge call service to telecom carriers like UTL,

SmartCell expected to run within a couple of months

Currently planning to run Call Record Management Software (UCS-

800) for call management and data storing

List of PSAP equipment providers

Radio Phones- Motorola ,Hitera (Digital Trunking System)

Cellular Phones- Mostly Android phones, IOS

CRV with GPS System- Vehicles forms Tata , GPS system is Own

Hamro Police , Mobile Application for android and IOS (Police)

internally developed.

Contact:

Information Technology Security Emergency Response Team Nepal

(ITSERT-NP), E-mail: info@itsert-np.org

narayan@cert.com.np

URL: http:// www.itsert-np.org

Tel: +977-1-5520429

Cell: 9851110497

HIDDEN SLIDE - Accessibility for people with disabilities

Free SMS service for Police (100) is in progression

Every citizens are expected to have the SMS service

Trained workers are available for the service

HIDDEN SLIDE - SMS service

Under process !

HIDDEN SLIDE - eCall

Not Available !

HIDDEN SLIDE - Public warning: alert to for

citizens

In case of large emergency , every media is used for

alert

Experienced from last earthquake National Radio and

FMs are used for Public warnings.

Some communities are equipped with alarm system for

such emergencies

One frequency managed for emergency ( HAM Radio )