Sub-Regional Workshop on E-resilience for the Asia-Pacific Information Superhighway (AP-IS)

ICT and DRR: Nepal Earthquake 2015

Santosh Sigdel

Sr. Vice President, Internet Society Nepal

Outline

oBackground Information on Disaster and ICT (Internet)

oImpact of Earthquake on ICT Sector

oImmediate responses

oResponse made by Internet Society

oLesson Learnt

oRecommendations

Major causes of Disasters in Nepal

o Glacier Lakes

o Flood

o Earthquakes

o Landslides

o Fires

o Epidemic

Nepal: Vulnerability and Risk

Disasters Ranking Source

Disaster prone in the world 20th ranked UNDP/BCPR 2004

Climate change vulnerability- ranked

4th Maplecroft,2011

Earthquake vulnerability risk 11th ranked UNDP/BCPR,2004

Water induced disaster risk 30th ranked UNDP/BCPR,2004

Kathmandu, the capital city- Earthquake among 21 mega cities in the world

High risk UNDP

2 People loss lives daily in average and thousand of HHs displaced every year.

High risk GoN/MoHA,2010

Current Status of Internet Penetration

Source: Nepal Telecom Authority, October 2016

• A recent (ESCAP) evaluation has classified Nepal’s international connectivity as ‘weak’ and its fixed and mobile infrastructure as ‘limited’.

GDP per Capita, YE 2012 (PPP, USD)

Int’l. Band‐ width per Capita (Kbps)

Int’l. Connectivity

Domestic Connectivity

IP Transit Price

Competitive ‐ness of Telecom Market

Fixed and Mobile Broad‐ band Infra‐ structure

Annual 1 Mbps Broadband Subscription + Installation as % of Nominal GDP per Capita

$1,600 0.7 Weak Limited Expensive

Less Competitive

Limited Very Expensive

Earthquake 2015 • Powerful earthquake on 25 April 2015 with magnitude of 7.8

followed by 475 aftershocks until last week

• 8,000+ people lost their lives

• 23000+ people were injured.

• Half million private houses were fully destroyed and 250,000 houses were partially damaged.

• 8 million people were affected.

• 14 out 75 districts were mostly affected, including capital area.

What happened after earthquake

o Electricity power grid went down o Internet Services disrupted o Network congestion and Downtime o Voice call service was severely

disrupted whereas SMS and internet were intermittent

o Nepal’s international Internet links survived but last mile connection was disrupted causing problem for immediate search and rescue operation (SAR)

Communication Sector

Infrastructure damage- Nepal Telecom

S.N. Asset Count

1 BTSs Affected 525

2 Transmission Towers Affected 10

3 Fiber Backhaul Affected 2

4 Microwave Links Affected 15

5 Physical Buildings Affected 197 •The total damages and losses of infrastructures related ICT in economic flows are estimated at US$36.10 million and US$ 50.85 million respectively.

Electricity

• The April 2015 earthquake significantly damaged hydropower plants, the transmission system (substation and lines) and distribution lines.

• Electricity generation facilities and distribution networks were damaged in a big way.

• 115 MW hydropower facilities out of the 787 MW total installed capacity in the country were fully damaged

• 60 MW were partially damaged

• about 800 km of distribution and 365 transformers were damaged and non-operational.

Situation at hand at that time • No shared information platforms

• No Cross-Agency Situational-Awareness (CASA) platform

• No integrated Incident Command and Control System (ICCS)

• All the emergency services were working independently improvising and adjusting to the situation presented to them

• National Disaster Response Framework (NDRF) was approved in 2013 but not implemented

• - Example: Emergency Communication Strategy within 6 months (not implemented)

Role of ICT • Use of ICT in Search and Rescue

• Post-disaster relief efforts relied heavily on telecommunications, internet and broadcast media

• ICT helped to keep the people informed during and post disaster period

• ICT helped to inform people about the recovery and reconstruction programs

• 500+ FM Stations/Radio Nepal

• Social Media (Twitter/Facebook)

• Open Street Maps

Initiatives by ICT community Google has deployed its Person Finder to help track people in Nepal. The Web

application lets people post or search for information on relatives and friends affected by a disaster.

Skype made all Skype calls to landlines and mobiles in and out of Nepal free of charge from 27th April to 15th June.

Facebook has also launched Safety Check that automatically lets people in the impacted region inform others about their safety.

Viber has switched off 'Viber Out' billing in Nepal. Calls to Nepal via Viber Out have also been made free.

Nepal Telecom and Ncell, two major service providers, provided free voice and date services

Telecom service providers from many countries including India, United states, United Kingdom provided free voice and data service to make call or SMS to Nepal for few weeks

(ITU) contributed with satellite telecommunications equipment,

ETC: Emergency Telecommunication Cluster

Objective: provide the humanitarian community in Nepal with shared internet connectivity and security telecommunications services.

Cluster was providing shared internet connectivity services in 13 sites

1,550 humanitarians from over 250 organizations were registered to use ETC services in Nepal.

Cluster also build local capacity to ensure the sustainability of its deployed services and solutions in Nepal.

Internet Society

Internet Society Nepal launched a “RECONNECT Nepal” Project

handed over connection equipment to Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police to support efficient earthquake rescue operation.

over 50 Nos of Power Bank (Mobile Recharger), 20 Set of Inverter, Solar Panel and Battery

Established mobile charging station at various location to enable general population to charge their mobile phones with solar charger.

Organized INET: Learning Lessons from Nepal-Embracing ICT for Disaster Management

participation of 150 people from diverse sectors of ICT in the country and from abroad.

Research In collaboration with LIRNEasia: Evaluation of Nepal’s Emergency Communication System

Glimpses of the ISOC Nepal Activities

Installation of Solar panels/batteries to reconnect communities

Free Wi-Fi Zone/Mobile recharge Centers

Distribution of Generators to Community Radios

Research

Was ICT sector resilient?

• Partially (May be)

• Why?

Post Disaster Need Assessment (PDNA)

• Disaster Risk Reduction and Build Back Better

(Short-term priorities)

reconstruction of damaged DRR assets and improvements on BBB principle;

measures to improve preparedness, response, relief and logistics systems;

measures to strengthen information and communication capacities for relief, response and recovery; and

measures to enhance multi-hazard risk monitoring, vulnerability assessment, risk information dissemination and awareness.

Medium to long term priorities include:

• Improvements in legal and institutional arrangements;

• Measures to mainstream DRR into the developmental sector, particularly housing, private and public infrastructure, social sectors (health and education), and livelihood; and

• Measures to improve integration of climate change adaptation and DRR

Area Immediate Need Specific Action

Restoring Nepal Telecom’s local network for priority customers

1. Repairing local access networks in Kathmandu and affected districts for priority customers (government, hospitals, schools)

2. Emergency power generators

1. Confirm locations and cost of repairing access network for priority customers

2. Pool requests for power generators across sectors

Cellular and Internet services

1. Restore cellular service by repairing fallen/ damaged sites

2. Provide high speed broadband connectivity in the worst-affected districts.

3. Lease government land, where available, within Kathmandu Valley to operators to build towers

1. Use RTDF to build new towers in severely affected districts and ensure infrastructure sharing between operators

2. Use RTDF to support development of wireless broadband networks in worst affected districts

3. Use government resource and RTDF to finance the early build out of community information centers in every VDC in rural Nepal.

4. NTA and MOIC to identify in collaboration with operators, sites for leasing from government.

Building Back Better (Creating Resilience)

Building Back Better (Creating Resilience) Area Medium Term Needs Specific Action

Building resilience in international and national communication

1. Establish redundancy for international gateways at both the India and China borders.

1. RTDF fund utilized for redundant network build-outs, with infrastructure sharing mandated.

2. Deploy short terrestrial fiber networks to India and China at border points.

2. Review of telecommunications sector policy and regulatory framework to ensure that infrastructure investments are future proofed.

3. Deploy national backbone network with open access (e.g., by including it in the electricity network rebuilt)

3. Adopt a policy, legal and regulatory framework for infrastructure sharing across utilities and sectors (roads, urban, power) and easier rights of way access.

4. Install additional towers in rural areas to provide increased coverage and ensure tower sharing

4. Identify critical network points and implement early warning systems (EWS) in coordination with other agencies that have existing EWS.

Building resilience to loss of critical data across sectors

• Create system of redundant repositories of data for critical government information systems

1. Establish government disaster recovery data centers. 2. Pilot and adopt the concept of “cloud computing”

Area Medium Term Needs Specific Action

Building resilience in international and national communication

6. Implement a disaster recovery telecommunications Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

6. Develop mobile applications for both smart and feature phones that can send messages from a customer to preselected numbers

7. Develop and raise citizen awareness of telecommunications and ICT services and applications for use during disasters

7. Raise awareness among consumers on using telecommunications and ICT services during disasters in order to prevent network congestion.

Development after earthquake Preparation of Post Disaster Needs Assessment Report by National

Planning Commission: Communication was one of the key sector Emergency Telecommunication Continuity Management System: Draft is

ready ITU provided the technical Support

National Emergency Telecommunications Plan: Draft ready/revised/not approved yet

Optical Fibre connection with China in June 2016, creating necessary redundancy Nepal now can be directly linked with Hong Kong Data Center, which is one of the

two biggest global date centers in Asia, through the Chinese mainland. Test successfully completed, commercial use is expected within few months

NT has signed initial memorandum of understanding with China Unicom, another Chinese telecom operator, for further cross-border optical fiber connectivity.

Disaster Management System

Recommendations

Need for shared information platforms

Common operating picture for improving institutional responsiveness to crises and emergencies

Telecommunications availability/survivability assessment necessary

Business Continuity-Disaster Recovery Plan (BC-DRC) capacity development,

Establish a set of emergency telecommunications infrastructure construction and operational best-practices supportive of national emergency communication resilience

a multi-sectoral multi-stakeholder collaborative approach is necessary for policy development

Thank you for your patience

@Sigdelsantosh