Wireless Network for Tsunami Rehabilitation

From HTN

We had been able to bring in a paradigm shift is disaster relief during the Indian Ocean Tsunami Relief phase. The Government and the NGOs requested us to continue helping them in the “Rehabilitation Phase”. Click here (Demand Based Relief) for article on earlier work.

As we see it, the most important challenge in Rehabilitation is to provide equitable assistance to the affected population. No one should receive any special treatment and more importantly no one must be ignored. After discussion, we were of the opinion that this was possible by bringing in transparency to the operations and accessibility to the entire affected population.

This meant that even the weakest among the affected should be able to receive communication from the Government and aid agencies and she must be able to represent her case to the Government and Donor Agencies. In addition a monitoring mechanism must be put in place where it must be possible to see the status of assistance received by each individual.

The informal organization we had set up in 2004 had by April 2005 become formal and named “NGO Coordination and Resource Centre” NCRC for short. It was officially constituted by two NGOs SIFFS and SNEHA and the UNDP.

1 Challenge Overview
2 Population Impacted
3 Solution
4 Beneficiaries
5 Results
6 Project Team
7 Obstacles and How Addressed
8 Current Status
9 Other Projects by IEEE Kerala Section

Challenge Overview

To establish bi-directional communication so that each member of the community can effortlessly understand and be understood.
As the population is largely illiterate, communication would mean voice or video communication.
For the communications from the Government / Aid Agencies to the population, we must have one to many facilities. We must also be able to store the messages and make them available as and when required.
For the communication from individuals in the affected population to the Government / Aid Agencies, they must be able to communicate through simple means like audio / video.
There must be a means to record each issue and track them till completion.
The assistance delivered to each person should be tracked to see if the distribution has been equitable.

From the technology standpoint, this involved (a) Networking, (b) Database and (c) Application development. In India, (b) and (c) were easily done and many volunteers came forward to help out. The real challenge handled by us in IEEE, was Networking the 12 centres of NCRC.

Population Impacted

The affected population was about 30,000 families. Taking an average family size of five, this would mean a population of 150,000.

Solution

The requirement clearly ruled out simple means like Cellular Phones or dial-up networking. Speeds required for bi-directional video communication could not be met by these simple solutions. We needed a robust network. The first choice was broadband. However on enquiry with the service providers we found that 10 of the 12 locations did not have facilities for broad band link.

At a meeting of IEEE, Kerala Section, this problem was discussed and one of the members, Sasi PM, Chair Communications Society (Now Chair IEEE Kerala Section) from CDAC, suggested that we look at the option of wireless networking. CDAC had implemented a project by which an entire district, Malapuram, had come under wifi coverage as early as 2003, making it probably the very first wireless district in the world.

Nagapattinam District is in the delta of Kaveri, a major river system in South India. The are is criss crossed by rivulets making road communication difficult and limited to a few bridges in the area. The terrain is sandy but absolutely flat. This meant that “line of sight” was assured between any two points in the area!

Time was also short, we had to get going fast for the solution to have any impact. We shortlisted technologies available and came with Vine, a technology that was prevalent in 2005. The points in favor were (a) Proven – we had seen an installation before (b) Vendor – A vendor was available and experienced in implementation.

The network design also posed a major problem. All the proposed centres were along a straight line and the usual models of hub and spoke were difficult to implement. Reliability and Redundancy had to be ensured on this long chain network. A model was drawn with three centres in a connected to a hub etc. However finally, we decided to go in for unique model for ensuring redundancy. We would go in for an alternate chain model. Each tower would be connected to two towers on each side. The heights of the towers would have to be increased to about 30 Meters (100 ft) to achieve this. However the cost would be much lower than setting up hubs. In practice we also found the reliability to be very much higher.

Power supply was another major issue. In most of the areas, there were power breakdowns lasting upto 6 hours once or twice a week. However the power drawn by the networking equipment was very low in the range of 10 watts and battery backed solutions would be enough in most places. In two of the nodes, where power supply was very erratic, we had to go in for Solar backup for battery charging.

Beneficiaries

150,000 tsunami affected people
NGOs and Civil Society Organisations
Government

Results

Data connectivity was ensured
The database and applications ran successfully
The District authorities conducted video conferences over the network
Public Grievance Redressal over the video link was possible

Project Team

IEEE Team for Kerala Section:
Amarnath Raja, Satish Babu, Sasi PM,
Annie George CEO NCRC
and the whole NCRC Team.

Obstacles and How Addressed

Lack of broadband: Wireless networking
Redundancy in network: Unique scheme of alternate chain model
Power Supply: Battery backed supply and Solar Panels in two places

Current Status

The network worked very well throughout the entire period of Tsunami Rehabilitation. It was very popular and useful. However presently the NCRC has been wound up and assets transferred to an NGO named BEDROC also set up by the same group. BEDROC had some funding problems in the and some of the towers in the periphery had to be decommissioned. Even now it faces funding shortages.

The network is now being used in very innovative ways.

Two orphanages have been connected to the network and regular psychiatric counseling from experts from Chennai, take place over the network.
District officials use the network for Citizen Grievance redressal
The centres are used as information kiosks, with internet browsing.

There is a large potential in e-Government, which is being explored.