Usability and Acceptability of the Sahana Situational-Awareness Platform in Myanmar, Maldives, and the

Philippines

Nuwan Waidyanatha, Biplov Bhandari, and Lutz Frommberger

Sahana Software Foundation, USA

{nuwan, biplov, lutz}@sahanafoundation.org

AbstractMaldives, Myanmar, and the Philippines are vulnerable to natural disasters. Sendai

Framework of Action calls for risk reduction by implementing early warning systems

(Zia and Wagner, 2015). A prevailing challenge is for authorities to coordinate

warnings across disparate communication systems and autonomous organizations

(Smith and Bunker, 2009). Cross-Agency Situational-Awareness platforms and the

ITU-T X.1303 Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) interoperable data standards

presents themselves as solution for diluting the inter-agency rivalries and

interconnection disparities (Pagotto and O’Donnell, 2012). The CAP-enabled Sahana

Alerting and Messaging Broker (SAMBRO) was designed to overcome these issues

by providing a Common Operating Picture and a platform for all Stakeholders to

share and disseminate early warnings. To that end, the CAP-on-a-MAP project

implemented SAMBRO and the CAP standard along with the policies and procedures,

recommended by Christian (2016) in the three countries. The project evaluated the

usability and acceptability of the intervention through a ‘gulf of evaluation’

complexity analysis method and by applying the ‘technology acceptance model’. The

users ‘agreed’ that SAMBRO was ‘useful’ and ‘easy to use’. Moreover, they had

‘quite’ a good attitude towards adopting and indicated that it was beneficial. This

paper discusses the outcomes of the evaluation and the policy implications that would

allow for sustaining and scaling the concept of cross-agency situational-awareness for

improving institutional responsiveness to coastal-hazards in the three countries.

KEYWORDS – Disaster, Innovation, Application, Information, Performance

IntroductionDisasters are a major problem worldwide and a serious threat to sustainable

development. The rapid an often unplanned expansion of human settlements is

exposing more people and economic assets to the risk of disasters and the effects of

climate change in these countries (WEF, 2015). Coastal cities are made vulnerable by

the low lying land that are often built upon and as such are susceptible to flood, storm

surge, tsunami, and sea-level rise (Nicholls, 2007). As a consequence of climate

change, the world is facing an increasing threat of extreme events. Especially in

developing countries, this heavily affects equal access to opportunities and

development and is a main reason for poverty. Sendai Framework of Action calls for

risk reduction by implementing early warning systems (Zia and Wagner, 2015) in

support of building resilient communities.

Disaster Risk Management interventions such as alerting/early warning, evacuation

planning, and coastal zone management are important for addressing the challenges

faced by all communities. The project titled “CAP on a Map” was designed to

improve the institutional responsiveness to coastal hazards in Maldives, Myanmar,

and the Philippines. It would augment the capabilities of the National Disaster

Management Organizations (NDMOs), National Warning Centers (NWCs), Line-

Agencies and other relevant Stakeholders, in disaster management, to interchange and

share early warning information.

The CAP on a Map project’s information stocktaking activities uncovered several

prevailing challenge that point to issues with coordinating warnings across disparate

communication systems and autonomous organizations. In their current practices,

each alerting authority has their own individual dissemination system. Government

Agencies, Public and Media have to tune into each of those channels (e.g. public

health, meteorology, hydrology, seismology, and police operate their own websites).

Governments still use hierarchical trees where the messages go through multiple

administrative hops before they reach the last-mile Households. Stakeholders are

often left out and forgotten. At present they use Television, Radio, Facsimile (FAX),

Phone calls (hotlines) and some Social Media (facebook and twitter). Operating

multiple dissemination systems and monitoring multiple channels are labor intensive,

significantly delayed, and costly. Meteorologist, Hydrologist, and Seismologist

generated alert messages are incomprehensible. Effective and efficient warning

dissemination to the last-mile remains unsolved.

Cross-Agency Situational-Awareness platforms and the ITU-T X.1303 Common

Alerting Protocol (CAP) interoperable data standard present itself as a solution for

diluting the inter-agency rivalries and interconnection disparities (Pagotto and

O’Donnell, 2012). Cross-agency situational-awareness system is an information

aggregation system that effectively and efficiently shares situational awareness within

the public, media and the public safety community. Information shared relates to

incidents and planned events. It includes public alerts, risks to responders, and

community profiles.

The SAMBRO, web and mobile software applications, were designed to overcome

the issues inherent in the present warning practices. SAMBRO provides a Common

Operating Picture and a platform for all Stakeholders to interchange early warning

information, in near real-time. The CAP-on-a-MAP project implemented SAMBRO

and the CAP standard along with the relevant policies and procedures in the Maldives,

Myanmar and Philippines. SAMBRO is now live and integrated in to their warning

practices.

The CAP-on-a-Map project’s main goal was to implement and operationalize the

system and not serve as a research project, in the strict sense. Nevertheless, the project

designers and implementers realized that it was imperative to evaluate the usability

and acceptability, of the intervention, to identify any shortcomings that could be

rectified prior to commissioning the system. The paper elaborates on the

methodology and evaluation results for each of the three countries. The relevant

findings were shared with the Principals in the respective countries to advocate policy

for fixing the shortcomings and fostering a program to scale the SAMBRO system

beyond the CAP-on-a-Map implementation.

Technology and ImplementationThere are two parts to the technology implementation. First component is the

introduction and implementation of the interoperable CAP warning standard with

policies and procedures acceptable to the country. Second component is the

implementation of the SAMBRO software tool that supports the use of the CAP

standard. We briefly introduce the technologies but refer the reader to Waidyanatha et

al. (2017) for detailed technological insights of the CAP standard and Bhandari et al.

(2016) for the SAMBRO tool.

Common Alerting ProtocolCAP has been approved by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured

Information Standards (OASIS) and aims to provide a single and standardized input

for alerting and warning systems (OASIS, 2010). It is also a recommendation of the

ITU-T X.1303bis standard. The ITU-T X.1303bis standard – CAP - is broadly

recognized internationally as the key standard to achieve the goal of all hazards, all-

media public alerting. It is essentially a XML document that inherits the

interoperability aspects of the XML structured content standard. OASIS (2010)

presents the technology and specifications to support adoption and implementation.

The CAP standard complies with US National Councils Science and Technology

principles: coordination (avoid duplication), consistency (believable), channels

(multiple), completeness (unambiguity), coverage (geo-targeting), and control

(security). A single message payload can carry the information in multiple languages.

The polygons and location description defines the alert effective area. Messages can

be prioritized to indicate the severity, certainty, and urgency of the message which is

directly related to the threat. Parameters can be defined with data for triggering

systems or sharing telemetric information.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), International Federation of Red

Cross/Crescent are key advocates of the standard. Google Crisis Response offers to

publish NWC generated CAP feeds through their products including Google Public

Alerts. Federation of Internet Alerting is a consortium of online advertising agencies

that have extended the service of rendering alerts on their online ad-spaces for free.

Meteoalarm and Accuweather are other rendering and distribution agents, among

several, online services that help Nations publicize CAP messages. At present twenty

three countries are identified to produce CAP-enabled warnings through Real Simple

Syndication (RSS) feeds.

Sahana Alerting and Messaging BrokerPrutsalis and De Silva (2010) discuss the evolution and impact of the Sahana

community that supports the development and deployment of various open source

disaster management software. SAMBRO is a specialized solution, of the Sahana

disaster management software framework, designed to serve as a CAP-enabled

warning and cross-agency situational-awareness platform. Essentially the software,

comprising a web-based interface and a smart-phone application (or “mobile-app”),

offers interfaces for publishing, subscribing, disseminating, and visualizing the CAP-

based geospatial warning information. SAMBRO is designed to support ‘impact-

based’ alerting.

The SAMBRO tool, using CAP as the interoperable standard, is instrumental to

providing situational-awareness information for all disaster and emergency decision-

support and management practices. The SAMBRO web-based application offers a

GIS map-based Common Operating Picture with an overview of “What is happening

and Where and When”; key to situational-awareness, as shown in Figure 1. The

warnings can be filtered to move into the area of interest for decision support. Each

warning has its own CAP message that presents associated alerting qualifiers, detailed

information relating to warning, any instructions, descriptions and many more.

Figure 2: SAMBRO Alert Hub receiving, presenting, and sending CAP messages

Figure 1: Common Operating Picture of all alerts

Figure 2 shows the communication architecture as to how SAMBRO serves as a

National Alert Hub. The Alert-hub is a single point for monitoring or subscribing to

all alerts shared by all alerting authorities. It aggregates all CAP feeds from all

NWCs, presents them on a Common Alerting Picture (Figure 1) along with a National

CAP feed for external systems, and allows for NDMOs to relay those messages to

targeted public or private recipients through the web, email, SMS, RSS, and Social

Media. NDMOs can subscribe to CAP feeds originating from neighboring countries

or other global feeds to be informed of cross-boarder threats.

Figure 3 shows SAMBRO serving as a one-

stop-shop for managing and coordinating all-

hazard warnings and sharing them through all-

media channels: RSS feeds, Email, SMS, Social

Media (Twitter/Facebook), and Mobile-App.

The single entry of a message can be transmitted

to a list of recipient or target to recipients in a

geographic location. With SAMBRO no one is

forgotten because the subscribers manage their

own alerting needs. The software ensures that

the alert messages are automatically and reliably

received. The dissemination process is efficient because it eliminates the need for

untimely multi-hop tree traversals by offering a single hop communication link.

The accompanying SAMBRO mobile-app runs on both Android and iOS smart-

phones. It was introduced for local-authorities to issue local warnings, within their

jurisdictional limitations. An authorized village leader could alert of a local incident

without the need for a costly local datacenter and communications infrastructure.

Moreover, the mobile-app adopts Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) for pushing

messages in real-time onto the phones and activating an audible siren alarm to serve

as a First-Responder wakeup feature. This requires a dedicated Internet connection.

Future version is looking at transporting the information and activating the wakeup

feature using SMS.

Theoretical FrameworkExcept for the Philippines Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Service

Administration (PAGASA), CAP was a new concept to all other beneficiary

Figure 3: SAMBRO alert hub spoketopology

Organizations, in the three countries. To that end, the project realized that a plan-

driven implementation method would become frustrating to the users and the

implementers. We identified four related areas of study and practice within the broad

field of information system design and implementation. Bhandari et al. (2016) discuss

these formative evaluations and practices; namely (1) user-centered design, rapid

prototyping, (3) agile software design (also know as the SCRUM method), and (4)

action research.

By engaging the users and implementers through the user-centered, rapid prototyping,

SCRUM, and action research approach, we expected the users to have reached a level

of maturity in adopting and operating the technology intervention. Therefore, at the

time of evaluating the implementation, with a prerequisite capability and capacity to

operate the SAMBRO technology and apply the CAP concepts, the evaluation

exercises should not be a surprise.

The theoretical framework, relevant to this paper, is confined to the usability and

acceptability testing through a series of controlled-exercises and user feedback.

Controlled-exercises were essentially exploitation-evaluation activities. They

followed a format of Simulations and Tabletop Exercises. The controlled-exercise

activities constituted three steps: 1. discussion of the operating procedures, 2. actual

execution of those procedures, and 3. evaluating the outcomes. They were designed as

verification exercises to determine the system’s: usability (user interface and

experience on system complexities, efficiencies, and quality), adaptability

(capabilities and capacities to alter to the changes of the new system), and utility

(state of being usefulness, beneficial, and cost-effective).

The interest was in studying the usability and the acceptance components of the

utility. Acceptance involved evaluating the state of being useful and its benefits. The

cost-effectiveness component was excluded because it is a large resource intensive

study and was not a primary goal of the CAP-on-a-Map project. Adaptability, which

requires understanding the National or Organization mission and goals, was not

formally evaluated. However, relevant observations are discussed in the paper.

The SAMBRO users who participated in the exercise were from national and last-mile

community administrative strata. We applied an objective and subjective evaluation

method. First followed the popular goal oriented Norman’s Gulf of Execution human

computer interaction method that was outlined by Kitajima and Polson (1995) and

further strengthened by Vermeulen et al. (2013). Users would discuss their own

scenarios operating procedure to later exercise them using the SAMBRO tool. Second

evaluation made used of the widely used Technology Acceptance Model introduced

by Davis in 1989. For the purpose of evaluating SAMBRO, we adopted the extension

to TAM, introduced by Malhotra and D.F. Galletta (1999), for considering the

Organizational or Social influence. Diederichs et al. (2014) proposed techniques that

also expands on TAM and the User Experience, by logging the user’s utilization

history and evaluating the mistakes and interaction patterns, were also other

approaches incorporated to access both the acceptance and usability.

Data And ResultsThe data and results discuss the background of the users and the evaluated sample of

participants. Thereafter, we present the results from the usability and acceptance

evaluations.

User SampleThree countries: Maldives, Myanmar, and the Philippines participated in the

controlled-exercises to evaluate the usability and acceptance of the SAMBRO system.

The participating beneficiary organizations, from the respective countries, are listed in

Table 1. The categorization of the organizations are such that, typically, a NWC would

monitor, detect, and alert the NDMO and other relevant Stakeholders of any alarming

event. The NDMO is mandated by the Government for disseminating the warning to

all Stakeholders: Public, Response Organizations, and In-line Agencies.

Table 1: National beneficiary organizations and the user base

Maldives NWC: Maldives Meteorological Service Maldives NDMO: National Disaster

Management center (project lead)

Maldives Response Orgs: Maldives National Defense Force (Coast Guard and Fire Search and Rescue

Department); Maldives Red Crescent Society; Local Atoll Councils; Local Island Councils; Maldives

Police; Department of Health; Ministry of Tourism Arts and Culture; Ministry of Education

Myanmar NWC: Department of Meteorology and

Hydrology (project lead)

Myanmar NDMOs: Relief and Resettlement

Department, General Administration Department

Myanmar Response Orgs: Department of Irrigation; Department of Health, Department of

Agriculture, Department of Fisheries, Department of Inland Transportation, Fire Services Department,

Myanmar Red Cross Society

Philippines NWC: Philippines Atmospheric

Geophysical and Astronomical Service

Philippines NDMO: Office of the Civil Defense

(OCD)

Administrations (project lead);

Philippines Institute of Volcanology and

Seismology

Philippines Response Orgs: Department of Social Welfare and Development; Local Government

Units, Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Councils

The project had requested for, at least, two members from each NWC, NDMO, and

Response Organizations to participate in the controlled-exercises. It was not based on

any representative sample but based on resource availability and insights on the

willingness for each Organization to release staff members for these activities. A

predominant number of the representation was from NWCs and NDMOs. Table 2

indicates the number of national and community users who participated from each

country. These numbers are also indicative of each countries institutional capacities.

Table 2: Number of participants from each country

Country National Community Total

Maldives 06 10 16

Myanmar 13 38 51

Philippines 19 31 50

UsabilityIn this assessment, the first step was for the users to discuss a scenario to realize their

communication goal, intent, and actions. For example, the goal was to save lives,

intent was to provide timely and accurate information, and the actions involved using

the SAMBRO technology to author and disseminate the warning information to

targeted recipients through available technology channels. Independent Observers

assessed the complexity of performing the actions.

Complexity was measured on the simplicity to follow the expected sequence of the

Graphic User Interface transitions, number of attempts to complete each step of the

sequence, number of CAP content errors made, and the total time taken to complete

the entire sequence. Table 3 presents the results from the complexity analysis.

Simplicity was measured on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 = extremely difficult, 2 =

difficult, 3 = neither difficult nor easy, 4 = easy, and 5 = extremely easy. The ‘error’ is

the average number (or counts) of incorrect or inconsistent use of content or CAP

element in a message. The duration, as in the number of minutes, was measured on

the time it took to complete the tasks. The number of attempts to complete the task

was essentially a count. The number of attempts were uniformly 1 with only 3

instances out of 27 with a value above one attempt. Therefore, we have excluded

presenting the result in Table 3.

Table 3: Country and event-wise average task simplicity, errors, and time taken

CountryEvent Type

Alert Update All-Clear

Simple Error Time Simple Error Time Simple Error Time

Maldives Flood 3.80 ? 8.67 3.80 ? 13.67 4.00 ? 3.00

Myanmar

Cyclone 3.80 2.25 32.75 3.40 3.33 7.00 3.30 6.00 1.67

Flood 4.00 3.50 10.67 3.90 4.00 6.50 4.00 6.50 5.67

Tsunami 4.10 4.00 16.67 4.10 4.00 14.50 3.90 4.75 2.50

Philippines

Cyclone 3.20 5.33 16.67 4.20 5.00 32.67 4.40 6.50 3.00

Flood 2.60 4.60 15.60 3.30 5.73 25.73 2.60 6.50 3.50

Tsunami 3.60 4.00 17.00 3.20 5.00 14.00 * * *

Landslide 4.00 4.33 10.67 * * * * * *

Volcano 4.20 2.00 15.00 * * * * * *

Fire 3.20 4.00 13.50 * * * 4.00 4.00 1.00

* participants did not perform these tasks

? data not available

Acceptability

The subjective assessment presented the users with the TAM questionnaire. Figures 3,

4, and 5 show the average scores associated with the ease-of-use, usefulness, and

attitude towards using SAMBRO and the CAP warning standard, respectively. The

scale for ease-of-use and usefulness were based on the likert scale: 1 = strongly

disagree, 2 =disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = agree, and 5 = strongly

agree. On average the users 'agreed’ that SAMBRO was a “useful” tool and was

closer to ‘agreeing’ that it was “easy to use”.

The assessment for quantifying the

attitude towards using SAMBRO in their

business practices, used a likert scale

between 1 and 7. The lower extreme ‘1’

indicated that it was bad, harmful,

foolish, and negative and the upper

extreme indicate it was good, beneficial,

wise, and positive. These terms would

carry a prefix of ‘extremely’, ‘quite’,

‘slightly’, or ‘neither’ (e.g. slightly-good

or quite-bad). The users had to chose a

number between 1 and 7 to complete a sentence: “all things considered I find

SAMBRO to be __________ for my Organization’s warning dissemination practices.”

The results in Figure 5 show that, on average, the users’ attitude towards adapting

SAMBRO was closer to being one that was “quite” good, beneficial, wise, and

positive.

Discussion and FindingsThe key question we asked was “did the technology and the people work as planned

on the day of the controlled-exercise?” The overall observation was that there were

several shortcomings and the users were unprepared. The overall outcomes of the

measurable results were above the median but not convincingly strong to support that

the usability was satisfactorily high. There were several technical, organizational and

policy challenges that the project met, in relation to operationalizing SAMBRO. The

Figure 4: User perceived ease of use Figure 5: User perceived usefulness

Figure 6: User perceived attitude for using

challenges will be exemplified through the data from the controlled-exercises and

related findings.

User engagementThe project implementers emphasized the need for frequent training, experience using

the system and have a fully prepared and tested implementation before the controlled-

exercises. The controlled-exercises should not be a surprise for any of the participants.

As part of the participatory user-centered design and development approach

Stakeholders were engaged through several workshops and activities. They underwent

several cycles of the design, develop, implement, test, and redesign cycles. In many

cases the participation was inconsistent with new faces at each event.

The commitment from the lead organizations were good but the other beneficiary

organizations treated these activities as just another event that they had to participate

in. Moreover, the participants were junior staff who did not have the authority to

convince the senior management to continue and scale the program within their own

organizations. As a result it was only the lead organizations that accepted and began

utilizing the SAMBRO system for disseminating CAP-enabled warning messages.

Table 2 shows Maldives to have a significantly low number of participants, relative to

Myanmar and the Philippines. The Maldivian Stakeholders did not perceive the

exercises important over other commitments. For example, on the day of the exercises

the Myanmar Meteorological Services, who represented a larger portion of the project

participation and involvement, were busy working on their expiring ISO certification

to be able to continue as an accredited service to support the national aviation

services.

Technology Usability

Table 3 shows the Philippine users exercise a level of inconsistency and uncertainty

because the controlled-exercise was the first exposure for some of the users. PAGASA

users were the only participants competent in issuing tropical cyclone warnings. It is

because they had been using their own homegrown CAP message publishing system

before SAMBRO was introduced. However, issuing flood warnings was new to them;

a reason for the drop in the average simplicity score. (Table 3)

Myanmar DMH users had been testing and practicing the use of the system. However,

they had not practiced the task of updating an alert. Typically, a messaging cycle

requires first issuing an alert, then updating its status with new verified information,

and finally issuing an all-clear message when the threat has ceased. The difficulties

were mostly in populating the CAP 'info' block because it requires a lot of detail with

respect to the event information. The users exercised doubt in changing the

information when they were updating a message.

Philippines and Maldives (Island Nations), data in Table 3, show similar patterns of a

bell-shape timing distribution to issue an alert, update, and all-clear message. When

an event is detected the duty officers have the authority to verify the event on their

own and issue a message. It is during the message update that they consult with the

supervising officers and experts to receive and verify the telemetries to include in the

message update. This process take more time; hence, the increase relative to the first

issuing of the event specific alert message. Myanmar, on the other hand, consults with

the DMH supervising officers and experts to verify all information before issuing the

first alert. Therefore, they spend a longer duration with the first alert. Subsequent

updates and all-clear messages are handled by the duty officers and does not require

supervision.

In relation to a tsunami alert, the time to complete an alert is too long. Cyclones,

volcanoes, and floods are slow onset hazards. A tsunami originating from the pacific

ring of fire, near the Philippines, gives Metro Manila and the eastern coastline less

than 10 to 20 minutes. If the tremor is not felt, such as in the middle of night when

sleeping, there is very little time to issue a wakeup alert and for people, living on the

Islands, to evacuate. The same applies to Myanmar, if a tsunami was to originate of

the northern parts of the Bay of Bengal. The nearest coastal inhabitants would have

less than 20 minutes to evacuate. Table 3 shows both countries, Philippines and

Myanmar, to have exceeded the time allowed to issue a warning allowing for an

adequate response time to save lives.

The Myanmar CAP message Publishers, relative to the other two countries, frequently

experimented with the system before the controlled-exercises. Nevertheless, Table 3

shows the average CAP content errors to be similar between Philippines and

Myanmar. The users need to develop their CAP competency to give prominence to

message completeness. The Researchers examined each and every CAP message file

to identify any information elements with inappropriate or inconsistent content to

count the number of errors for each information element. There are a total of 42

information elements of which less than 10 are frequently used. To that end the users,

on average, incorrectly used or populated 4 of the 10 CAP information elements. The

All-Clear stage of the alerting cycle shows the most number of errors. The concept of

issuing an all-clear message is important and one that was introduced through the

project and new to them.

Although Myanmar users were, relatively better prepared on the day of the exercise,

their Internet failed. As a result during the cyclone alerting exercise, they spent more

than 32 minutes before they could send out the message. The same issue prevailed

with the earthquake-tsunami controlled-exercises when it took the team more than 16

minutes to issue an update message. The duration was calculated starting from the

time the user exercised the software login process to the time the alert message was

received by a recipient, either by email, mobile-app, or social media. The fault was

not at the DMH data center; instead it was the Ministry of Transportation and

Communication data center that serves as the DMH Internet Service Provider. Their

data center electricity is unreliable, and when the power fails the Internet fails.

Diederichs et al. (2014) indicate that related constructs to user acceptance are

usability or user experience which is known to enhance the probability of user

acceptance. SAMBRO offered a generic user interface that could be used for all-

hazards. Predefined message templates, area polygons, and warning priorities would

populate an alert, update, or all-clear messages at the time of authoring. However, the

project learned that hazard specific graphic user interfaces could further simplify and

improve the usability, which in turn would improve the acceptability. The mobile-app

instigated this finding because the mobile-app has a limited number of data inputs it

was perceived easier to use. A simpler graphic user interface would reduce the number

of inputs, chance of errors, and other inconsistencies. These lessons will serve as

inputs to future versions of SAMBRO releases.

Technology AcceptanceThe users in the last-mile communities had not receive any training and were not

exposed to the SAMBRO system and work flows prior to the exercises. A noteworthy

findings is that the community participant expressed usefulness and attitude towards

using scores are in par with that of the Publishers (Figure 4 and Figure 5). Despite the

repetitious request from the project asking to train and expose to SAMBRO the

Stakeholders at every layer of the administrative structure, it was unfulfilled. The

main reason was the silo-ed and bureaucratic structures did not make it easy on the

lead organizations to get the approval from the national layers of the other beneficiary

organizations. Each country has a National Disaster Management Committee.

However, collaboration among member organizations, in projects as such, remains a

challenge.

One reason for the users, in Myanmar and the Philippines, to score low on the

acceptance was because SMS was not operational as notification service. All the users

were keen on being notified through SMS. Myanmar and Philippines were unable to

acquire a SMS gateway for disseminating alerts. Bhandari et al. (2016) discuss the

intricacies of operationalizing an SMS gateway in the three countries. In summary –

We learned that the Myanmar Post and Telecommunications (MPT), now under the

Ministry of Transportation and Communication, same as DMH, had never offered a

Bluk SMS service before. They do offer a decoupled SMS notification service,

whereby a human operator re-creates and sends the text to a list of Government senior

managers. PAGASA could have leverage the Philippines “free mobile disaster alerts

law”; however, remains unused since it was approved in June 20141. The project

facilitated for the Communications Authority of Maldives (CAM) to provide an SMS

gateway through the mobile operators. It never materialized; instead NDMC worked

out a public private partnership with a local Bank to purchase a bulk SMS service.

CAP and SAMBRO allows for presenting warning content in multiple languages. A

separate CAP ‘info’ block can be designated for each language specific content.

Message subscribers (or recipients) have the option of indicating their choice of

language when configuring their own user specific messaging parameters on

SAMBRO. Myanmar is taking advantage of this to issue alerts in Burmese and

English. The last-mile users, in the Philippines and Maldives, were keen in receiving

warning messages in the local languages; i.e. in Tagalog/Cebuano and Divehi,

respectively. However, the national authorities assumed that it was adequate to

provide the messages in English. The project did not conduct a comprehension or

appropriateness test to confirm this decision instead left it to the discretion of the

national implementers to decide on their implementation policies.

1 An act mandaring the telecommunications service providers to send free mobile alert in the even to natural and man-made disasters and calamities, Republic Act No. 10639: http://www.gov.ph/2014/06/20/republic-act-no-10639/

Policy Implications

Scaling the situational-awareness platform

The national stakeholders, in the three countries, are considering scaling CAP to

integrate alert feeds from other alerting authorities as well as expand on the recipient

user base. After realizing the outcomes and potential of the cross-agency situational-

awareness platform for the efficient and effective coordination of alert, other

stakeholders are, now, keen on getting on board. For such the lead organizations were

planning on presenting the intervention and the outcomes to their respective National

Disaster Management Committees.

CAP working group

From a policy perspective the National Disaster Management Committees might

consider paving ways to improve cross-agency situational-awareness within their

jurisdictions. They need to establish policies and plans to foster a wider scale of

stakeholder engagement and adoption. For such, a first step might be with establishing

a CAP working group. This is an important starting point for directing resource for

setting national training, certification, standards implementation, and guidelines for

operations. It would foster uniformity across all stakeholders.

ConclusionThe CAP interoperable warning standard and the SAMBRO cross-agency situational-

awareness platforms are operational in Maldives, Myanmar, and the Philippines. This

is an important step towards integrating the silo-ed national organizations for

improving institutional responsiveness to all-hazards. There is a growing need for

establishing national policies and plans to better integrate systems and especially the

last-mile communities, which remains neglected. Cross-agency situational-awareness

and SAMBRO is capable of bridging those gaps. However, it is a new concept to the

beneficiaries. Nevertheless, it is an intervention that was perceived useful with a

positive attitude towards adoption and scaling beyond the project phase. Lessons

learned point towards the need for some adjustments and enhancements to SAMBRO

to improve the ease of use.

AcknowledgementThis work was made possible through the United Nations Economic and Social

Commission for Asia and the Pacific Trust Fund for Tsunami, Disaster, and Climate

Preparedness (No. 2014-35). This work could not have been possible without the

cooperation of the Governments of Maldives, Myanmar, and the Philippines. The

Authors also wish to express gratitude to the project partner: the Asian Institute of

Technology in Thailand.

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