http://jaswalap.wufoo.com/forms/study-introduction/

SURVEY PARTICIPANT CONSENT FORM

The purpose of this research study is to examine the development of the information society in Thailand and its role in the tsunami disaster relief efforts from December 26, 2004 to February 3, 2005. You are being asked to complete a survey that will take about 5-10 minutes of your time. Answering the questions in the survey involves no foreseeable risks. Participation is voluntary and you may stop at any time without penalty. By completing the survey you are giving consent to participate and confirming that you are at least 18 years old. Results of the survey will be reported only on a group basis.

If you have any questions regarding this study, please contact Joy Aswalap, at joy@unt.edu, (940) 565-4148 or Dr. Brian O’Connor, (940) 565-2445, the University of North Texas School of Library and Information Sciences. This project has been reviewed and approved by the University of North Texas Institutional Review Board (940) 565-3940. You may keep this Notice for your records.

The Relief and Community Health Bureau, Thai Red Cross Society signed an MOU with OpenCARE.

Under the agreement, OpenCARE system will be used to coordinate collaborations amongst government agencies, NGOs and volunteers in the events of disaster mitigation.

The National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC) recently awarded research grant to fund the development and extend practical uses of OpenCARE.

More info

During December 12-15, 2006, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) is jointly arranging a workshop on Disaster Communications.

The workshop aims at providing guidance on technical, policy and institutional issues in the development of networks, systems and possible regional cooperation mechanisms for communications supporting disaster management with emphasis on emergency situations for the countries in Asia and the Pacific, especially the least developed countries, developing countries, as well as small developing islands.

• Workshop agenda
• Workshop announcement

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OASIS is calling for a public review of EDXL HAVE 1.0 since November 2 and will end by January 19, 2007.

Roughly, HAVE is a crucial information interchange to co-ordinate medical services (patient beds, trauma centers, medical personnel, expertises, coverages, facilities, etc.) in response to emergencies.

Yesterday, Microsoft staged a round-table meeting among NGOs in the field of disaster mitigation. Participants were from USAID, Thai Red Cross, Thai National Science and Technology Development Agency, Thai National Electronics and Computer Technology Center, Thai Government IT Services, Thai Meteorological Department, Thai Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, PTT Plc (an active IT force for 2004 tsunami incident in Thailand) and OpenCARE.

The goal was to learn from real experience and to forge further collaboration.

An extension of RSS feed, called SSE, that Microsoft recently put into public domain was introduced. The schema looks right for disaster information.

Interpol’s Disaster Victim Identification process (international law, privacy, etc.) was mentioned on the table. Identifications by mean of pictures, birthmarks, tatoos, artifacts are not acceptable by the DVI process.

Cross cultural thesaurus is another major missing component; colors, names (order and spelling) are examples. Phonym or other kinds of fussy matching is needed to overcome spelling error or the use of European diacritics. Privacy needs to be addressed. Providing a list of victims is not the best way of doing it.

Strong Angel III website

The ISO/TC 223 Societal Security meeting in Bangkok, Thailand is reaching its conclusion today. OpenCARE was proposed and discussed in WG3.

Objective: WG3 (Command and Control for societal security) aims to strengthen preparedness and capability to respond to emergency by resolving inter/intra organizaional barriers that limits the management, exchange of information, resources, and knowledge by preparing of standards:

• Work Item 1: Frame and Principles of command and control, coordination and cooperation — Chair: D, Information draft: January 2007, NWIP (New Work Item Proposal): April 2007
• Work Item 2: Essential information and data requirements for command and control, coordination and cooperation — Chair: UK, Information draft: January 2007, NWIP: October 2007
• Work Item 3: Inter/intra organizational warning procedures — Chair: UK, Information draft: January 2007, NWIP: October 2007
• Work Item 4: Systems requirements for interoperability in command and control, coordination and cooperation — Chair: IS, Information draft: July 2007, NWIP: October 2007

OpenCARE is parts of work items 2, 3 & 4.

TC 223 adopts the scope and the suggested work items, as preliminary work items, including the timeframes from WG3.

Thailand to deploy the first tsunami detecttion bouy in the Andaman sea on November 28, 2006. It will use US-made Deep Sea Tsunami Detection Equipment-2 (DART-2) technology. Similar technology has long been used as part of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.

Reference: Phuket Gazette
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OpenCARE was presented to a community obsessively interested in technologies in Bangkok. OpenCARE itself is not a technology; it is an application of various technologies. The presentation drew some attentions on how IT knowledge may be applied to philanthropical works.

Technical aspects of the presentation is elaborated further (in Thai) in the OpenCARE forum.

ITbusiness.ca reported that vendor specific file formats and features had hindered relief efforts in many places.

“Still not convinced? Consider this: The Bangkok Post reported that file format incompatibility allegedly hindered government recovery efforts after the 2004 tsunami. Since then, the Thai government has made open file formats an immediate priority. But open standards have not been relegated to “developing” nations. In the U.S., for example, victims of Hurricane Katrina who requested aid on the FEMA Web site had to use Internet Explorer. Got Linux? Sorry, out of luck.

More than 280 organizations in 43 countries are part of the ODF Alliance, including Google. A number of governments are also behind it, including Belgium, Denmark, France, India, Thailand and, most recently, Malaysia. In fact, Malaysia has proposed that ODF become a national standard by the end of this year and has recommended it for use in the public sector.”

A portion that the Bangkok Post quoted was taken from the page before Executive Summary of this document.