Information devices available to affected people
First, we asked which devices were actually available to affected people. According to the 2,815 people who responded to the online survey, a sharp drop is seen in the usage of most communication devices right after the quake: only 37.5% said they could use mobile phones, from 63.6% usage before the earthquake/tsunami hit them. Similarly, 33.4% could watch TV compared to 87.2% before the disaster, and 19.5% could use the internet compared to 81.3% before the event. The only exception was radio – 67.5% of respondents used a radio within a few hours after the quake, an increase of 20 percentage points over regular use.
Up to one week after the earthquake, radio (75.0%) still remained the most available medium, while TVs (71.2%), mobile phones (54.7%) and internet (52.8%) showed good recovery, even though they did not reach the level of availability before the quake.
It is said that up to 72 hours is the most critical period to save the lives of people affected by disasters. Yet as the survey shows, most information channels were not functioning sufficiently during this time. It was extremely difficult to determine the exact degree of damage in the coastal areas, which span 600 kilometres. The police, army and fire and rescue departments all dispatched the first emergency teams, but we knew that the communication lines became more dysfunctional as you approached the affected areas.
It was only in late April, after more than a month, when most major telecommunication operators announced that the repair work on their trunk lines and telephone services was almost done.
The results of this survey corresponded with that: the use of most communication tools and services was recovered between one to three months after the quake.
Useful information sources
Next, we asked which information sources people actually recognised as useful. By information sources, we meant not only TV, radio, internet and telephones, but also newspapers, email and SMS, word of mouth, community notice boards, amateur CB radios, etc. We meant all forms of information sources.
Here again we found that 67.4% of the people in the devastated areas responded that radio was most useful within a period of several hours after the quake. This was followed by TV (32.1%) for those who still had a power supply, and then “one.segment” digital broadcast TV (a TV service that can be received from a mobile phone or car navigation devices using butteries). This is a reflection of the fact that electricity was not available to many. Word of mouth was ranked seventh, after newspapers.
Internet services, newspapers, email, mobile phones and fixed-line phones were all under the level of usefulness before the quake.
After a week, TV returned to first place followed by radio, the internet and newspapers.
Action steps
Many people we interviewed emphasised the importance of power supply in an emergency situation. As we have entered the digital age, almost all devices and services are designed to use electric power. But that could become the major source of vulnerability once a large.scale natural disaster hits a technologically advanced society. ICTs can only work when a sufficient supply of electricity is guaranteed.
Of course, super-large.scale natural disasters such as the 9.0 earthquake or a massive tsunami could destroy almost all manmade infrastructure and devices/equipment once it hits land. However, there are always areas outside the devastated areas where people could start to do rescue and relief work. They can bring in resources needed. This time, what we found was a lack of preparedness for organising the rescue work using ICTs.
Though we have benefited much from the use of the latest technologies and services such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, to name a few, no well-structured information-sharing mechanisms were ready. At best, it was ad hoc.
Japan is well known for the heavy concentration of all kinds of natural disasters. As I said, it was predicted that at least a 7.5 to 8.0 level earthquake would hit the Tohoku region with 99% probability within 30 years since around 2003. The western and southwest parts of Japan also received a formal alert for an earthquake and tsunami. The Great Kanto Earthquake that hit Tokyo and killed more than 100,000 people, mostly by fire, occurred only 70 years ago. Preparation is the responsibility of policy makers and practitioners using ICTs. And Japan is not the only country subject to such large.scale disasters.
In this regard, we foresee a need for building an international alliance of disaster relief teams. We were told that several international activities were already in place and learned that ICT services for emergency rescue were organised in Thailand and Indonesia in 2004, in Haiti in 2009, and for the recent earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand this year. We have not teamed up with these efforts in Japan, and because of this we had fallen behind, despite the experiences from the Kobe earthquake and several other disasters in Japan.
Things are never too late. We should start now.
JORDAN
New media and social resistance: Moving towards a direct democracy
Alarab Alyawm
Yahia Shukkeir
www.alarabalyawm.net