Bangkok--Jan 24--Hill & Knowlton Thailand
The Swedish health services company MedDay has a warning system innovation to detect and inform people for catastrophes like the tsunami wave in South-East Asia on December 26th. For several years, MedDay has developed a cell phone service to detect and restrict epidemics of various kinds, e.g. SARS and bird flu. The very same system can also be modified to send warning messages of possible catastrophes around the world.
MedDay has an application called RegPoint? for managing treatment of chronic diseases and detecting and verifying epidemics/pandemics. The application is developed in order for the patients to be able to send updated health profiles to their doctors several times a day via cell phones. To expand the range of usage of such an application, MedDay is going to cooperate with the seismology experts of the Uppsala University to provide a tsunami and earthquake warning system as a same kind of application.
The quake on December 26th took place 06.58 local time. After approximately one and a half hour, the first waves reached Thailand. Sri Lanka was hit one hour later. The amount of tsunami victims rose very high because there were no proper warning systems around those areas. Many seismological measurement systems had detected the earthquake, but no information was sent in time.
“Our systems registered the quake eleven minutes after it occurred, almost an hour before the first warning reached the authorities in the affected areas,” said Reynir B?dvarsson, leader of the Swedish national seismological network at the University of Uppsala.
Automation can become a key solution to the disadvantage. If RegPoint? had been connected with the system at Uppsala, thousands of people could have been able to get the warning into their cell phones shortly after it was detected.
MedDay is going to develop a mobile warning system with seismology experts of the University of Uppsala. The complete system will require a registration, but after that, if a serious quake should occur, a message will be sent from Uppsala through GPRS, CMDA or 3G networks directly to all RegPoint? users in the affected area. MedDay uses a de facto standard called DMS (Daily Medical Support) for the message delivery. For example Motorola has been involved in the standard development.
It is time to update the tsunami and earthquake warning systems around the world. “The American warning system, which is in use today, was created in 1948, long before cell phones were invented,” said Sophia Salenius the President and CEO of MedDay. “The American
system is very reliable, but it takes time to inform people that are not in the reach of alarms or local radios. The catastrophe in South-East Asia showed us that today the information should spread among people without a delay that cost so many lives.”
Today there are Tsunami Warning Centers especially around Japan and the American seaboard. The systems are a combination of seismographs and measure buoys. When the seismograph registers a strong quake on the seabed the personnel sends a message to the authorities that are responsible for the sea buoys. If the buoys register movement that could interpret a tsunami, a warning will be sent to the rescue service on each threaten seaboard. At last a warning goes out to the public. This is how the system, which is in use today, works (e.g. Pacific Tsunami Warning System, PTWS).
American systems have severe disadvantages. They are very expensive to create. It also takes a minimum of 2 years to install the system. Organisations must be built in the area, ready to respond and take responsibility. American systems have been working for several years and since a great deal of facts is gathered, the risk of false alarm is rather small. But if the information does not reach the affected area quickly enough, the system is not useful.
The new Swedish system is un-expensive, and it takes only four to five weeks to install the system. The warning comes early and consequentially the public is reached faster. Eleven minutes after the quake on December 26th, Uppsala could have issued a warning if they had twenty four-seven surveillance and access to the RegPoint? solution. One minute later everybody in the area could have received a warning on their cell phones. The possibility of a false alarm exists, since no measure buoys are used, but one can not be too alert in an earthquake risk zone.
For further information, please contact:
Orawan Chuenwiratsakul, Hill & Knowlton Thailand
Phone: 0-2627 3501 ext 212
Fax: 0-2627 3545-6
e-Mail: [email protected]
Sophia Salenius, Managing Director, MedDay
Cell phone: +46 7680 78710
Reynir B?dvarsson, Project Leader of Swedish national seismological network, Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Uppsala
Phone: +46 1847 12378 End.