Improving Institutional Responsiveness to Coastal Hazards through Multi-Agency Situational Awareness

Rapid changes in coastal land-use over the past few decades due to high economic growth rates in South and Southeast Asia continue to expose more and more populations, assets, and infrastructure to risk arising from coastal hazards. As a result, in an event of a catastrophic disaster, a large number of individuals is at risk of injury, displacement or even death. National Disaster Management Organizations (NDMOs), aid organizations, and NGOs face great challenges in coordinating emergency responses for this rapidly changing environment. Therefore, a platform for regional information exchange is necessary for better coordination during a disaster.

PROJECT OBJECTIVE

The project aimed to operationalize a Common Alerting Protocol (CAP)-enabled Multi-Agency Situational Awareness (MASA) platform, called Sahana Alerting and Messaging Broker (SAMBRO), to provide location-specific alerts and warnings.

KEY OUTCOMES

• Information stocktaking and stakeholder consultations have created awareness on CAP-enabled MASA and SAMBRO.
• National working groups on CAPs were founded which in the following developed a national CAP-profile in consultation with various stakeholders. During this process, procedures for managing the Register of Alerting Authorities and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for CAP implementation were developed.
• SAMBRO was set up in the three target countries. The beneficiary countries were guided by experts from the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) and the Sahana Software Foundation (SSF) throughout the project.
• Geocodes were imported into SAMBRO which can identify and visualize potential warning areas and provide location-and hazard-specific alerts and warnings.
• The Community Resilience Mapping Tool (CRMT) was implemented in case study areas.

URL: https://www.unescap.org/sites/default/files/25_TTF_Project_Brief_0618.pdf