INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES FOR DEVELOPMENT IN INDONESIA
4.2. Disaster Relief and Alert Systems
As a country that has long been exceptionally prone to natural disasters, Indonesia should benefit
from the use of new technologies to improve disaster alert and relief systems for people living
in coastal areas in danger of being hit by tsunamis or those living near volcanoes that are active and
may erupt. Thus far, a wide variety of government agencies, local NGOs, international NGOs and
media groups have collaborated in utilizing mobile phones and the Internet to increase the efficiency
with which warnings can be delivered to people on the ground prior to a natural disaster and also to
more efficiently get help and resources to victims of a natural disaster once it has occurred.
Before the tsunami of 2004 hit Aceh, Air Putih Foundation had largely focused on providing free
trainings to CBOs in computer and Internet usage, implementation of open source software, and
application usage assistance for SIMKES Health Management Information System to community
health centers Interview with Okta Setiawan, November 2011. Air Putih Foundation first
became involved in disaster relief by restoring communications and providing Internet access to
the devastated region of Aceh, within two days of the tsunami. This Internet connection in turn proved
crucial to the implementation of humanitarian relief from other organizations Nugroho 2009.
Now, Air Putih Foundation collaborates with AJI Independent Journalists Alliance, Tagana Youth
Disaster Preparedness, SAR Search and Rescue, as well as other local and international NGOs in
order to help enable the use of ICTs in disaster areas and facilitate cooperation and task allocation
efficiently between different parties during disaster situations. Air Putih Foundation has also worked
with the United Nations, PMI Indonesian Red Cross, and government agencies such as BNPB
National Disaster Management Agency and BPBD Local Disaster Management Agency.
Air Putih Foundation has also created an Early Warning System, through which they can broadcast
SMS with information about potential tsunamis to all mobile phone numbers listed on their server
through a program called SMS Gateway. Using SMS Gateway, Air Putih Foundation is able to broadcast
thousands of tsunami alerts to the many numbers that are registered on their server.
In Sri Lanka, Samarajiva and Waidyanatha have also concluded that cell broadcasting
using a server to send large numbers of texts simultaneously can be very useful when combined
with traditional public warning methods in areas where mobile phone usage is relatively high. The
Indonesian Government, moreover, has provided cell-broadcasting units to local government BPBD
offices. These units, however, along with the BPBD offices themselves, are generally quite new and
not yet established in all districts at risk of natural disasters.
In Central Java, four districts still do not have official BPBD offices. The district of Kebumen,
however, acquired a BPBD office in October of 2010. The traditional alert system procedure was
that if a tsunami warning were to be issued by the national government in Jakarta, it would be sent
directly to every BPBD office and from the district government office, the sub-district kecamatan
offices would be alerted in at-risk coastal areas and then these offices would alert the village heads in
at-risk coastal villages. If each of these alerts were to be delivered one by one via phone calls, it would
likely take quite awhile before a tsunami alert from the national government reached village heads and
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INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES FOR DEVELOPMENT IN INDONESIA
then the villagers at risk of being hit by the tsunami. Unfortunately, tsunami warnings generally cannot
be made at the national government level more than a few minutes before the tsunami will strike.
As such, the speed at which a tsunami warning is delivered from the national government to the at-
risk populations is of critical importance.
Now, with the cell-broadcasting unit provided to the Kebumen BPBD office by the National
Meteorology and Geology Agency BMKG in 2010, alerts from the national government
can be sent directly by text to as many mobile national government to the BPBD office—but the
message would still have to be relayed via phone call from the district-level to the kecamatan-level
and then individually to each village head before reaching the villagers. As it stands, therefore, the
capacity for quicker delivery of tsunami warnings has not yet been optimally utilized in developing
the protocol to be used in the event of an actual tsunami. Officials at the BPBD office recognized
that the system was not yet being used optimally and explained that this was in part due to their
concerns that village heads andor villagers would not trust text alerts coming from an unknown
Figure 4: BPBD cell broadcasting unit in Kebumen, Central Java
Source: Author’s photo
phone numbers as the BPBD office enters into its system. As of April 2012, however, the only mobile
phone numbers that had been entered into the system were those of the Kebumen BPBD office
members most of them and the Bupati elected district head of Kebumen District. As a result, the
alert would likely travel more quickly from the number. When it was suggested
that they might provide trainings to village heads that would clarify
how the system operated, the officials explained that the office
did not have the resources for such trainings and blamed bureaucracy
for the lack of initiative taken on fully implementing the cell-
broadcasting program Interview with Ahkmad Sofwani and Made
Wirawan, April 2012.
Though the effectiveness of mobile phone enabled disaster
alert systems in Indonesia is not yet clear, the use of ICTs to assist
in disaster relief has at least on one occasion proven to be very
successful. In the wake of the October 2010 eruption of Mt.
Merapi in Yogyakarta, the organizations Jalin Merapi and Combine Resource Institution used Twitter
to organize and distribute resources, particularly food and water, urgently needed by refugees who
had survived the eruption. Volunteers used two- way handheld receivers or SMS text messaging
via mobile phones to send information about
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INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES FOR DEVELOPMENT IN INDONESIA
the refugees and also about the volcanic activity to the organization Jalin Merapi. The information
was then relayed to all of Jalin Merapi’s tens of thousands of followers on Twitter, and from
Twitter then automatically shown on Jalin Merapi’s homepage and Facebook page and broadcasted
over the community radio network Nugroho 2011. The website itself provided clear links to all
forms of communication between volunteers and Jalin Merapi. Within a few hours, requests made for
water via Twitter had been met and new requests were being made and met as needed. Jalin Merapi’s
success supports the findings of Samarajiva and Waidyanatha who argue that a combination of
SMS communication and a robust website are key factors in successfully using ICTs to enable
cooperation between disaster relief agents 2009. Jalin Merapi goes a step further by heavily using
social media as well.
Air Putih Foundation also provided disaster assistance for the 2010 Merapi earthquake, as well
as the 2011 tsunami in Mentawi. In these cases, Air Putih Foundation used mobile phone technology
combined with mapping applications and SMS Gateway to map out reported information from
various individuals on the ground. The mapping was done through an application called Ushahidi,
though which people all over the world can tell the story of what is happening to them — or
around them — during a disaster, and share their story through SMS texts.
Air Putih Foundation is now also trying to develop “Open BTS” technology, a simplified
version of mobile technology that could be setup for public use in rural areas without depending on a
major network operator. In this way, they hope that it will be possible for communication to become
organized by society rather than companies.
4.3. Mobile Phones and Maternal Health