AUDMP Information and Networking Strategy 11. Implementing Systems and Procedures for Information Management The project's systems will have to evolve gradually by test and readjustment. It would be inappropriate to attempt to map them out completely. It is possible, nonetheless, to lay down elements of a stable framework. 11.1 Supporting Project Management and Control Three key components of project management and control will be Direct and effective communications with country-level co-ordinators Maintaining information on influencers and decision-makers: Biographic databases of key players Country-level activity and event tracking 11.1.1. Communicating with Co-ordinators Maintaining excellent communications with country-level co-ordinators is obviously vital. The overall goal should always be to try and ensure that country-level co-ordinators, and as many project participants at country-level are connected to reliable e-mail, and know how to use it. But this is unlikely to be fully possible within first two years. In the meantime, a basic aim should be to connect ADPC to an information co-ordinator in each country, and to ensure that at least those staff involved in any GIS activity are connected. We considered a range of options and alternatives for meeting the core communications requirements. Each has various advantages and disadvantages. Fax links are used now, and work reasonably well. International Fax charges are expensive for operating partners, and these costs are likely to discourage a considerable amount of routine and speculative communications. Nonetheless, the relative simplicity and reliability of fax makes it essential as a core communications tool. An alternative is to rely on institutional (university and company) email links. At present the main problem with this approach is that several institutions or departments involved in the project only have one email box, and messages can take a considerable time to be routed internally. In addition, those institutions providing individual mailbox accounts sometimes impose a limit on the amount of material that can be held at any time. The overall limits to this approach need testing empirically. Another alternative is to rely on local Internet service providers, and encourage each key participant to obtain access to a personal private mailbox. Internet service providers charge in the region of $25 per month, to which should be added an initial subscription (around $50) plus phone bills. Users require at least 14k modems - $90 each - and if possible a faster modem costing around $200. Email software and browser software is relatively straightforward to install, but users may need two or three hours of technical support and training to become fully operational. In addition, most private email services are currently very overloaded, and access is not guaranteed. A higher cost solution is to encourage the use of an international Internet provider such as IBM. Mailbox costs are about double the local service providers, but transmission rates are generally higher, and accessibility and service reliability is greater. An additional option is to use FIDO or other amateur bulletin boards. The FIDO system is unfortunately very slow, and is not really suitable for large file transfers - a service which is highly desirable. In addition, setting up FIDO access requires considerably more computer expertise than a basic dial-up Internet account. FIDO may be an option in Laos, but is not likely to be a good option elsewhere. There are two other possibilities. One is to make a specific agreement for low cost or free donation of services with a Value Added Network, or other provider, such as SITA, or IBM. The second is to establish Internet servers in each country, with purchased links to the international networks. Both are feasible, but would divert much of the attention of the project administration from the basic practical tasks of the project. These options are best considered only if other simpler approaches are proving to be a major constraint. Recommendations The project should continue to rely on fax and telephone communications for the most important discussions. At the same time, project members should be encouraged to seek out dial-up access to local email service providers where individuals don't have their own institutional email boxes and adequate bandwidth. Ensuring compatibility of software is important. Installation of viewers such as the MS Word 6 viewer or QuickViewPlus on PCs for reading multiple formats should be encouraged. In addition putting Acrobat reader software and Visioneer Paper Port plug-in software on appropriately configured machines would enable project participants to access scanned documents sent by the AUDMP information section. AUDMP should consider obtaining an account with the IBM Network for travelling ADPC staff until regional roaming agreements involving the major local Internet service providers are fully established. A list of all project email numbers should be circulated to all project participants, and the database of user addresses and contact details should be available in a common transfer format. 11.1.2 Maintaining biographical databases, and Country Level activity and event tracking Keeping track of key decision-makers and other people involved at the local level is vital to the project. By itself, this is a relatively simple requirement. However, when linked with event tracking (see below) the issues becomes harder to deal with. At present AUDMP uses a contact manager NOW Contact. This is well-chosen in itself, and is adequate for day to day requirements. It records names, contact details, and notes on each discussion, and provides simple file links to other correspondence held on the network. However, a new requirement develops as soon as there is a need for AUDMP staff to keep track of promotional activity and other contacts made at the national level. Furthermore, avoidance of overlap and confusion at the national level requires a co-ordinated effort involving national project level staff to share and communicate information on the contacts they routinely make with city officials and others during the course of their work. This is a similar problem to that faced by any fast evolving international marketing company or indeed any large organization with a public role. A number of networked database packages, commonly based on Lotus Notes software have been developed for this kind of internal management of meetings and workflow. However, these are very expensive, and require very substantial system administration to keep operational. Even if available, these would be difficult to apply in the relatively loose, and lightly networked environment in which AUDMP operates. At this level, keeping track of activity is more of a people issue than a technical one. The more people see the collection and use of relevant information as part of their jobs, the more readily available the information will be and the more it will be used. If the system as a whole does not share information, no technology will help. However, once a reporting process is in place, there will be benefits in collecting and storing the information that is available in such a way that it can be made available efficiently, and that it is kept secure when required. This problem needs more work. At present it seems that the real need is to spread the responsibility for collection and analysis of information across the AUDMP project as a whole, to encourage email or fax reports, and to store reports in a form which can be searched as free text, and which can be replicated amongst key co-ordinators. Both the purchase and development costs of Lotus Notes look too high at this point for AUDMP. But simple textual databases or document indexing programs such as Idealist for Macintosh, or Marco Polo, have search and sort capabilities which make them useful for marshalling snippets of data. At this point the best strategy may be to encourage a weekly in-confidence "mitigation opportunities" report from project co-ordinators in-country, and from any other participants who can be persuaded to participate. Information requested could include: Who makes particular types of decision Who needs persuading What might work What factors to take into account These should be digitized and indexed using the Marco Polo package. As a relatively inexpensive experimental alternative Blackwell Idealist might be considered as a database of choice for handling other snippets of incoming project intelligence. If neither of these approaches work, then it may be necessary to develop a database internally, to meet the particular requirements of the project. Actions now Purchase Marco Polo (Mainstay Software) (High Priority) 11.2 Supporting establishment of networks, and of project identity and cohesion The main requirements here are to give the project an identity, make people want to belong, and provide a rich milieu for communications and ideas exchange. Coalition building is a central strategy, finding ways in each country to link organizations from the public, private, and NGOs sectors to build advocacy groups for disaster mitigation. The project will also aim to build networks across national boundaries through such venues as conferences and city twinning relationships. As the project develops, a range of task related communications and exchanges will need to be encouraged and facilitated, including idea generation, technical information exchange, problem solving, dissemination of background information, etc. This may be national or international. These activities depend on the relative ease and low cost of communications, and on the way the social process of networking is managed. There is much focus presently on electronic means of networking, but it should be remembered that there are many examples of successful postal mail networks. The main information system elements are: A Membership directory Discussion moderators Some kind of shared forum, or shared conceptual "message board" for joint communications A database of message archives, papers, and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), accessible by email, WWW, or postal request. A Database of other useful contacts There are several alternatives ways of approaching this networking requirement, ranging from simple postal conferences to relatively sophisticated visual conferencing systems. Postal conferences can be very effective when based on circulating papers and comments. The marginal cost of a mailing can be relatively low when it is combined with other routinely circulated material. The administrative load is somewhat higher than electronic methods, but material on paper may still be read and stored more effectively than electronic documents at this current early stage in the technology. Internet email is the fastest and potentially the least expensive conferencing method per transaction; however, as we have noted already, not many of the project participants presently have access to the Internet. Where full Internet access is available, WWW conferencing can be relatively easy to follow, but even fewer have access, and it requires more modern computing equipment. Also, a WWW page (password protected if necessary, to give reasonable security) is increasingly being seen as an effective way of archiving material for widespread ready access, either in association with a conference or on its own. Bulletin boards can be useful for archiving materials, but are much too expensive for international conferencing. They are hard to maintain unless a specific institution is willing to take on the job of system maintenance. They still require modems and communications software to access, and most people will only call one in the local call area. Modern bulletin board software is visually attractive, and easy to use, and very inexpensive, but unfortunately most people now prefer direct Internet access. A bulletin board system should certainly be considered for a relatively sophisticated and integrated technical group in a local area, but would have to be maintained by that group. Probably the simplest and most capable bulletin board software for non-specialist use is Wildcat 4, which runs on most DOS machines, or Wildcat5 which emulates many Internet features on Windows equipment. Videoconferencing can be feasible if built upon existing projects and linkages. Options include bilateral regional experiments such as the A3 project involving AIT, the Institute of Technology - Bandung and a number of other Asian universities. The use of CuSeeMee (an inexpensive Cornell University Package for limited, small-window video links) may be worth some experimentation, but the bandwidth to support video links of adequate quality is unlikely to be in place in most developed urban areas of S.E. Asia until around early 1998. This area should be explored in detail in about nine months time. The possibility of using hybrid arrangements is worth exploring - for example, emailing material to a distribution point in each country, and then printing, faxing, or posting the contents onwards within the country itself. Whatever the method chosen, it is important to have a framework for networking: a series of products and "institutions". These need to include: Briefings and instructions on how to participate Regular papers Reading lists Access to Specialised archives Collections of Frequently asked Questions (FAQs) and Frequently Encountered Problems (FEPs) A database of specialists to whom specific questions and referrals can be put. Achieving a "critical mass" of users is essential for productive networks. Even one or two defections may cause problems for meeting scheduling, decision support, or project management applications. Even in an idealized situation in which every individual will benefit once critical mass is achieved, the early adopters may well abandon it before the critical mass of users is reached. Encouraging project participants to believe that participation in networking is a major element of performance review, and related to future funding, may increase participation rates. A number of priority actions are required now for network building. First, potential sub-network facilitators in each country, and regionally, need to be identified. The shape and character of different sub-networks are likely to emerge during the next stage of the project, but are likely to broadly include promotion strategies, integrated risk and vulnerability mapping and analysis, and structural aspects of building design. If the list is intended to operate mainly by email, management arrangements for managing email forwarding of each message will be required. At present this can easily be done manually with a single mailbox at ADPC. However, if the list is made public, a fully functional listserv arrangement will be needed. If possible, AIT's computer centre should be encouraged to provide and support a Listserv for the project. If not, EPIX should be approached. AUDMP's WWW pages will need to include material that facilitates the work of each network sub-group. What is included should be decided by the group. Whatever is included should be available on disk to other users without WWW linkage, on request. The network sections of the page should be password protected primarily to encourage relatively frank discussion rather than to protect confidential material, and this should be made clear to participants. 11.3 Information support for project credibility and visibility There is a vital public relations task to ensure that the project's overall credibility is kept high and that those who need to hear about it have heard about it. Information related activities contributing to this include: Developing basic displays and poster sets which can be used at conferences and other public events (High Priority) Maintaining a simple database of Public Relations actions taken: who made contact, who was contacted, and who was given what (High Priority) Production of materials which news media organizations can use off-the-shelf in stories, for example maps, diagrams, etc. which can be taken up and used directly (Medium Priority) Developing outlines of media articles which might be used to promote stories about the project. (Lower Priority now) 11.4 Supporting Focused Promotional Activity Focused promotional activity, aimed at city governments, opinion leaders or business leaders, requires detailed information from as many sources as possible on the influence and power of each group involved. Ideally there should be some attempt to judge the weight of opinion on mitigation issues, and the attitudes to various measures being proposed. Those at country-level involved in promotional activity will need to be supported with a combination of services, including: Packaged presentations - brochures, video, leave-behind material Self-run presentations: video or CD-Rom Packaged Displays for conferences Video material Radio scripts This implies that AUDMP should develop a capacity either to produce or to commission brochure development, multimedia authoring, computer to video transfer for slide presentation development, and CD-Rom production. Some in-house capacity to produce basic promotional materials is desirable, if only to build up skills to manage outsourcing. The same resources would also be applicable to developing training materials. AUDMP already has excellent resources for developing promotional materials. The main additional requirements are likely to be software for multimedia productions, and some capacity to produce small runs of CDROMs in-house. Currently, the most widely recommended package for multimedia development is Macromedia Director. This is a complex package, which requires about two months use to become proficient. Serious consideration should be given to the choice of who would use it, and exactly what products should be developed first. Strategically, in-house or outsourced skills in this area will be important to ADPC as a whole, and the decision on this should be linked to ADPC's overall needs for materials development for training courses and distance learning. CDROM Writer equipment is changing monthly, in price and capability. There is no urgent need for purchase of the necessary hardware and software until a clear demand emerges. The highest priority product in this area is a good, simple brochure as a focus for interviews, and a collection of output material from other projects, especially the Quito project. A slide presentation transferred to video, with a good commentary is a medium priority requirement at present, but will increase in importance as the project proceeds. It may be best to develop a video after the project has been underway for some months. 11.5 Supporting Scientific and Technical Analysis The scientific and technical members of the project in each country could benefit from a range of services: Mailings of routine current awareness bulletins in key technical fields, advising of key publications and useful new information sources Easy access to relevant bibliographic databases and library catalogues Easy access to peer support Improved access to external expert support Ordering and document supply arrangements A training resources directory An information "marriage bureau" which helps to match people interested in the same topic or subject The approach to the technical group as a whole has to be tailored to make use of limited resources, and also to avoid duplication by acting as a information exchange on similar activities elsewhere, in particular at specialist information centres such as the U.S. National Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (NCEER) and the Natural Hazards Center at Boulder, Colorado. In terms of who provides the bulk of technical information support, there are three basic options/alternatives: AUDMP takes on the prime responsibility for managing the circulation of technical material (relying on AIT's technical library services for specific advice and inputs where appropriate) An information broker is designated for the project in each city, using whatever technical resources are available locally A hybrid arrangement is established, whereby AUDMP works together with a local information service. The best arrangement, provided communications will support it, is a hybrid one with a local information specialist acting as an intermediary and interpreter for a local community of technicians. In general, though, AUDMP is likely to have to circulate a reasonable amount of technical material, both to meet the demands of the technical members of the group as a whole, and (notwithstanding the very high quality of several of the institutions involved in the project) to ensure that an excellent standard of information provision is sustained for the project as a whole. Detailed current awareness requirements of individual researchers and technical staff can be met in several ways, either in house, or relying on other more specialist centres, or using custom services from commercial information services. Although AUDMP's information staff could cover new publications and research in a number of fields in detail themselves, it seems far more efficient to use the services of other specialist centres wherever possible. For example, since the NCEER produces a bimonthly detailed information bulletin on new seismic engineering research (and a range of other earthquake protection subjects), this should be circulated by AUDMP to all technical staff on the project concerned with earthquakes. Similarly, bulletins produced by flood hazard research centres in the UK and US cover much of the flood hazard current awareness requirement. Alternatively, custom current awareness services can be purchased from commercial groups such as the Institute for Scientific Information, and this may be worth exploring further when individual needs are better known. So far, it appears that most requirements can be met from the output of existing research and information centres. Acquiring reports and papers should wherever possible be the responsibility of individual technical staff in each country. However, it will probably become clear that individual specialists may have local difficulties obtaining material quickly or easily. In those cases AUDMP may be in a position to obtain important reports or papers or other materials and circulate them, either as originals, as photocopies, or by scanning and digitizing and transmitting on disk, CDROM, or by electronic mail. In each case it will of course be essential to follow the copyright laws of the countries involved. Clearly there are also advantages in making material that one group has requested potentially available to all project members involved in similar activity. As the project develops, it should be possible to build an archive of technical material from all projects upon which all members can draw. There are several ways of approaching this possible requirement. First is to circulate lists of material held by each group, and to provide, and encourage other groups to provide, photocopies by post on request. This is worth trying initially in any case; it may work perfectly satisfactorily. A second option is to formally copy material from country to country and attempt to build up in-country libraries containing material from all the projects. This seems excessive at this stage. Much material would probably go unread. More limited shared collections would almost certainly be worthwhile, however. A third option is to use scanning software such as Acrobat Capture, and to provide disk copies on local PCs of scanned material from each project, for example using the inexpensive and simple 100 Mb Iomega Zip drives as a transfer format. This is worth exploring initially on a small scale. A fourth archiving option is for AUDMP to develop CDROMs containing scanned material from all projects, circulating updates periodically. This is well worth considering as the project develops, and as the technology becomes simpler and cheaper. Choice of document imaging software/transfer standards appears at present to be fairly straightforward. The main choices for scanned material are between Acrobat Capture, and other less widely used specialist document imaging systems such as Watermark. Brief sources of details of other systems are included in the Annexes. Since the Acrobat PDF file standard is becoming widely used on the World Wide Web, and since reader software is freely available, it seems worth experimenting first with Capture before considering other much more expensive options. 11.5.1 Information Products for Technical Staff The project should aim to produce the following regular information products for technical staff: Monthly current awareness circular (include proposals from country groups for contents) (High Priority) Items newly received at ADPC Other Reports/Books/Media of potential high interest WWW/Electronic publications of interest NHO (when available) Paper Copies of Disaster Research Newsletter Paper Copies of NCEER news (WWW site reference) Photocopies of contents sheets of a selected set of key journals Report on month's project activity Project meeting reports A regularly updated set of Group Frequently Asked Questions, and Frequently Encountered Problems (High priority) A set of Technical Topic Briefings and Reviews (Medium Priority) A basic list of WWW sites relevant to the project (and an AUDMP routine for regular checking of these sites). (Low Priority at present) A range of actions are required now to establish an effective service for technical project staff: Catalogue the AUDMP collection using the Reference Manager package (High Priority) Produce "launch support packs" for each project (High Priority) Photocopy and distribute title pages and contents sheets of a small number of key reports and documents held in AUDMP which it would be possible to duplicate or obtain for co-ordinators. Finish a basic reading list on urban mitigation (Medium Priority) Circulate title page and contents pages of key documents for comments on the value of scanning or copying (Medium Priority) Begin a basic current awareness programme immediately (High Priority) Regular downloads of Natural Hazards Observer, Disaster Research, and NCEER News Library check routine Websites routine checks Current awareness requirements description form Purchase a copy of the NCEER CDROM containing three major bibliographic collections (Medium Priority) Purchase a copy of PAHO's CDROM with the main Bibliodes bibliography. (Low Priority at present - higher later) Establish a basic catalogue of the journals available at ADPC and AIT, a listing of relevant articles in ADPC library and AUDMP, and a regular update on relevant new articles received. Mail copies on request (Medium Priority) Expand AUDMPs core bibliography. Build up a more comprehensive database on lifeline disruption and technological breakdowns (Medium Priority) Determine the demand for specific products (Medium Priority): Review the demand and requirements for a product: Urban Mitigation Strategy Briefings Review the demand and requirements for photocopied contents lists of key journals from a wider list of material held by AIT main library Review the need for procedures to provide on request a limited number of article copies from a specified list of journals (in AIT main library) - approximately ten articles per requester per year Review the need for procedures to provide copies of WWW papers on request Review the need for procedures to provide searches of NCEER CDROM database on request Review the need for procedures to provide a limited number searches of OCLC and NTIS databases at the request of country project co-ordinators Establish a set of goals for country visits by AUDMP information staff (High Priority) Identify partners' capable of providing information support locally, including: Committed individuals Institutional support Technical support such as server management (SOPAC model) Review partners' existing access to communications network services, information sources, and communications needs Review partner's Internet access options and provide support and assistance where necessary Advice on system set-up Seek out expertise in setting up local intranets Encourage country project co-ordination staff to get comprehensive access to computers and email - training if necessary Present brief seminars on ADPC information resources and services Actions later (Spring 1997) Begin to scan all the non-copyright and permission-obtained documents on the basic list using Acrobat Capture (Medium Priority) Build up a library on disk of key articles Review the specific copyright agreements required Develop routine for responding to and processing a larger volume of email and fax requests (High Priority) Ensure that at minimum that relevant articles referenced in Natural Hazards Observer (NHO) and NCEER are ordered. To save time, ensure that the electronic version of NHO is checked (Medium Priority) Work out a way to archive Disaster Research and other Internet-based electronic newsletters (Medium Priority) Prepare a replicable seminar for project participants on mitigation information resources (Medium Priority) Establish remote access to ADPC databases (Lower Priority) Test of First Search: test the document delivery services offered by the First Search subscription held by AIT library (Lower Priority) 11.6 Supporting urban dataset management Some of the technical staff of the project will need to access a wide range of structured data, mostly in numerical form. This is particularly the case with GIS specialists, but also includes other groups such as structural engineers, and seismologists. Much of the data required will need to be extracted from datasets held by a variety of organizations: urban survey and land-use projects, public utilities, university geophysics departments, etc. A quote by Susan Cutter at a recent meeting of mitigation specialists in Boulder highlights the issue well in relation to US analysts' problems with locational parameters, access, format, and data coverage and quality: "Actual location: Flood plain locations and fault lines are educated guesses, storm data are given by county rather than latitude and longitude, for example. Access: Data are located in disparate sources. There are differences between data compiled within various federal agencies and, sometimes, within the same agency. The same is true regarding state databases. Efforts are needed to unify data standards, compilation, and archiving. There is little integration between hazard/disaster databases and environmental databases. Confidentiality also interferes with data accessibility." "Format: When data do exist, they may not be in a usable format. For example, demographic databases are often based on political boundaries. Databases are also static: the most recent census data is for 1990; what about the population in 1996? Further, the census data is limited to where people live, and does not cover where they work." "Absent (missing, inaccurate, or highly uncertain) data: Examples of absent data include data on hazardous material transportation and flow, the value of land parcels, mitigation data (cost of mitigation, mitigation actions, insurance), and local knowledge in our maps that incorporates rapid development (which has an impact on risk assessment). " AUDMP will probably need to play close attention to sources of expert advice and assistance for individual national technical staff in relating different data sets. If only to help with identification of sources of assistance, it could also be useful if AUDMP itself developed some additional familiarity with the somewhat arcane and technical issues of metadata cataloguing. 11.7 Supporting Urban Level Mitigation Strategy Planning An important role in co-ordination and bringing mitigation into the mainstream of city planning is likely to be played by city level hazard safety advisory boards. There will generally include both technical staff, urban planners, and utility specialists, as well as political representatives. It will be important to ensure that members are fully briefed on available methodologies, and that meetings of these groups are properly resourced. Support could include GIS and mapping, small scale simulation, and collections of case study material (for example, the Quito project, British Council Mexico study, Stanford Palo Alto study, Fiji Suva Project, and a range of US mitigation projects involving GIS) Two actions needed at some stage for almost any hazard safety board would be a collection and distribution of lists of Frequently Encountered Problems (FEPs) from previous similar urban mitigation activities, and the identification of members of GIS user groups in each country who may be able to provide briefings and introductions to the use of GIS for members with little prior experience of this technology and its benefits. This activity should have high priority. 11.8 Helping With Replication/Diffusion Of Project Activities The AUDMP project has great potential for replication and diffusion. Much of this will occur very effectively within each country, as staff from one city learn informally from others. Replication will be enhanced by a solid framework of products: a comprehensive series of clearly delineated reports and studies documenting each project (see above); a collection of lessons learned in the course of implementation; and free availability of as much as possible of the informal discussion material produced by the various teams during the project. The latter would include transcripts of meetings and seminars, memos, notes, and original first drafts. By the end of the project the range of options for archiving this material will be wider than at present, but will almost certainly include high density CDROM archives and WWW page. At this stage, the key requirement is to ensure that material used at the inception of each project, expressing the uncertainties, questions, and assumptions is preserved as far as possible. 11.9 Establishing A Future-Proof Model From the review of possible technical innovations at the start of this analysis, it should be clear that the AUDMP project will need to take account of substantial changes in the way information is communicated, stored, and processed over the life of the project. Quite sudden improvements are likely to bring with them equally sudden new opportunities. AUDMP staff will need to keep a "watching brief" on the emergence of new software, and information management tools which could significantly impact on the project. Some potentially important areas to keep in touch with include intranet applications in city governments, GIS applications in insurance and other industries, use of remote sensing data in hazard assessment, Internet conferencing software, and the emergence of simpler multimedia development tools for use in training and briefing. Probably the simplest way of ensuring that information can be transferred and maintained effectively in countries which are lagging technologically is to encourage project staff with relatively modern computers (486 and above for PC's) to install their own CDROM readers. costs will continue to decline to below $40 per unit, and in any case CDROMs will become widely available as existing computer assets are added to or replaced. This should enable AUDMP to extract documents from the growing body of material held on WWW servers, and also to distribute scanned material where this is appropriate. A second set of developments to encourage at a later stage is the installation of local dial-up intranets for project groups. This is unlikely to be an issue for at least a year, but the opportunities of using what will soon be a straightforward technology to focus disparate groups on a common agenda may be just too positive to miss. The best place to start testing intranet applications is with ADPC's own network. Next Page