AMATEUR RADIO EMERGENCY SERVICE-A SOURCE OF FLEXIBLE SOLUTIONS FOR VARIOUS PROBLEMS Author: Aziz SASA,TA1E President TRAC TRAC ARES-Officer

INTRODUCTION - Emergencies are unpredictable in various terms, however there are problems which are common to all sort of big scale emergencies. -A widely known problem in all emergencies is the breakdown of public communication utilities. Therefore efforts to organize alternative communication resources in advance are generally made. These efforts are mostly concentrated on finding solutions for tactical and strategical (logistics) communications. Amateur Radio is one of the prominent alternative resources.

INTRODUCTION However, besides of the well-known general communication problems for which quite a wide range of solutions are available there are a number of case-specific problems which can not be solved with the “convential” recources or techniques. The problem to be aware on that point is the fact that in the usual (or “normal”) problem evaluation process in the aftermath of events these are not identified. Problems which are disturbing the big majority of the affected people are considered a priority while other matters which are problematic as well are either only identified by a small number of agencies and therefore not considered as priority or simply forgotten. These kind of problems can only be identified and brought into the agenda by careful observers with a big deal of experience in emergencies.

The Problem Earthquakes are felt in a very wide area and are considered as very threatening. In countries like Turkey which very often are confronted with devastating earthquakes and therefore traumatized, any tremor being felt can instantly cause panic in the population and officials. This panic triggers a sudden demand on information and therefore a tremendous load on the public communication resources. This can cause a breakdown of the public communications. As a result of this, the distribution of information from the source (e.g. the observatory) can suddenly be disturbed.

The Problem The interrupted information flow can cause more panic and various speculations-the problem escalates dramatically. This panic can hamper besides all emergency response activities the tasks of the observatory as well. Observing an earthquake and calculating its datas correctly is quite a complicated matter. Any interference caused by the overwhelming information requests towards the observatory can be very hindering for this primary task of this institution. Therefore a specific solution to this very major and specific problem had to be found.

One Possible Solution-The Experience in Turkey TRAC, having had experienced several major emergencies in Turkey, maintains permanent consultations with all relevant emergency-related agencies. Among these is also the Kandilli-Observatory in Istanbul which is the primary national institution for earthquake research and the only source for earthquake datas in Turkey. Due to previous experiences where earthquake informations had to be “manually” conveyed to Ankara from there by deployed amateurs when the phone connections were saturated, we installed a 2-Meter Radio into the observation room. Our intention was to link at least the Istanbul Emergency Management Center with the observatory independent from the public network. This first step worked out quite fine, but we noticed that even this setup was not sufficient especially at nighttime when only two scientist had their shift in the observatory and therefore were too busy even for passing the informations over the radio. We came to the conclusion that an automatic mechanism would be more functional.

APRS-The solution for the problem We were implementing APRS already regionally. Realizing that this would be most likely a handy tool for distributing earthquake datas we decided to offer a formal co-operation to the observatory. Our offer was enthusiastically welcomed by the director of the observatory. Just one week after our offer was forwarded we had our mutual agreement with them. The script necessary for converting the observation datas to a APRS-compatible format was compiled by a scientist in the observatory. We had already our own production of TNC’s running, therefore in a very short time or installation in the observatory was ready. After some debugging business in the script the system was working perfectly. The treshold of the observations to be broadcasted was set to Ms=3, as this was the level of tremors which is felt by human beings. Our setup is directly connected to the computer system where the observations are compiled. Therefore, if everything else fails, our system is the only reliable source of automatic information distribution, completely independent from the public communication network and not requiring any additional work from the observatory personnel. Another helpful factor has been the fact that we had installed APRS-equipment in some of the reagional Emergency Management Centers where we were already established. Therefore, our network delivers the required informations to the correct destinations.

APRS-The solution for the problem APRS incorporated also the advantage of giving the possibility of interfacing into the internet by gateways and delivering the datas to a large area with a relatively small number of digipeaters. In that point, our MoU with the Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) which is giving us free access to their high altitude transmitter sites was very helpful. As internet services will primarily be hampered only in the affected areas and in their next vicinity, internet interfacing is still possible in other areas. Therefore, by distributing the risk to several points, internet connection with gateways is possible and this is helpful to raise the throughput of data. This facility gives also to possibility to create local area networks which are fed by internet from various points and distribute the data by RF. The APRS network gives also the possibility of communicating with any point in the coverage area and virtually anywhere completely independent from propagation conditions. Therefore, the risk of communication failure due to propagation problems is eliminated.

The Network At present, 11 provinces in the most populated and seismically endangered provinces in the nothwestern and western part of the country with approximately 25 million population are covered.This network gives also the possibility of communicating with Greece, the country which is the main partner in the intergovernmental disaster response unit (JHET-SDRU). Next step will be the expansion to 27 provinces in the western half of country, including the western mediterranean provinces. At that stage, Ankara will be connected to the 3 most populated and industrialized cities in the country. At that step, a population of approximately 40 million people will be reached. Efforts will be made to create a local area network in the very eastern part of the country which are extremely endangered by seismic risks. This network will be fed by internet at three points to bridge it with the western network.

Conclusion This project is a clear indication for the fact that amateur radio is a supreme resource for solving communication problems. TRAC is the first national amateur radio society which established a permanent installation in an observatory. As known, this project became an inspiration for some interesting projects such as the dissemination of Tsunami Warnings via APRS in other parts of the world. To our opinion, this method is a very helpful instrument to distribute critical information with very low costs by engaging volunteers. APRS gives the possibility to distribute informations in a much wider extend than any other “professional” method. This is very crucial when it comes to the point where a wast amount of people have to be warned and mobilized.