Fujitsu to Go Live with Disaster Information Management System in Indonesia's North Sumatra Region

Fujitsu Limited and PT Fujitsu Indonesia today announced installation of its Fujitsu Public Sector Solution Disaster Information Management System in the Command Center of the North Sumatran Regional Disaster Management Agency. The new system supports rescue and recovery activities as well as quick decision making when disasters occur, delivering centralized management of disaster information. Operations will begin in January 2019.

North Sumatran Regional Disaster Management Agency employees dispatched to various disaster sites will be able to connect to the Disaster Information Management System and input information about numbers of casualties and damaged structures, and select from 12 different types of disasters⁽¹⁾, including volcanic eruptions, floods, and landslides, using a proprietary smartphone application developed by Fujitsu to transmit the information to the Command Center. The information submitted from disaster-afflicted areas will be displayed in real time on a dashboard map screen installed in the Command Center, providing insight into the extent and nature of damage suffered by residents and buildings aggregated from each disaster site.

With this data on hand, when disasters occur, the North Sumatran Regional Disaster Management Agency will now have the ability to accurately and quickly gather information, which had been an issue in the past. This will strengthen the initial disaster response and speed up decision-making in rescue and support activities on the ground.

Going forward, Fujitsu and Fujitsu Indonesia will continue to support disaster response efforts in North Sumatra through the innovative deployment of ICT, and plan to link this system with the Agency's existing systems, including its river management system and its volcano monitoring system, expanding and enhancing functionality such as with evacuation notifications for residents.

Background

North Sumatra is a province located in the northern part of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. In addition to disasters like eruptions from volcanic activity at Mount Sinabung, one of the world's most active volcanoes, the area also experiences frequent floods and landslides from the cloudbursts that are common due to the tropical climate. The North Sumatran Regional Disaster Management Agency is called on to respond to 12 types of disasters, including earthquakes and floods. When disasters occur in multiple places at the same time, the agency has confronted the challenge of collecting timely information from each site and in preparing appropriate initial responses in light of that information.

In order to resolve this sort of issue, Fujitsu and Fujitsu Indonesia established the Disaster Information Management System at the North Sumatran Regional Disaster Management Agency's Command Center-the system will aggregate and visualize data collected from each disaster site in real time with operations initiating in January 2019.

Features of the Disaster Information Management System

1. Proprietary smartphone app to aggregate information quickly, from multiple disaster sites

Fujitsu developed a proprietary smartphone app for North Sumatran Regional Disaster Management Agency employees sent to disaster sites to aggregate disaster information for the Command Center. This application can display icons for the 17 categories of disaster defined in Indonesia's national disaster prevention law⁽²⁾, such as earthquakes and floods, and automatically determines the location of the disaster site using GPS. For the North Sumatran Regional Disaster Management Agency, the app has been adapted to apply to 12 categories of disaster specifically relevant to that region. This feature enables employees to easily and quickly send casualty numbers, the number of damaged buildings, the status of the disaster response, and pictures of the site to the Command Center from each disaster site.

2. Command Center aggregates and visualizes disaster information from multiple sites

The disaster-related information input using the smartphone app by employees dispatched to disaster sites is displayed in real time on a large dashboard monitoring screen installed in the Command Center. The system not only displays an easy-to-understand map with icons representing the 12 disaster categories, such as volcanic eruptions, floods, and landslides, as well as the disaster level, but also aggregates information on damage done at each disaster site to residents and buildings. It additionally provides information on the status of the disaster response on the ground at each site, and offers users the ability to visualize aggregated information. Fujitsu is supporting an enhanced initial response to disasters by the North Sumatran Regional Disaster Management Agency and more efficient planning for recovery operations based on timely reports gathered on the ground on disaster sites.