Incorporating InAWARE into Indonesia’s disaster management processes

August 22, 2014

As part of a three-year project, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance  (OFDA), key stakeholders in Indonesia’s disaster management community gathered in Jakarta on August 8 to review and endorse a Concept of Operations (CONOPS) document for the recently deployed InAWARE system.

InAWARE, a customized version of PDC’s DisasterAWARE, is a multi-hazard monitoring and decision support system hosted at the Jakarta Data Center which also houses other IT equipment for Indonesia’s national disaster management agency, Badan Nasional Penanggulangan Bencana (BNPB). The system consolidates hazard information and alerts from various national and international data providers and facilitates information sharing within and between stakeholder agencies.

The development of the CONOPS began last July during the project kick-off workshop in Jakarta and continued over several months as Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) staff conducted a series of detailed interviews with stakeholders. The information gathered through these activities allowed PDC to identify existing processes of information flow, data collection and transfer, interagency communication protocols, organizational structure, agency roles and responsibilities, as well as operational processes pertaining to disaster management operations within Indonesia. The CONOPS document will guide the use of InAWARE in the context of Indonesia’s existing procedures for natural hazard early warning and response.

PDC Geospatial Information Specialist John Livengood, Southeast Asia Program Advisor Victoria Leat, and Jakarta-based National Project Representative Whisnu Yonar conducted the CONOPS Stakeholder Engagement Workshop to present salient points contained in the document. Ten people attended the Workshop, including representatives from BNPB, World Food Programme (WFP), ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management (AHA Centre), Australia-Indonesia Facility for Disaster Reduction (AIFDR), and Indonesian Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation.

Discussion surrounding the CONOPS covered use of the InAWARE system as well as suggestions for additional data that could be brought into the system. Participants provided general approval of the document and were encouraged to review the translated version in further detail and provide additional feedback to PDC. Completion of the CONOPS marks a major milestone in the project, “InAWARE: Disaster Management Early Warning and Decision Support Capacity Enhancement within Indonesia’s BNPB and BPBD,” as the process of institutionalizing the system and transferring ownership to BNPB begins.

For more information on InAWARE:
• Read about the installation and deployment of InAWARE,
• See how InAWARE was highlighted during a UN-SPIDER meeting,
• Read about the InAWARE kickoff workshop in Jakarta, and
• Look over information about the Great Sumatra Earthquake and Indian Ocean Tsunami. 

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