| Emergency Telecommunication Services work in ITU-T SG 16 |
Introduction
Unexpected natural and manmade disasters may occur anywhere at any time. The very nature of disasters requires
immediate response for organizing and coordinating recovery operations. Critical disaster recovery activities
may be aided by ready availability and accessibility to public telecommunication resources to support urgent
communications. The development and standardization of telecommunication capabilities to support emergency and
disaster relief communications is needed.
Question I/16 has been established in Study Group 16 to address public telecommunication services that authorities
can use to communicate during emergency and disaster operations. This capability, referred to as the emergency
telecommunication service (ETS) or telecommunications for disaster relief (TDR), will enable communications from
authorized users to have preferential treatment for organizing and coordinating disaster relief operations. Preferential
treatment is particularly important because telecommunication networks often experience severe stress during these events
due to high traffic demands, bandwidth limitation, and possibly infrastructure damage.
There are a variety of telecommunication capabilities for use in emergency situations. The scope of Q.I/16 addresses the
capabilities specifically for authorities to use public telecommunication services for emergency and disaster relief
operations. However, it is recognized that some of the technical solutions emerging from this work could be applicable
to other emergency telecommunication capabilities. In addition, consideration could be given to possible interfacing between
public networks providing TDR capabilities and dedicated systems used by authorities during disaster relief operations.
This question addresses a variety of issues associated with converging and evolving next generation networks including
consideration for multimedia applications, as well as traditional telephony. Standards that emerge from this work are
intended to apply to international TDR traffic.
Development of TDR capabilities is being addressed by many standards development and disaster relief organizations.
Therefore, cooperation and liaison (coordination) among the many organizations representing different interest areas
is essential to ensure consistency and completeness in the provisioning of effective telecommunication capabilities to
support emergency and disaster relief operations.
Q.I/16 is planned to help bring coherence and consistency among ITU-T Study Groups and other SDOs to the many aspects
in the development of comprehensive TDR capabilities. The work to be performed in SG 16 will be coordinated with the work
in other parts of ITU, but in particular with the work performed under the responsibility of ITU-T Study Group 2.
In Study Group 2, TDR aspects are studied under Question 3/2. One of the issues addressed by Q.3/2 is the interconnection
of national emergency schemes to create a global emergency scheme, which led to the development of Recommendation E.106,
"Description of an International Emergency Preference Scheme (IEPS)". E.106 relates to the
E.105 international telephone
service and provides operational and service guidelines for extending national preference schemes across International
boundaries. A new project, under Q.3/2 will be designated to continue addressing these issues. The most recent text produced
by Study Group 2 on this topic can be found in TD-94 (WP 1/2) of its April-May 2003
meeting.
Study items
- Identify organizations addressing the various aspects related to telecommunication capabilities for emergency
and disaster relief operations
- In conjunction with Study Group 2, identify user requirements for ETS/TDR capabilities, e.g. solicit input
from Administrations and disaster relief organizations.
- Define ETS/TDR capabilities drawing from identified user application requirements.
- In conjunction with Study Group 17, define security aspects for authentication of users and prevention of
interference, e.g. spoofing, changing content, denial of service, eavesdropping, with ETS/TDR traffic.
- Define the terminology associated with ETS/TDR capabilities for emergency and disaster relief operations
Specific task objectives with expected time-frame of completion
- Develop and maintain a table of work items related to ETS/TDR being addressed by standards development
organizations and other relevant organizations, which provides initial and eventual target dates for completion of
the work items – living document
- Develop an emergency telecommunication requirements Recommendation. This continuing work will draw from actual
user requirements. This is a SG2 objective –first draft Autumn 2003
- Identify the ETS/TDR capabilities that are needed to fulfil the requirements – first draft Spring 2004
- Liase with organizations or activities responsible for addressing specific capabilities – ongoing
- Develop a system framework Recommendation identifying the components needed to support the ETS/TDR capabilities –2005
Relationships
- ITU-T Study Groups 2, 3, 4, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, and SSG
- Questions of related topics within ITU-T Study Group 16, e.g., 2, F, G, and C-Metadata Ad Hoc
- ITU-R – WP 4B, WP 8B, and WP 9B
- ITU-D - Study Group 2
- UN Working Group on Emergency Telecommunications (WGET)
- Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) – IAB, IESG, ieprep Working Group
- European Telecommunications Standardization Institute (ETSI), OCG EMTEL, Partnership Project MESA, ETSI Project TIPHON, and Partnership Project 3GPP
- Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) Partnership Project 3GPP2
- Asia-Pacific Telecommunity Standardization Program (ASTAP) Expert Group on Public Disaster Relief Communications
- User organizations – UN and other international disaster relief organizations
Status of the work
Q.I/16 was approved by the SG16 Plenary in October 2002.
A questionnaire has been circulated to ITU-T members in Circular 134 to solicit input on existing TDR-type
systems in operation and being planned as well as identification of requirements for future telecommunication
capabilities to support disaster relief operations. Currently available responses can be found in this page:
http://ties.itu.int/u/tsg16/sg16/wp4/qi/TDR-questionnaire
(requires TIES account).
The ITU-T Workshop on Telecommunications for Disaster Relief was held 17-19 February 2003. Presentations and
their audio recording, and the conclusions of the workshop can be found at: http://www.itu.int/ITU-T/worksem/ets.
The next meeting of Q.I/16 will take place during the ITU-T SG 16 meeting in Geneva, 20-30 May 2003.
More details can be found in Collective Letter 6/16 and in the
SG 16 main web page.
Near-future plans
Q.I/16 will coordinate, with Q.3/2, the establishment of the "TDR Partnership Co-ordination Panel", as
endorsed by TSAG in February 2003, as a platform to foster exchange of information amongst the different players
(see terms of reference at http://www.itu.int/itudoc/itu-t/workshop/ets/finalrep.html). More details will be announced soon.
Useful links:
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