| Question I/16 - Use of public telecommunication services for emergency and disaster relief operations |
(New Question approved 25 October 2002 - TSB
Circular 131)
Background and justification
The focus of this question is 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), 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.
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.
There are a variety of telecommunication capabilities for use in emergency situations. The scope of
this question 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 ETS 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 ETS traffic.
Development of ETS 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.
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 capabilities,
e.g. solicit input from Administrations and disaster relief organizations.
- Define ETS 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 traffic.
- Define the terminology associated with ETS 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 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 - first draft May 2002. This continuing work will draw from actual user. This is a SG2 objective -first draft June 2003
- Identify the ETS capabilities that are needed to fulfil the requirements - first draft January 2004
- Liaise with organizations or activities responsible for addressing specific capabilities - ongoing
- Develop a system framework Recommendation identifying the components needed to support the ETS 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 8A, 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
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