Category: Berita Internasional

Even though earthquake-prone Japan has seen numerous warnings that massive, devastating temblors could strike at any time, including in the Tokyo metropolitan area and in the Nankai Trough off the Pacific coast, data shows the nation’s youth don’t seem to have the same sense of preparing for a disaster that older generations do.

A poll by map publisher Zenrin Co. last summer showed that 32.9 percent of 1,897 respondents in their 20s and 40.7 percent of 2,420 people in their 30s recognized the importance of being prepared for natural disasters.

But with age this increased to 44.2 percent of pollees in their 40s, 51.1 percent in their 50s and 57.8 percent in their 60s.

One social entrepreneur is seeking to raise awareness of the need for disaster preparedness among young people by changing the way efforts to mitigate the effects of natural calamities are perceived.

Misaki Tanaka said of note was the lack of interest females showed toward preparing for a disaster, with many of the 100 women in their 20s and 30s she interviewed seemingly negative on the issue — an attitude she believes discourages them from taking precautions.

“They said disaster prevention efforts were not cool and cost too much. They were also not sure whether such measures will produce results,” Tanaka said.

“I myself had no interest in disaster prevention and didn’t prepare anything for possible disasters,” she added.

A sense of crisis drove the 26-year-old Nara native to establish Bosai Girl (Disaster Prevention Girl) in a bid to change the notion of disaster preparedness among young females.

“If we can change their attitude, it could result in spreading disaster prevention efforts,” Tanaka said.

Tanaka set up Bosai Girl with two friends in August 2013 while working for a nonprofit organization that provided reconstruction support in the Tohoku region, which was hit hard by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Through Bosai Girl’s website, Tanaka started providing information such as about items needed in the event of a disaster, and useful apps. After a while, she decided to fully commit to the organization, with Bosai Girl now comprising 15 volunteers, or “bosai girls.”

Their work includes business promotions, fundraising, and information on community disaster prevention efforts.

One of the projects is creating new types of evacuations drills.

Tanaka said the conventional drills many Japanese participate in have contributed to the negative image among young people toward disaster preparedness.

“Many young people I have talked to said they didn’t enjoy or didn’t see the point of disaster drills at elementary schools or junior high schools,” Tanaka said. “I came to realize if we could transform the conventional disaster drills into something meaningful, it could change the notion of disaster prevention and change such drills nationwide.”

Tanaka noted that everything is prepared in advance in conventional drills, including the venue for the mock disasters and evacuation routes, and teachers and HR personnel are tasked with issuing instructions to students and employees.

But such drills aren’t necessarily realistic if a disaster struck at a location other than those schools or workplaces, Tanaka said.

In response, Bosai Girl has created “next-generation version evacuation drills,” where in one example participants can choose the safest evacuation route and find an evacuation site by themselves after leaving a designated starting place.

Tanaka said in this drill Bosai Girl staff don’t provide clues or maps, given nobody knows when and where they will be when disaster hits.

After the drill, participants and Bosai Girl staff discuss how it went and what can be improved.

Another drill involves Google’s location-based smartphone game Ingress, in which participants visit certain “portals,” notable evacuation spots designated by Bosai Girl in advance. “By introducing a game element to evacuation drills, we want people to enjoy them,” Tanaka said.

Bosai Girl conducted the drill using Ingress for workers at Recruit Holdings Co. in July and plans to hold one for the general public in Tokyo’s Shibuya district on Aug. 31.

The group has also received inquiries from companies and municipalities, and more recently launched a brand for disaster-preparedness goods.

“Around December 2013, we received an inquiry from ad agency Trademark Kochi, which asked us whether we can send out something on disaster prevention from Kochi Prefecture with them,” Tanaka said. If a huge earthquake occurred in the Nankai Trough, Kochi would probably be hit hard.

The collaboration with the firm resulted in launching the brand SABOI last March, which includes disaster goods such as a pair of pink pumps that can be folded, and a pouch with little items such as a mask, small flashlight, whistle, hair elastic and bobby pin.

“Conventional disaster kits didn’t include a hair elastic or bobby pin,” which can be of help for women in emergencies when they can’t wash their hair, Tanaka said.

Bosai Girl and Trademark Kochi have produced 1,000 items each, but they are almost sold out, Tanaka said.

Besides holding seminars, Bosai Girl has held unique events in an effort to attract young people who have little interest in disaster preparedness.

Bosai Machikon, a mixer held in July 2014, drew 30 young men and women, who learned about disaster preparedness through workshops while eating and drinking. “We wanted the participants not only to become couples but also to think about disaster prevention together,” Tanaka said.

The participants learned how to stop bleeding, utilizing such daily commodities as plastic wrap and newspapers, and where best to position furniture in a house.

Although Tanaka’s activities have expanded, things didn’t always go smoothly. After the 2011 earthquake hit, just before Tanaka joined Internet services company CyberAgent Inc. after graduating from Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, she pondered ways to help the disaster victims, discussing the issue constantly with her university friends.

Tanaka said she felt a gap between what she had actually done compared to her friends and how she wanted to help, as well as what she was doing at the company, which targeted mobile customers.

After some thought, Tanaka decided to focus on working at the firm in order to acquire basic business skills and knowledge that she believed would be necessary to help with the Tohoku reconstruction effort.

“I concluded I couldn’t be of help with reconstruction efforts in Tohoku since I didn’t have skills and physical strength at that time,” Tanaka said.

Tanaka put thoughts of Tohoku aside, worked hard and managed to achieve her goal, saying she learned the basics of business and how to communicate with others to pursue projects.

Around June 2012, she was offered a post by the nonprofit organization Tasukeai Japan to be in charge of reconstruction efforts in Fukushima Prefecture.

The organization, which is headed by one of Tanaka’s lecturers at the university, has engaged in putting local information from Tohoku online.

“The organization regards information as one of the lifelines,” Tanaka said, adding their mission was to convey the right information on what was happening in disaster-affected areas.

Tanaka left CyberAgent and joined Tasukeai Japan in August 2012. She was tasked with recruiting people in Fukushima Prefecture and training them as “information rangers” to upload videos or pictures.

“People have completely different opinions and backgrounds and sorting that out took the most amount of time,” Tanaka said.

Tanaka moved to the organization’s Tokyo office after handing over her duties to the staff in Fukushima, and turned her attention to promoting disaster prevention efforts in general.

She said that while working in Tokyo, she also had the opportunity to give lectures and hold workshops.

Before deciding to fully commit to Bosai Girl, Tanaka received emails from females who wanted to join the team. The number of “likes” on the group’s Facebook page have increased to about 860 in the five months since the organization opened the page in Aug. 2013.

Tanaka said her goal at Bosai Girl is to make disaster preparedness common. By the end of March 2017 she would like to increase the number of people nationwide who make contact with Bosai Girl to 160,000 — the same as the number of fire department staff in Japan. “We want them to take action for disaster prevention . . . be it ever so small,” Tanaka said. “It’s OK for them just to click ‘like’ on our Facebook page. People won’t click ‘like’ if they don’t have awareness of disaster preparedness.”

source: japantime

Standing in front of a door which is the only part of her former school left standing, this Nepali teenager clutches a dog-eared book recovered from the rubble. 

Three months after a devastating earthquake struck the Himalayan country, Pabitrya Paudyal, 13, is one of a million children who continue to live in areas at high risk of landslides and floods following two devastating earthquakes on April 25 and May 12.

The destroyed Chaturmala Higher Secondary School where she once went is in Muchowk, Gorkha, one of the districts most severely affected by the two disasters.

Four teachers died in the school, putting them among the almost 9,000 people who perished in the two natural disasters little more than two weeks apart. 

Inadequate shelter, school closures and a lack of safe water and sanitation are the three biggest concerns for Nepali children according to Unicef.   

 

+9

Family bond: Rita Shrestha bottle-feeds her two-year-old daughter, Elina al Krishna Shivakoti, in their family’s earthquake-damaged restaurant in a bazar in Dolakha District, epicentre of the May 12 earthquake

In a series of haunting images released by the charity Saraswati Saru Magar, 15, stands beside her three-year-old nephew outside a temporary shelter in Sitalpati Village Development Committee in Sindhuli.

Saraswati, whose house was damaged during the earthquake, has been living in the temporary shelter built from the remains.

She says she really misses going to her school, despite it being about a two-hour walk each way, saying: ‘I am afraid of the ongoing aftershocks and constantly feel the fear of death.’

In a further photo Dil Bahadur Darain holds his 13-year-old granddaughter Anjali Darain’s hand outside their house in Salyantar Village Development Committee in Dhading, another badly hit area. Anjali lost her father, mother and younger brother to the quake in April 25.

And in a third Rita Shrestha bottle-feeds her two-year-old daughter, Elina al Krishna Shivakoti, in their family’s earthquake-damaged restaurant in a bazar in Dolakha District, epicentre of the May 12 quake. 

As the rainy season takes hold, access to the most severely affected areas is becoming increasingly challenging, threatening these children’s access to water, sanitation, education and health services and putting them at a higher risk of exploitation and abuse, including trafficking.

More than 10,000 children have been identified as acutely malnourished since the first earthquake. These include more than 1,000 children with severely acute malnutrition. 

 Keeping on: A young girl stands inside a temporary learning centre in Shree Chaturmala Higher Secondary School in Muchowk, Gorkha

 

Enjoying the sun: Two adolescent girls wash clothes near rubble from destroyed homes in the earthquake-affected town of Singati, near Charikot in Dolakha District

More 200 children remain without a parent or caregiver, and more than 600 have lost one or both of their parents to the quakes. More than 32,000 classrooms have been destroyed and nearly 900,000 houses have been damaged or destroyed.

Children interviewed by aid agencies for a major survey published Saturday expressed worry about the lack of privacy and space, with younger children fearing attacks by wild animals, and girls feeling vulnerable to sexual harassment.

‘Living under the sky increases our exposure to abuse,’ an adolescent girl from Sindhupalchowk, a district badly hit by the earthquakes, told an aid worker. 

At least 2.8million people, around 10 per cent of Nepal’s population, need urgent help according to a UN report published earlier this month.

source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Islamabad—Speakers at a seminar on Friday linked the natural disasters with health challenges saying the government needed to double efforts to deal with challenges in the natural calamity-hit areas. Minister for National Health Services Regulations & Coordination (NHSRC) Saira Afzal Tarar, President Heartfile Pakistan Dr Sania Nishtar, Federal Secretary Seerat Asghar, President of The Rockefeller Foundation Dr Judith Rodin were among the speakers highlighting the health woes of people living in natural disaster-hit areas.

Speaking on the occasion, National Health Services Minister Saira Afzal Tarar said, “Our country is frequently challenged by natural disasters; hence we are fully cognizant of the need to accord this area priority.”

A report ‘Planetary Health Commission Report’ was also launched on the occasion. Health Minister said environmental challenges had been double edged for us in terms of policy responses. Monsoon flooding brings in its wake acute challenges of an emergency nature but on the other hand they are the slow and insidious water shortage issues, she gave an example.

We see evidence of both, day to day, she said. She said the government’s foremost concern was to ensure safety of the population there and get them on the road to recovery and rehabilitation soon.

A new report released today by The Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission on Planetary Health, calls for immediate, global action to protect the health of human civilization and the natural systems on which it depends. The report, Safeguarding Human Health in the Anthropocene Epoch, provides the first ever comprehensive examination of evidence showing how the health and well-being of future generations is being jeopardised by the unprecedented degradation of the planet’s natural resources and ecological systems.

The report was written by a Commission of 15 leading academics and policymakers from institutions in 8 countries, including Dr. Sania Nishtar, President Heartfile Pakistan. It demonstrates how human activity and development have pushed to near breaking point the boundaries of the natural systems that support and sustain human civilizations.

“The Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Planetary Health Commission has issued a dire warning: human action is undermining the resilience of the earth’s natural systems, and in so doing we are compromising our own resilience, along with our health and, frankly, our future,” said Dr Judith Rodin, President of The Rockefeller Foundation. “We are in a symbiotic relationship with our planet, and we must start to value that in very real ways.

sumber: http://pakobserver.net/

In April and May, two massive earthquakes in Nepal killed more than 8,400 people, injured 20,000 and reduced 300,000 houses to rubble. In March, Cyclone Pam destroyed homes, schools, infrastructure and livelihoods on the Pacific island of Vanuatu, affecting half the population, including 82,000 children. Both nations will take years to recover.

The number and severity of disasters is increasing (see ‘Catastrophic rise’). Annual global economic losses from geophysical, hydro-meteorological and climatological events could almost double from their 2005 levels by 2030 to exceed US$300 billion if the past decade’s trend continues. The figures may worsen as climate change, globalization, technological change, urbanization and political and economic instability put more people and assets at risk.

Improved disaster-risk management and resilience is essential for sustainable societies¹. But the science of natural hazards is too fragmented to influence policy effectively. Seismologists, for example, had long warned in specialist journals that Nepal’s Kathmandu region was due a large earthquake. Local politicians did not strengthen construction codes, reinforce old buildings or inform the population about potential risks. Had such measures been implemented — as they have in Japan, California and Chile — the death toll would have been lower (see ‘Three lessons yet to be learned’). Similarly, structures in flood-prone areas can be elevated; those in cyclone zones wind-proofed; and the public educated about such possibilities.

Sadly, hazard mitigation is not a vote-winner. It pits long-range investments against short-term political cycles — even though it is cheaper to prevent losses than to rebuild after them^{2, 3}. Reinforcing the levees of New Orleans, Louisiana, against hurricane storm surges would have cost ten times less than rebuilding neighbourhoods after Hurricane Katrina. It is more politically expedient to respond afterwards when constituents are demanding assistance. Public awareness of the scale of disaster risks is hindered by the breadth and complexity of research, spanning the natural, social and health sciences, law, humanities and engineering.

In March, governments met under the auspices of the United Nations in Sendai, Japan, to negotiate an international agreement to reverse the rising trend of disaster losses. Unlike previous voluntary agreements, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 has set measureable targets. One goal is to lower average death rates and economic losses in 2020–30 relative to 2005–15 (by what percentage is not specified).

For the Sendai agreement to succeed, an open and comprehensive source of vetted information on disaster-risk reduction is needed. It would provide evidence for monitoring progress towards the goals. We call on the scientific community to set up an international assessment process to feed such information into disaster policy and practice.

Splintered approach

The community of disaster-risk researchers is small and splintered into disciplines that are focused on single natural hazards. Only recently have seismologists worked with geodesists to determine how changes in Earth’s shape and gravity field apply loads to faults⁴. Disaster-medicine researchers rarely meet public-health professionals or read social-science journals⁵. Local or indigenous knowledge and the on-the-ground experiences of emergency managers and humanitarian agencies are often excluded.

Source: Munichre/Natcatservice

 

Governments need holistic solutions, not incremental proposals that solve one aspect but ignore wider ramifications. A move towards integrated disaster-risk research — bringing together disciplines to focus on particular problems and social needs — is filling this void⁶. But lack of a critical overview of what is known about disaster risk leaves politicians without guidance.

This is why early political efforts to reduce disaster losses foundered. The UN designated the 1990s as the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, and in 1999 created the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) to coordinate national efforts. In the absence of a legally binding treaty with targets, and consequences for not achieving them, UNISDR has been largely limited to promoting risk awareness and facilitating institutional development.

In 2005, some 168 countries signed up to the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA), pledging to reduce disaster losses by 2015. Again, this did not occur. Of the ten costliest disasters between 1980 and 2014, those that happened after the agreement were more than four times as expensive as those in the decade before. Increased vulnerability and exposure account for some of the increase — but not all.

At least 35 nations, including Colombia, Brazil and India, now include disaster risk and reduction in their development strategies. Most do not. Many financial donors view disasters as interruptions in development, not as risks that need to be managed. Disaster-risk-assessment reports are too broad to guide municipalities and nations. For example, UNISDR’s Global Assessment Reports or the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks reports provide global and thematic overviews, often consider risks qualitatively rather than quantitatively, and neglect the collective impacts of personal choices such as whether to purchase insurance or relocate⁷.

The Sendai framework calls on governments to do four things: understand disaster risk; strengthen risk governance to manage risks across all sectors; invest in risk-reduction measures that promote resilience; and enhance disaster preparedness and responses so that nations “build back better” in their recovery. It tasks research networks with focusing on the root causes of disasters and probable emergent risks; supporting action by local communities and authorities; and engaging policy-makers.

Review mechanism

A coherent science-based assessment process for disaster-risk reduction should be created to provide sound knowledge to inform decision-making, and to assist governments worldwide in setting policies and goals and to identify research gaps. By taking an integrated approach, such an assessment would go beyond previous proposals for international panels on natural hazards and disasters⁸.

Disaster-risk reports should identify what is known and where there are gaps in our knowledge. They must summarize information relevant to the Sendai targets. And they should examine the root causes of vulnerabilities and exposure, the potential socio-economic impacts of natural hazards and the ways to reduce (if not prevent) human and economic losses. Finally, such an assessment should provide a mechanism for knowledge transfer from research to practice, ensuring that the science is useful, usable and used⁹.

A high-level, transdisciplinary body of international experts in disaster-risk reduction should be established by national governments and international organizations dealing with disaster risks, with input from various sectors and civil society. Such a body would have the reach and influence — from local communities, businesses and governments — to raise people’s awareness. The same findings presented by an independent scientist or article would not.

The main practical difficulties will be in incorporating the field’s diverse information and practices into an assessment, and demonstrating to policy-makers that it need not take a extreme event to cause catastrophic human consequences¹⁰. Government support for the process will be essential. Synergies must be found by combining and consolidating disaster-risk reduction efforts across UN institutions.

Disaster-risk management, climate change and sustainable development targets will need to be aligned. For example, there should be a coordinated assessment of the state of knowledge in disaster risk and its utility for supporting the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Knowledge transfer will make community-based resilience efforts possible. Illuminating findings, best practices and state-of-the-art modelling must become part of the evidence-based strategy for disaster-risk reduction.

source: http://www.nature.com

THE METRO Manila Earthquake Impact Reduction Study of 2004 says that a 7.2-magnitude earthquake that will be generated by the 100-kilometer West Valley Fault will occur at any time. This will make Metro Manila the epicenter of this destructive earthquake, according to director Renato U. Solidum Jr. of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs).

Defense Secretary Voltaire T. Gazmin has emphasized that the Greater Metro Manila Area, including the adjacent regions of Central Luzon and Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon), comprising the economic, political, sociocultural and education hub of the Philippines and home to a third of its population, is transected by the West Valley Fault system.

This means that about 30 million people are residing or working in this crowded urbanized landscape. These people, composed of both ordinary citizens and civil and military personnel, will all be victims of the Big One.

This will present serious challenges to the response capability of both local and national governments because all their personnel will also be victims, and their facilities and equipment could be damaged or destroyed.

The Big One is projected to result in an intensity 8 earthquake that will produce widespread destruction, thousands of deaths and countless injuries. It is expected to bring down or damage the major bridges and other spans across the Pasig River and its many tributaries, creeks and esteros, which will physically separate and isolate the cities and communities in Metro Manila.

No power, phone service

The destructive ground shaking is expected to make roadways virtually impassable due to the toppling of giant billboards and utility poles. There will be no electrical power and landline communication and the cellular phone system will be seriously interrupted due to overloading of calls or text messages and damage to cell sites.

Monstrous traffic jams due to an expected blackout would result in road accidents if the Big One hits during an evening rush hour on a weekday.

Since the epicenter of the Big One will be the entire Metro Manila, everything located in the metropolis and the surrounding areas, and everyone living in all its barangays will be adversely affected.

Isolated

It must be emphasized that almost all of our communities have numerous utility poles. When these poles topple, entire communities and individual streets will be isolated.

Republic Act No. 10121, or the Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (PDRRM) law, provides that the barangays are the first responders in the community.

However, the widespread destruction and blockage of roads will delay responders even at the barangay level. This is due to the fact that the barangay first responders will also be victims and will have to care for their families, gather their emergency teams and consolidate their undamaged resources before they can actually respond.

Prepare, organize

Therefore, Phivolcs emphasizes that individuals and families in each and every barangay must be prepared for the Big One.

Citizens must develop their own plans and organize before the disaster strikes, lest they find themselves alone, confused and helpless as individuals, as separate families, as neighbors or as a community. Families residing on the same street or cluster of streets must be self-reliant and must not rely on help from government as a substitute for self-reliance and sustainability.

There is therefore, a need for the citizens themselves to organize a Family-based Street Level Disaster Preparedness Program (FSLDPP). This must be based on a bottom-up plan in support of the Barangay Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Plan.

Objectives of FSLDPP

Develop, train, equip and manage families as frontliners before and during emergencies.

Develop and institutionalize a culture of disaster preparedness among families and neighbors.

Develop and institutionalize collaborative planning programs among neighbors and community stakeholders.

The initial action in developing an FSLDPP is to organize each home and all the members of the household by assigning emergency tasks.

INDIVIDUAL LEVEL

* Locate safe areas and identify hazards in the house.

* Assign emergency duties for every member of the household.

* Stock 14 days of food, water and medicine.

* Organize a “go bag” with a personal emergency and first aid kit for each member of the family with three days of food, clothing and toiletries.

* Designate several assembly areas if there is a need to evacuate the home.

STREET LEVEL

* Locate, inform and organize assets residing in each street, like physicians, nurses, pharmacists, health workers, caregivers, physical therapists, midwives, first aid providers, engineers, teachers, boy scouts and girl scouts, faith-based individuals, and active, retired and reservist military personnel as well as police and fire service personnel.

Emergency brigades

These individuals will play vital roles in the FSLDPP when we organize among all the residents of the street functional emergency brigades, such as food and water, evacuation, search and rescue, security and traffic control, medical control and information control.

A bottom-up FSLDPP must be developed among the residents because every street is unique in terms of population density, profile and physical configuration.

The program must likewise identify facilities like barangay hall, police and fire stations, hospitals, churches, malls, groceries, sari-sari stores, drug stores, hardware stores, car repair shops, funeral homes and open spaces that will be useful sources of shelter, food, water and emergency equipment.

(Brig. Gen. Marcelo B. Javier Jr. [reserve] is a management specialist by profession. He has been a volunteer reservist of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine Red Cross [PRC] since 1968. He is currently the commander of the Army’s 15th Infantry “Defender” Ready Reserve Division whose area of responsibility is Metro Manila. He is also the chair of the Disaster Management Service of PRC [Rizal chapter] and a trustee and executive director of Red Cross Muntinlupa.)

LOS ANGELES — In a narrow parking lot, Brett Kennedy and Sisir Karumanchi stand around what looks like a suitcase. But then four limbs extend from its sides, bending and clicking into position. Two spread out like legs and two rise up like arms as the robot goes through several poses, looking for all the world like a Transformer doing yoga.

This is RoboSimian, a prototype rescue robot whose builders at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory hope can win the $2 million prize at the DARPA Robotics Challenge. The goal: to foster a new generation of rescue robots that could help save lives when the next disaster hits.

Twenty-four teams from around the U.S. and the globe have sent their best and brightest bots to compete in a grueling obstacle course — a robot Olympics, if you will.

The challenge has been three years in the making. Now, just days before the contest in Pomona, the JPL engineers think they are ready — but they’re putting the robot through its paces.

RoboSimian stands in front of a doorway leading to a zigzagging chipboard wall. Along the wall are a valve that must be turned and a high shelf and a low shelf, each holding two power tools.

To get into the “room,” the 275-pound robot sits back on its haunches and carefully wheels through the doorway on its butt.

Inside the laboratory, Kyle Edelberg is staring at a computer screen showing a representation of RoboSimian and what it sees. He can’t walk outside and check on the robot; his senses are limited by RoboSimian’s.

The robot freezes when it reaches for a triangle-shaped pull. It’s hard for the robot to see the thin metal and hard for the human to pick it out even if RoboSimian does see it.

This is how operating a rescue robot will feel in a disaster zone, Kennedy says. Robots will be sent to perform reconnaissance or fix malfunctioning hardware in ravaged areas that are too dangerous for humans. So being able to understand and work with the robot — and practice with it — is key.

Outside, RoboSimian reaches for a drill on the lower shelf. The bot pushes against the drill to gauge its location, but pushes too far: The drill tips and falls over.

Most of the other robots in the challenge are humanoid — they have a head, a torso, two arms and two legs. But walking on two legs is a major balancing challenge — a gust of wind or a swinging door could knock the robots over.

“The thing that would almost guarantee our winning the program,” Kennedy says, “would be if the Santa Anas kick up.”

Having Fun Saving The World

Across town, engineers at UCLA are also working on their entry into the DARPA challenge. As students pore over papers and fiddle with electronics, professor Dennis Hong shows off two models of their humanoid robot, THOR-RD, one of which sports shocking pink hair.

“We’re trying to literally save the world and save humanity,” Hong says. But “we want to have some fun.”

Hong, who moved from Virginia Tech last year, bounces around the lab space, where the UCBC-University of Pennsylvania team has built a smaller version of a course, much like the one at JPL, to fit indoors.

Hong has worked on several different kinds of robots, some inspired by animals, including a snake and an amoeba robot. He even worked with Kennedy several years ago on a predecessor to RoboSimian named LEMUR.

But for this challenge, Hong has chosen to stick with a humanoid form. After all, he says, animal-inspired robots can each do one thing well — climb poles or perhaps squeeze into hard-to-reach places. That’s useful in specific circumstances during a disaster, but not all of them. Here, the robots will be asked to do a wide variety of human tasks, so a bipedal approach makes sense.

“Robots need to be humanoid for disaster relief, because robots need to drive a car, need to climb steps,” Hong says, though he adds that he would be watching JPL’s performance.

“If they fail, it means, oh, what I said was right,” he says. “And if they indeed do well, it means they’ve proven me wrong.”

One Hour To Complete Course

Gill Pratt, program manager of the DARPA Robotics Challenge, grips the handle of a white door under a yellow warning sign that reads, “Caution: high voltage. Do not enter this enclosure.”

He pushes on the door, embedded in a wall of faux brick and corrugated metal, to reveal the real obstacle course, sitting in a field in front of the grandstand at the Fairplex in Pomona. Three more identical courses are lined up beside it.

The course is a three-sided stage that’s open to spectators filling the bleachers above. Along the wall, the lanky engineer faces a familiar set of objects: a tall black pipe with an orange valve that can be turned like a steering wheel and a staggered pair of shelves that await power tools. Near the end of the room, a pile of concrete cinder blocks lies in front of the exit to the other side. The robots can choose whether to clamber over the cinder blocks or wrestle their way through debris that will be strewn next to it when the competition starts.

The robots will compete to beat the clock: Finish up to eight tasks before an hour runs out. Four robots will compete at a time, each in its own stage on the field, so that spectators can compare their progress.

The idea for this DARPA challenge grew out of the disaster at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, after a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011. At one point during the crisis, employees at the nuclear power plant needed to open some valves to release steam to avert an explosion, but could not get close enough, fast enough, because of the massive amounts of radiation.

If robots had been available to perform these tasks, they could have mitigated the disaster, the thinking goes. But the technology doesn’t yet exist. DARPA, or the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is an arm of the Defense Department that seeks to develop these kinds of emerging technologies — and they do so by putting on these high-risk, high-reward contests.

The robots have to drive a car to the door, but the hardest part of the ride is getting out of the vehicle without falling, Pratt says. He goes through the motions of some of the assigned tasks: He turns a valve, mimes drilling through a window where drywall will be placed and climbs over the concrete blocks. But before he completes the course, he gestures at a hole in a wall: a mystery task that none of the teams know about yet.

Real World Challenges

Since the semifinals in late 2013, DARPA has made the challenge even harder: The robots can’t operate with power cords — which means they have to have all their heavy batteries on board. And they can’t use safety belays to keep the robots from falling — a problem for many of the two-legged robots, which already have trouble with balance. (This is where the wheeled and four-limbed contestants may have an advantage — they’re inherently stable.)

“In a real disaster, there are no ropes to hold you up,” Pratt says.

As if the tasks weren’t hard enough, Pratt’s team will be shutting down the wireless communications so that the teams will only get about one second’s worth of information for every 30 seconds of competition.

“If you’ve ever been on a really bad cellphone call … it’s like that, but 10 times worse,” Pratt says.

There’s a very good reason for doing this, he points out. In a disaster zone, the networks get overloaded. Because of radiation shielding, communication goes down. So it’s very hard to directly control a robot when you can only send commands and receive vital information in broken bits and pieces.

The RoboSimian team is setting up in a cavernous garage near the obstacle course. As other teams unpack robots, lug in couches and start setting up mock obstacle courses, Kennedy’s group seems relaxed. He shrugs at the surrounding chaos, sipping a Pellegrino soda while RoboSimian stands behind him.

A few members of the MIT team come over to greet Karumanchi, who used to work with them — and they hand him a team T-shirt emblazoned with a robot riding a dragon.

“They dared me to wear this with the JPL hat,” he says, smiling. “I told them I’d wear it once we beat them.”

The two-day competition gives each team two chances to earn a high score. On the first day, RoboSimian is one of the top performers, as is CHIMP, the other apelike robot in the running. The behemoth built by Carnegie Mellon University quickly becomes a fan favorite on the first day when it does what no other fallen robot has done: It picks itself back up and keeps going, earning roars of approval and the only perfect eight-point score.

On the second day, UCLA’s THOR-RD robot, like many of the other bipedal robots, takes mincing steps toward its target, but falls backward partway between the valve and the drill. It’s out of the running for the big prize.

After its second performance, RoboSimian also falls short, ending up in fifth place.

CHIMP’s high score from the first day helps earn it third place and $500,000; second place and $1 million goes to Running Man from Team IHMC Robotics in Florida. Team KAIST from South Korea takes the $2 million prize after dispatching all eight tasks Saturday with amazing speed.

As the event is winding down, four-wheeled Momaro, from Team NimbRo Rescue in Germany, struggles through the course. There’s no chance the bright orange robot will win, but still it pushes on alone through the debris with one wheel askew, to cheers from the crowd.

But the stairs still stretch in front of the robot. Momaro’s spinning head seems to ponder whether to attempt this final task. Then, very slowly, it turns its torso to the grandstand, raises an arm and jiggles it.

It takes a moment for the crowd to realize what’s happening, and then the applause grows to a crescendo: The robot has tried its best. Now, it is waving goodbye.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

Source: http://swtimes.com

Mount Sinabung, a volcano in Sumatra in western Indonesia, is again spewing large clouds of gas into the air. Last week, authorities had placed the region on the highest level of alert, and are closely monitoring the volcano.

Hot ash from the volcano made its way down the slopes of the mountain and covered up to 1.5 miles, although no injuries were reported, the Associated Press (AP) reported. Indonesia’s government volcanologist Surono, who goes by only one name, urged the villagers to stay away from the main danger zone that extended up to 4 miles southeast from the crater. More than 2,700 people have been evacuated from nearby villages.

“The growing size of the lava dome is very unstable,” Surono said, according to the AP, adding that boiling rocks mixed with gases may fall down from the mountain anytime. Over 50 separate eruptions were counted early Wednesday, but villages located outside the evacuated area were not in danger, the authorities said.

Mount Sinabung is a 2,460-meter tall volcano in the Karo district of North Sumatra and had also erupted in 2013, spewing a cloud of black ash and rocks nearly two miles into the sky. Authorities had then evacuated villages along the slopes of the mountain following the eruption, forcing at least 1,300 people to flee their homes.

The mountain, which is among about 130 active volcanoes in Indonesia, has been releasing smoke and ash more than 1,600 feet into the air since Monday, the AP reported. The mountain had been dormant for the past 400 years, but started erupting at irregular intervals since 2010. Last year, at least 17 people were killed after an eruption at the mountain.

The island nation is prone to volcanic activity and frequent earthquakes as it lies along the “Ring of Fire,” a nearly 25,000-mile horseshoe-shaped curve along the Pacific Ocean basin.

sumber: ibtimes.com

POMONA, Calif. (AP) — The robots drove, walked through rubble, climbed stairs, turned valves and sometimes fell, amid cheers and groans from a crowd of thousands at the Fairplex in Pomona, California.

After three years of research, development and an obstacle course of competition, a South Korean team on Saturday won the three-year and $3.5-million U.S. contest to create a robot capable of responding to disaster conditions that are unsafe for humans.

Team Kaist of Daejeon took home $2-million in first-place prize money for its DRC-Hubo robot, which successfully completed eight tasks related to disaster response in less than 45 minutes at the DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals.

The contest by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) started after the 2011 Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan. Workers couldn’t vent hydrogen from the overloaded reactors without enduring excess radiation. The idea was to create a robot that could do such important emergency tasks in the future and get to the problem site.

Competition was fierce among 23 international teams, including a dozen from the United States and 11 from Japan, Germany, Italy, South Korea and Hong Kong. The robots were timed while navigating eight tasks they would likely encounter in emergency scenarios. The challenge required the teams have their robots increasingly difficult competitions over two years.

Team IHMC Robotics of Pensacola, Florida, finished second, winning $1 million for its robot Running Man. Tartan Rescue of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and its robot CHIMP designed by Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center came in third, winning $500,000.

The event was live-streamed and YouTube videos culling together clips of the robots taking falls throughout the competition were tweeted out.

“These robots are big and made of lots of metal, and you might assume people seeing them would be filled with fear and anxiety,” said Gill Pratt, DARPA program manager and the competition organizer in a statement. “But we heard groans of sympathy when those robots fell. And what did people do every time a robot scored a point? They cheered! It’s an extraordinary thing, and I think this is one of the biggest lessons from DRC_the potential for robots not only to perform technical tasks for us, but to help connect people to one another.”

sumber: seattletimes.com

ALOR SETAR: The Asean Regional Forum Disaster Relief Exercise (ARF Direx) is vital in testing civil and military preparedness for disasters.

National Security Council secretary Datuk Thajudeen Abdul Wahab said the exercise aimed to create synergy and co-operation between Asean countries based on regional disaster management experiences.

The exercise, he said, would also put into practice ways to overcome challenges in any disaster.

“One of the challenges is managing the media. For example, during the Kuala Krai floods last year, we could not inform the media about what was happening (at the time). We disaster managers were biting our nails on how to manage it. We didn’t want the whole country to panic as well,” he said in an interview yesterday.

He said other challenges included mass co-ordination in times of crisis, casualty management, aid distribution and ways to manage assistance from foreign countries.

“We also have to manage the needs of vulnerable people, including senior citizens and the disabled,” he added.

While the exercise has been conducted for quite some time, this year’s series stands out as it is the first after Asean leaders formed the “One Asean, One Response” initiative.

“It also has the largest participation. More than 3,000 people are involved, including 1,280 foreign participants,” he said.

Thajudeen related an incident following the Nepal earthquake when Malaysia and Singapore rescuers were the first on scene.

“At first, rescuers from both countries were diverted to Calcutta but we managed to teleconference and co-ordinate. When the Thais arrived, they also co-operated with us,” he said.

He added that one of the most memorable moments of the search and rescue in Nepal was the sight of Malaysia’s Smart team members, the Thai search and rescue team and members of Singapore’s Civil Defence rescuing and carrying an injured victim together.

“We want to have such co-operation between Asean countries. This exercise aims to foster that,” he said.

Thajudeen said the exercise would be split into two parts – a table-top exercise and a field exercise.

“The table top deals with theory. We present the countries involved with different disaster scenarios and ask for their solutions.

“It has to be done fast and the participants must treat it like it is a real-life situation.”

The field exercise presents participants with situations mimicking a real disaster.

“We want to find the best practices and best solutions, which will be used in disaster management in the country,” he said.

The exercise, led by the NSC, will see simulated land, air and sea rescue missions involving a multi-country approach.