mKRISHI fisheries: a case study on early warning system (EWS) for disaster communication and management

Disaster implies exposure of the people or property to a given hazard and their vulnerability towards it. Fisheries sector employs 38 million people , especially marine fisheries who are sensitive to the natural hazards like cyclone or rough sea conditions. 370 million Indians residing over 8118 kms of coastline are exposed to 10% of the world’s tropical cyclones. During 1891 to 2000, 308 cyclones hit the Indian West coast, leading to loss of lives and livelihood and damaging the public infrastructure; resetting the development pace, repeatedly. Technological advancements like Remote Sensing, Data Analytics and weather models have improved the accuracy of prediction of the natural hazards. Communication technologies such as mobile phones are spreading too and have become affordable. Hence, such revolution in Information generation and Communication technology has increased the hope of identifying the hazards in advance, their impact region (exposure) and the people / property vulnerability towards it. mKRISHI® Fisheries used the Wind and Wave information generated by INCOIS and using the service design concept, simplified the delivery of information to local language on mobile phones. Such communication helped fishers, their family and other stakeholders to identify the risk zones, their occurrence date and time and accordingly responded to it or re-planned their journey. This data driven planning is helping the fishers reduce the risk exposure and hence saving the lives of many fishers. We also experimented with the extension of mobile signal in the deep sea, to create a digital information highway upto 30km from the coast. This paper captures the experience, methodology followed, learning and set of recommendations, which can help develop a strategy for Early Warning System (EWS) to improve safety at sea and coastal regions.