Published on January 31, 2005

When it comes to disasters, information technology – especially the Internet – has proven itself to be a valuable tool in enhancing rescue efforts. Suchalee Pongprasert visited Phuket to see how a Swedish team used technology to rescue and identify victims of last month's tsunami.

In early January, 108 men and women of the Swedish Rescue Services Agency, the Swedish Foreign Ministry, Swedish police and other agencies put the “Swedish Mission in Thailand” into operation in Phuket – a mission to rescue the injured, and search for those dead and missing in the tsunami that lashed the beaches of this resort-island.

“Initially, our main task was to save lives of as many people as we could. But now, our mission is to identify Swedish victims before sending their bodies home,” said team leader Goran Schnell.

Pearl Village, a hotel located on Nai-Yang beach, serves as a temporary command centre. The team has equipped about 200 square metres in the hotel compound with cable and wireless infrastructure, computers and IP-based telephones to facilitate their task.

The centre is divided into several sections, including logistics and communications, as well as various tasks carried out by the police department, all utilising a variety of hardware, software and networks to ensure all operations are properly coordinated.

Fifteen wireless PCs and a separate standalone station are in use, as well as about 15 IP-based telephones. A 30-gigabyte hard disk drive stores photographs of victims.

Schnell said that since the operations require regular communication with people and organisations in Sweden, the rescue centre – with the help of Cisco Systems (Thailand) – had adopted IP-based telephones to lower the cost of calls, while ensuring secure communications.

A dedicated line from Thailand directly to a gateway in Sweden is linked to the call manager system. This way, all calls made via the IP-base telephone are equivalent to making a local call in Sweden, offering significant savings to operational costs.

A logistics centre has been set up at the centre to coordinate the movement of all teams. Whenever the members of any department want to go anywhere, they have to make a request beforehand and the system will allocate and arrange a vehicle.

“We have people in different departments. Instead of arranging their own transportation and ending up going to the same area at the same time as another team, the system allows us to allocate our resources effectively,” said Schnell.

Since members of the Swedish police department are working to identify victims of the tsunami, two separate databases – ante-mortem and post-mortem – have been set up.

The ante-mortem database contains personal information and medical records of Swedish citizens provided by Swedish police records. The data is not only stored at the centre, but has also been distributed to Interpol. The information is used in tandem with data from the Disaster Victim Identification system that processes the results of DNA testing on the bodies of victims.

The centre has also utilised the global positioning system (GPS) in coordination with conventional maps to enable the relatives of victims who come to Phuket to locate the site where people are believed to have gone missing, for example hotels or resorts.

“Now, you can locate such sites from the distribution of debris, but soon you won’t be able to do that. With the help of GPS, relatives can be guided to the site where their loved ones were lost. Many of them want to stand on the same spot as when it happened,” said Schnell.

The centre has repatriated some 660 Swedes and has successfully identified 15 victims, before sending their bodies home. The mission is now focused on searching for another 1,000 Swedish citizens still missing.

“The mission will continue until we have sent every Swedish national home,” he said.

Suchalee Pongprasert

The Nation

PHUKET

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