Rapid Assessment for Resilient Recovery and ... - GFDRR

Recommendations for Resilient Recovery and Reconstruction
Strategy for Short-term Recovery (up to 6 months)
Expediting the rapid and full recovery of all services should be the highest priority
for the telecommunications sector over the next six months. All damaged components of
telecommunications hardware should be replaced and repaired as soon as floodwaters
recede. The restoration of telecommunications in flooded industrial estates is of particular
importance in order to allow the impacted industrial plants to resume business as early as
possible.
Improving the resiliency of telecommunications and broadcasting systems should be
done whilst restoring and repairing systems, based on information from the current disaster.
Such measures include building back with immediate risk reduction measures, such as
mounting containers on platforms that are higher than historical flood depths, and essential
equipment including back-up power generators in better positions (higher levels).
Building redundancies into the network to avoid single points of failure can ensure
high availability of services. Efficiencies could also be gained by using adaptive capacity
so that the redundant equipment could be automatically deployed if additional capacities
are needed. Damaged equipment and/or systems which are becoming obsolete should be
replaced with new technologies to achieve more diversity and efficiency.
Strategy for Medium-term Recovery and Reconstruction
The vulnerabilities of existing telecommunications and broadcasting infrastructure
should be assessed. Necessary measures should be put in place to enhance the
resilience of telecommunications and broadcasting infrastructure, which is regarded as
critical to prevent future loss of services.
Establishing higher construction standards, establishing higher power backup
capacities, and improving scalability to meet the sudden increase of traffic during
emergency disaster responses could significantly increase the resiliency of existing
terrestrial infrastructures including mobile base stations and wireless transmission towers
in high risk areas. The network resilience may be enhanced through an increase of
network redundancy.
A multi-systems disaster communications infrastructure with terrestrial communications
networks, public address systems and satellite-based communications networks
should be considered in the resilient infrastructure design. The telecommunications
resilience could be achieved through multiple diverse systems providing back up should
one system fail. Reliance on a single communication system may become overloaded or
inoperable after a disaster. With Thailand’s satellite communications capacities, the use of
satellite communications as a backup means to enhance the resilience of communications
infrastructure should be examined. Unlike terrestrial wireless communications infrastructure,
satellite-based communications infrastructure is much less affected by disasters and can
be rapidly and easily deployed or redeployed.
Alternative power supplies for critical telecommunications infrastructure that are
vulnerable in ‘cascade’ events should be planned for. Telecommunications infrastructure
is heavily dependent and reliant on the continuing availability of electricity. Current mobile
and fixed network distribution and exchange points, including cell sites have only limited
132 THAI FLOOD 2011 RAPID ASSESSMENT FOR RESILIENT RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION PLANNING