GAREC 2012 — Sum­ma­ry Report
mygarec2012 The eighth Glob­al Ama­teur Radio Emer­gency Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Con­fer­ence, GAREC-2012, took place in Port Dick­son Malaysia host­ed by the Malaysian Ama­teur Radio Trans­mit­ters Soci­ety and was attend­ed by 17 del­e­gates from nine coun­tries. The theme of the con­fer­ence was ‘One world, One commitment’.
Pre­sen­ta­tions were received on:
The Mobile Emer­gency Weath­er Sys­tem – pro­vid­ing a means of empow­er­ing cit­i­zens to assist author­i­ties using sim­ple equip­ment and train­ing. Prin­ci­ples which should be trans­fer­able to the Ama­teur Service.
The sta­tus of the Ama­teur Radio Emer­gency Ser­vice pro­vi­sion in Fin­land, Hong Kong, Indone­sia, Ger­many and Switzer­land. These pre­sen­ta­tions high­light­ed the dif­fer­ences and sim­i­lar­i­ties in approach to emer­gency plan­ning by the respec­tive coun­tries, direct­ed to meet­ing the needs of their peoples.
Switzer­land also pre­sent­ed their pro­ce­dure for net con­trol which pro­vid­ed more effi­cient mes­sage han­dling should the vol­ume of mes­sages increase beyond the needs of a sim­ple net.
The con­fer­ence also con­sid­ered the prob­lems and com­mon issues fac­ing Ama­teur Radio Emer­gency Com­mu­ni­ca­tors, while solu­tions may not be easy to find, shar­ing the prob­lems and allow­ing indi­vid­ual coun­tries to recog­nise that they were not alone pro­vides valu­able sup­port to the Glob­al community.
Two fur­ther prac­ti­cal activ­i­ties were also car­ried out.
A direct­ed exer­cise was held where the del­e­gates were asked to work togeth­er as one team, pro­vid­ing emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tions for a fic­tion­al coun­try and event. This encour­aged the del­e­gates to con­sid­er what their ide­al net­work and licence con­di­tions would look like as well as enhance the inter-per­son­al rela­tion­ships between the del­e­gates help­ing them to work togeth­er more effi­cient­ly in future.
The IARU HF Emer­gency Oper­at­ing Pro­ce­dure was reviewed fol­low­ing expe­ri­ence of use in Glob­alSET and nation­al exer­cis­es. A num­ber of oppor­tu­ni­ties were iden­ti­fied to improve the pro­ce­dure and these will be devel­oped by the del­e­gates for pre­sen­ta­tion to the IARU Region­al Emer­gency Co-Ordinators.
Cer­tain themes began to emerge through the activities.
The title of GAREC and the Glob­al Cen­tre of Emer­gency Fre­quen­cies can be mis­in­ter­pret­ed as only mean­ing Glob­al emer­gen­cies. This is not the case. The Con­fer­ence and CoA fre­quen­cies are avail­able for all Emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tors around the world to share their knowl­edge to assist their col­leagues who are hav­ing prob­lems themselves.
There was a dis­cus­sion on how GAREC and Emer­gency Com­mu­ni­ca­tions should be brand­ed to allow more expo­sure to the Served Agen­cies and the pub­lic we also serve. All Emer­gency Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Groups are encour­aged to share infor­ma­tion on all emer­gen­cies they are asked to assist with so that our pub­lic pro­file is raised and under­stand­ing of our ser­vice improved.
It was dis­cov­ered that four coun­tries were inde­pen­dent­ly look­ing at the issue of mon­i­tor­ing the CoA fre­quen­cies to allow the alert to be raised for a dis­as­ter or emer­gency in an auto­mat­ic man­ner. It would obvi­ous­ly be bet­ter for those coun­tries to col­lab­o­rate on estab­lish­ing a stan­dard solu­tion. The con­tin­u­a­tion of GAREC as a forum to share ideas and plans may pre­vent wast­ed effort in future.
There was increased under­stand­ing of the restric­tions placed on Radio Ama­teurs in dif­fer­ent coun­tries in emer­gency response.
The con­fer­ence sug­gest­ed that future con­fer­ences seek to involve Part­ners in emer­gency response such as IFRC and ITU to ensure that the most val­ue is gained from the mem­o­ran­da of Under­stand­ing that exist between those organ­i­sa­tions and the Ama­teur Radio Community.
The next GAREC will be held in Zurich, Switzer­land on 25–27 June 2013 and all groups and organ­i­sa­tions involved in ama­teur Radio Emer­gency Com­mu­ni­ca­tions are invit­ed to attend to share their knowl­edge and learn from oth­ers. Fur­ther con­fer­ence venues have been iden­ti­fied as Huntsville, USA in 2014 and Tam­pere, Fin­land in 2015.
The del­e­gates wish to record their thanks and appre­ci­a­tion for the gen­er­ous hos­pi­tal­i­ty of MARTS and the Malaysian peo­ple in host­ing this suc­cess­ful conference.
— Greg Mossop, G0DUB IARU Region 1 Emer­gency Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Co-Ordinator.