The Sim­u­lat­ed Emer­gency Test to mea­sure the dis­as­ter readi­ness of Ama­teur Radio involved 38 coun­tries and four oth­ers who recog­nised its impor­tance but could not take part this time. 

IARU Region 1 Emer­gency Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Co-Ordi­na­tor Greg Mossop G0DUB, has report­ed on the event, which was dif­fer­ent from oth­er Glob­alSETs held since 2006.
While ear­li­er events had an empha­sis on mes­sage han­dling and field sta­tions, a bet­ter and sim­pler exer­cise was need­ed to demon­strate the strength of Ama­teur Radio Emer­gency Com­mu­ni­ca­tions through­out the world.
Greg Mossop G0DUB said: “The IARU Emer­gency Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Co-ordi­na­tors decid­ed that the best way to achieve this would be to have an avail­abil­i­ty or ‘call-out’ exercise.
“It asked all coun­tries with Emer­gency Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Groups to con­tact their mem­bers and ask them how quick­ly they could get on air if required.”
This seemed to be more suit­able to all, par­tic­u­lar­ly some very involved in emer­gen­cies but unable to take part in ear­li­er Glob­alSETs because of tim­ing or the dis­tance from oth­er countries.
The aims of the exer­cise were:
• Show that we can respond quick­ly and in a co-ordi­nat­ed manner.
• To get groups and soci­eties involved in an event with­out lan­guage, time or prop­a­ga­tion barriers.
• Update infor­ma­tion on how many radio ama­teurs around the world are avail­able for emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tions, show­ing the strength in the hobby.
The exer­cise could start at any time as dis­as­ters do not just occur at week­ends, with the start time to decid­ed by the IARU region­al coor­di­na­tors, who chose Decem­ber 18 as being clear of most social and cul­tur­al events.
A web-sur­vey form was used to gath­er data and analyse the results, both glob­al­ly, and with the IARU regions.
The web form was intend­ed to be sim­ple because of the dif­fer­ent lan­guages used, but its role and the Glob­alSET itself was mis­un­der­stood by a few, who admit­ted lat­er either not read­ing it, or send­ing it for indi­vid­u­als to complete.

Pre-pub­lic­i­ty had sought to explain to new Glob­alSET con­cept. Using a web form sought to over­come any lan­guage bar­ri­ers through the freely avail­able online trans­la­tion tools, mak­ing it eas­i­er to fill in by coor­di­na­tors and not each radio amateur.

The sur­vey col­lect­ed data from Nation­al Emer­gency Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Groups about their organ­i­sa­tion’s response.

It asked them to iden­ti­fy their member’s avail­abil­i­ty. Those imme­di­ate­ly avail­able to respond to an emer­gency, oth­ers need­ed to obtain sup­plies before respond­ing, and a third wave with com­mit­ments that need­ed to be cleared, result­ing in a tru­ly struc­tured response.

The sur­vey results cov­ered an esti­mat­ed 8466 mem­bers world­wide, of which, 2048 claimed to be avail­able in less than 1 hour.

Greg G0DUB said: “This exer­cise occurred on a nor­mal busi­ness day in many coun­tries, an avail­abil­i­ty rate of 20–30% of sta­tions is very good and does seem rea­son­able as a plan­ning assump­tion for future exercises.

“To bal­ance this how­ev­er, it is also recog­nised that some coun­tries did not get a response from all their membership.”

An inter­est­ing find­ing was the need to revise or improve alert­ing pro­ce­dures. The sur­vey asked the meth­ods used to con­tact their mem­bers — options were the tele­phone, SMS, email, radio or by oth­er means.

“A quar­ter of par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries (10 of the 38) who took part relied on a sin­gle com­mu­ni­ca­tions method with their members.

“Some 25 used email as part of their alert­ing method, but from pre­vi­ous exer­cis­es it has been shown that email is not a 100% reli­able. One group’s email call­out method in this exer­cise failed.

“Where pos­si­ble a mix­ture of meth­ods should be used for alert­ing mem­bers with auto­mat­ic feed­back of mes­sage deliv­ery or the response,” said Greg G0DUB. 

List­ed under ‘oth­er’ meth­ods on the sur­vey, What­sapp emerged as a favourite — a mix­ture of the
Inter­net and SMS, but groups should remem­ber that any sin­gle sys­tem is a sin­gle point of failure.

What­sapp itself was inac­ces­si­ble on Decem­ber 31 in some areas. The cause is unknown, but it showed again that any pub­lic ser­vice is vul­ner­a­ble to over­load and may not be avail­able on demand, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing a disaster.

The exer­cise caused some healthy debate, and part of the aim of every exer­cise — learn and improve. The small num­ber of fre­quent com­plaints, some based on mis­un­der­stand­ings, are explained in the report.

Greg G0DUB said that prob­a­bly ten times more radio ama­teurs took part this time, with a few groups return­ing after a few years absence.
He said: “Final­ly, suc­cess at Inter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions World Radio­com­mu­ni­ca­tions Con­fer­ence WRC-15, and the Inter­na­tion­al Ama­teur Radio Union advo­ca­cy work that includes ref­er­ences to the emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tions, can be backed up with fur­ther proof.

“What Glob­alSET 2015 did was to pro­duce good data to sup­port the IARU claims on spec­trum and shows that we are ready to respond when needed.”

A full report will be sent to the IARU region­al coor­di­na­tors, who will dis­trib­ute it further.

- Jim Lin­ton VK3PC, Chair­man IARU Region 3 Dis­as­ter Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Committee.