GAREC 2013 sum­ma­ry held in Zurich, Switzer­land, 26 ‑27 June 2013, from Greg Mossop G0DUB, Emer­gency Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Co-Ordi­na­tor at IARU Region 1.

The ninth Glob­al Ama­teur Radio Emer­gency Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Con­fer­ence, GAREC-2013, took place in Zurich, Switzer­land host­ed by the Union Schweiz­erisch­er Kurzwellen-Ama­teure and was attend­ed by 45 del­e­gates from 14 coun­tries. The theme of the con­fer­ence was ‘Do we need emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tions in the “first world”.

Pre­sen­ta­tions were received on;
• The effects of a loss of elec­tri­cal pow­er on a coun­tries infra­struc­ture and how ama­teur radio
could pro­vide support.
• The role of the Inter­na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Union in pro­mot­ing emergency
communications.
• The struc­ture of ama­teur radio emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tions groups in India and Italy.
• Three dif­fer­ent meth­ods of pro­vid­ing dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions struc­tures for emergency
email and file transfer.
• In an open ses­sion the con­fer­ence also con­sid­ered the prob­lems of con­vinc­ing both the
ama­teur radio com­mu­ni­ty and our reg­u­la­tors of the val­ue of emer­gency communications
activ­i­ties. 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.

A direct­ed exer­cise was also 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.

Cer­tain themes began to emerge through the activities.
• The impor­tance of data modes and pack­et radio as part of the emer­gency communications
toolbox.
• The impor­tance of prac­tis­ing with dif­fer­ent modes so skills are kept up to date. This should
be fre­quent­ly as the best sys­tem is one you already use.
• An increased aware­ness of the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of infra­struc­ture to loss of pow­er and utilities
and the pos­si­bil­i­ty that we may be asked to sup­port oth­er groups.
• Every coun­try has dif­fer­ent dis­as­ter response needs reflect­ing their sit­u­a­tion and there is no
one way of work­ing. But there are meth­ods which we can adapt to our needs.
• We are all vol­un­teers and are always learn­ing and always seek to do the best for our
com­mu­ni­ties with­in our means.
• There was increased under­stand­ing of the restric­tions placed on Radio Ama­teurs in different
coun­tries in emer­gency response.
• Good oper­at­ing prac­tice is key to effi­cient emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tions. The pro­duc­tion of
IARU train­ing mate­r­i­al for emer­gency com­mu­ni­ca­tions is encour­aged. Local train­ing is
always required to meet local gov­ern­ment needs.

The next GAREC will be held in Huntsville, USA in August 2014 and all groups and organ­i­sa­tions involved in ama­teur Radio Emer­gency Com­mu­ni­ca­tions are invit­ed to attend to share their knowl­edge and learn from others.

The venue for 2015 is cur­rent­ly planned to be Tam­pere, Finland.

The del­e­gates wish to record their thanks and appre­ci­a­tion for the gen­er­ous hos­pi­tal­i­ty of USKA and our Swiss hosts for this suc­cess­ful conference.