Useful and easy-to-use interactive voice for emergency data exchange

Abstract

Purpose – Telephone calls are the predominant telecommunication mode in Sri Lanka. Consequently, leveraging voice-based applications for disaster communication would be acceptable and sustainable. The purpose of this paper is to realise the design requirements for an integrated voice-enabled alerting and reporting system, and then to use the lessons learned to influence disaster management researchers, practitioners and developers to invest resources in related new system developments. Design/methodology/approach – The findings in this paper are from an experiment concerning interactive voice for connecting community-based emergency field operatives with their central co-ordination hub. Findings – A particular challenge was in interchanging Sinhala and Tamil language speech data, generated by the Freedom Fone Interactive Voice Response, with the text-based “Sahana” disaster-management system for analysis and decision support. The Emergency Data Exchange Language interoperable content standard was adopted for mediation between the two disparate systems. Standard mobile phones were the interface linking the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) members. Low quality voice transmissions over the GSM cellular infrastructure resulted in distorted data. This shortcoming was a barrier to automating transformations between text and speech. Originality/value – Replacing those processes with human procedure significantly degrades their reliability. Nevertheless, the CERT members find voice-enabled information exchange useful and easy to use, because it diminishes the need for computer literacy and removes language barriers. The paper discusses the utility evaluation of the introduced system.