THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:
While the rescuers toiled day and night during the devastating floods that hit the state, Kerala IT provided the vital co-ordination to one of the massive and successful evacuation and relief operations of recent times. The round-the-clock work of IT institutions and groups of professionals, some of them based abroad, provided the critical communication back-up to the operations, which saved and moved thousands to safer places.
The plans were put in place based on the decision of state Chief Secretary Tom Jose and Revenue Additional Chief Secretary PH Kurien to tap the entire potential of IT to provide critical communication support the huge task of saving lives and providing emergency relief to the evacuated.
Significantly, there was no single moment’s disruption in the functioning of the IT Department and allied institutions on the days when the state reeled under torrential rains and unprecedented flash floods, inundating vast swathes of land cutting through several districts.
The entire IT professionals remained online all the time and there was no breakdown of Internet.
The IT community, including the start-ups, had volunteered to impart critical support to the operation, especially in sorting out the messages that flooded the communication channels including the social media, pledging financial and material aid to tide over the worst-ever natural calamity befell the state in nearly a century.
They also helped confirm genuine messages and spot out the fake ones and take actions on them.
The major task taken up by the IT Department was co-ordination of communication as messages and inputs kept pouring in incessantly into the emergency control rooms, call centres and media, right from the moment the situation began to turn grim.
The online call centres were run by the IT professionals, prioritising and passing information to the rescuers to save and evacuate the affected communities. This was done by marking the messages with hash tags to ensure that they were not repeated. The software developed by some of the start-ups in the state was also utilised for this.
Services of the call centres were tapped to confirm the authenticity of the messages, a process that helped detect fake ones.
The sorting-out method was also applied in spotting aid pledges and co-ordinating with the collection centres inside and outside the state, which was vital in channelling the relief material in required quantities to the camps where people were moved.
Besides providing the technological back-up to the rescue and relief work, the IT professionals also made their services available in collection centres and relief camps across the state.
Collection points to mobilise relief material were set up in all IT parks in the state.
