Raj Prasanna

• PhD
• Asscociate Professor/Deputy Director at Massey University

What is the most effective P-wave detection algorithm for an Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) system that minimises false, late and missed detections? This study evaluates the performance of four distinct P-wave detection algorithms in terms of their detection accuracy. Utilising a comprehensive MEMS-based ground motion dataset from the GeoNet networ...

We introduce a novel LoRa-based multi-hop communication architecture as an alternative to the public internet for earthquake early warning (EEW). We examine its effectiveness in generating a meaningful warning window for the New Zealand-based decentralised EEW sensor network implemented by the CRISiSLab operating with the adapted Propagation of Loc...

This study addresses the critical question of predicting the amplitude of S-waves during earthquakes in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ), a highly earthquake-prone region, for implementing an Earthquake Early Warning System (EEWS). This research uses ground motion parameters from a comprehensive dataset comprising historical earthquakes in the Canterbury...

The GeoNet "Felt Detailed" survey collects information about people's experiences after earthquakes-from behavioural responses through to damage to buildings and infrastructure. One of the questions asked at the end of the survey is whether people have any 'Final Comments'. This is an open-ended question, where people can add any information that t...

This study addresses the critical question of predicting the amplitude of S-waves during earthquakes in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ), a highly earthquake-prone region, for implementing an Earthquake Early Warning System (EEWS). This research uses ground motion parameters from a comprehensive dataset comprising historical earthquakes in the Canterbury...

This work-in-progress paper presents preliminary findings from an exploratory workshop on disruptive technologies in emergency management in Aotearoa New Zealand. Thematic analysis identified three main themes on the role of disruptive technologies: (1) creating a common operating picture, (2) enhancing interaction, and (3) organising information....

Is running the Propagation of Local Undamped Motion (PLUM) algorithm in a community-engaged earthquake early warning (EEW) network feasible, and can it function effectively at the node level without centralised processing units? This study investigates the practicality of deploying the PLUM algorithm within a node-level architecture, shifting away...

Is running the Propagation of Local Undamped Motion (PLUM) algorithm in a community-engaged earthquake early warning (EEW) network feasible, and can it function effectively at the node level without centralised processing units? This study investigates the practicality of deploying the PLUM algorithm within a node-level architecture, shifting away...

This paper presents a synthesis and theoretical integration of findings from a research project that explored the data needs and sources for implementing impact forecasts and warnings for hydrometeorological hazards. Impact forecasts and warnings (IFW) have received global attention in recent years as they offer a novel way of improving the communi...

One of the reasons why adaptation and innovation occur in disaster response contexts is because of broader societal changes. Channels of communications between stakeholders and rightsholders in disaster response contexts have changed with societal adoption and ubiquitous use of social media. Social media has shown potential in enhancing disaster co...

This research presents a comprehensive framework for managing flood risk in the Kelani River basin, employing the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and spatial analysis to enhance flood risk comprehension, support informed decision-making, and facilitate effective flood management. Initially, the framework identifies key parameters influencing flood...

Sri Lanka has endured many hydrometeorological hazards due to torrential rains and monsoonal rains. These events disrupt communication networks, obstruct roadways, and can result in resource misallocation. Thus, setting in place mechanisms that could enhance situational awareness is essential and beneficial in building resilience in disaster manage...

Can a P-wave detection algorithm enhance the performance of an Earthquake Early Warning System (EEWS), particularly in community-engaged networks of low-cost ground motion sensors susceptible to noise? If so, what P-wave detection algorithm would perform the best? This study analyses the performance of four different P-wave detection algorithms usi...

Earthquake early warning (EEW) for Aotearoa New Zealand is in its infancy. Establishing a public EEW system in New Zealand that can warn the general population comes with several reservations as there are many technological, societal, and cultural challenges to overcome. Even with recent technological advances, a successful EEW system will rely on...

Introduction: Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) experiences frequent earthquakes, with a history of damaging and fatal events, but currently does not have a national, official earthquake early warning (EEW) system. Since April of 2021, Google's Android Earthquake Alert System has operated independently in NZ. While recent work has identified general public...

The 2019 Novel Coronavirus Pandemic has severely challenged the continuity of post-secondary education around the world. Online learning platforms have been put to the test, in a context where student engagement will not occur as a simple matter of course. To identify the factors supporting online learning under pandemic conditions, a questionnaire...

The current special issue was arranged by Information Systems for Crisis Response and management, during a point of the COVID-19 pandemic when many contingency plans were being made. It is a collection of the papers with the most positive reviews submitted to a conference organised by the Asia Pacific chapter of this organisation but which needed t...

The rapid growth of Internet-based communication technologies in the form of Social Media (SM) and associated mobile applications has enabled people to share information related to disaster events in “real-time” as they unfold. People are increasingly using SM platforms to report situational information during disasters, such as critical needs, dea...

Earthquake Early Warning System (EEWS) plays a major role during an earthquake in alerting the public and authorities to take appropriate safety measures during an earthquake. Generally, EEWSs use three types of algorithms to generate alerts during an earthquake; namely: source-based, ground motion or wavefield-based and on-site-based approaches. H...

During 2016, 2017 and 2018, the country witnessed extreme rains which triggered flooding in several urban areas. The number of affected people by the 2018 floods was around 150,000 which shows a significant decrease compared to the events in 2016 and 2017. Several institutions provided their support via funding, relief, and rehabilitation mechanism...

Earthquake early warning system (EEWS) plays an important role in detecting ground shaking during an earthquake and alerting the public and authorities to take appropriate safety measures, reducing possible damages to lives and property. However, the cost of high-end ground motion sensors makes most earthquake-prone countries unable to afford an EE...

Earthquake early warning (EEW) systems aim to warn end-users of incoming ground shaking from earthquakes that have ruptured further afield, potentially reducing risks to lives and properties. EEW is a socio-technical system involving technical and social processes. This paper contributes to advancing EEW research by conducting a literature review i...

This paper presents findings from ongoing research that explores the ability to use Micro-Electromechanical Systems (MEMS)-based technologies and various digital communication protocols for earthquake early warning (EEW). The paper proposes a step-by-step guide to developing a unique EEW network architecture driven by a Software-Defined Wide Area N...

Impact forecasts and warnings (IFW) are key to resilience for hydrometeorological hazards. Communicating the potential social, economic, and environmental hazard impacts allows individuals and communities to adjust their plans and better prepare for the consequences of the hazard. IFW systems require additional knowledge about impacts and underlyin...

There has been a growing recognition of the need to collect disaster and risk data over the last two decades. Accordingly, better collection and management of disaster data was identified as a priority of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. The introduction and implementation of Impact Forecasts and Warnings (IFWs) have further highli...

Mechanisms for sharing information in a disaster situation have drastically changed due to new technological innovations throughout the world. The use of social media applications and collaborative technologies for information sharing have become increasingly popular. With these advancements, the amount of data collected increases daily in differen...

Urban and suburban communities in tropical countries like Sri Lanka typically experience hydrometeorological hazards that substantially damage property and lives. Although accurate forecasts of weather events are available, the decision-makers often fail to mitigate the actual impact of these forecasts alone. The adverse impacts experienced by the...

Responding to emergencies requires many different individuals and organisations to work well together under extraordinary circumstances. Unfortunately, the management of animal welfare in emergencies remains largely disconnected from emergency management overall. This is due predominately to professional silos and a failure to understand the import...

Early Warning Systems are a key component to building preparedness and response capacities to hydrometeorological hazards that continue to affect people worldwide. Notable historic events have revealed gaps in current hazard-based warning systems. Impact Forecasts and Warnings (IFWs) have been proposed to fill these communication gaps by re-centrin...

Although recent literature suggested that knowledge generation and dissemination in social networks influence the resilience, the research in the two areas knowledge transfer and social capital has shown a low tendency to integrate into theoretical frameworks. This paper discusses the process of building a micro-theory, which explains the dynamics...

Massive amounts of data and information are exchanged during the response phase of disaster management. A large body of contemporary research has indicated that most of these data and information have severe quality related concerns, meaning that they may not be suitable for critical decision-making. The current paper addresses these issues by iden...

Social media applications such as Twitter and Facebook are fast becoming a key instrument in gaining situational awareness (understanding the bigger picture of the situation) during disasters. This has provided multiple opportunities to gather relevant information in a timely manner to improve disaster response. In recent years, identifying crisis-...

Traffic emergencies and resulting delays cause a significant impact on the economy and society. Traffic flow estimation is one of the early steps in urban planning and managing traffic infrastructure. Traditionally, traffic flow rates were commonly measured using underground inductive loops, pneumatic road tubes, and temporary manual counts. Howeve...

An infrastructure impact assessment process relies on the analysis of multiple types of models, the performance of individual infrastructure networks and the interdependencies between multiple infrastructure networks. Several models are developed for their specific purposes and there is a need to link these models for the assessment of natural haza...

Earthquake-related behaviors in Mexico and Japan have highlighted the need to better understand responses to demanding alerting scenarios. Both countries appear to have benefited from an established early earthquake warning system for several years. However, recent alert responses documented in these settings have been unlikely to protect residents...

A community-of-practice (CoP) is a community that comprises of members that build relationships with each other to create technical advancements motivated by shared goals. Establishing communities-of-practice has been demonstrated to enhance exchange and mobilisation of knowledge and facilitate the adoption and use of technological systems. At the...

We present a system for real-time traffic flow estimation using a low-quality video footage. Traditional methods of traffic data acquisition such as underground inductive-loops, pneumatic road tubes, and manual counts are labour intensive, expensive, difficult to install and can be inaccurate. The recent advancement of computer vision techniques in...

Mobile apps have the potential to aid disaster response by providing an avenue to distribute relevant and time-critical information to the public. Disaster apps already exist in the app markets. However, it is a challenge to engage users in retaining disaster apps on their smartphones. A mixed-methods approach is used in this study to investigate w...

Early warning systems (EWSs) can prevent loss of life and reduce the impacts of hazards. Yet, recent severe weather events indicate that many EWSs continue to fail at adequately communicating the risk of the hazard, resulting in significant life and property loss. Given these shortcomings, there has been a shift towards people-centred EWSs to engag...

Several mobile applications (apps) targeted for use by the public during disasters already exist. A large amount of research has been conducted to investigate the functionalities of these apps in aiding the public during disasters; however, only a few studies have investigated the apps' usability in the context of crises. In acute situations, seemi...

Earthquake Early Warning (EEW) systems are used to detect earthquakes and provide advanced notice of strong shaking intensity, allowing people to take pre-emptive actions that benefit the health of infrastructure and the life-safety of the public. With the advancement of technical research of EEWs, there is also an increasing need to understand EEW...

Emergency Traffic Management (ETM) is one of the main problems in smart urban cities. This paper focuses on selecting an appropriate object detection model for identifying and counting vehicles from closed-circuit television (CCTV) images and then estimating traffic flow as the first step in a broader project. Therefore, a case is selected at one o...

Purpose The paper illustrates how accountability of collaborative governance was constituted in the context of disaster managerial work carried out by the Government, local authorities, and Maori community organisations, after the 2010–2011 Canterbury earthquakes in New Zealand. Design/methodology/approach A case study detailing the communitarian...

The public has access to a range of mobile applications (apps) for disasters. However, there has been limited academic research conducted on disaster apps and how the public perceives their usability. This study explores end-users’ perceptions of the usability of disaster apps. It proposes a conceptual framework based on insights gathered from them...

Emergency management controllers throughout the developed world use various information technologies to help them manage emergencies. These emergencies can evolve rapidly, meaning that efficient information management is needed to minimize a range of uncertainties. Interviews with 12 emergency operation center controllers, from diverse areas of New...

Early Warning Systems (EWS) are crucial to mitigating and reducing disaster impacts. Furthermore, technology and information systems (IS) are key to the success of EWSs. This systematic literature review investigates the research topics and themes from the past six years of Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM) conference...

Limited research has studied how citizens' perspectives as end-users can contribute to improving the usability of disaster apps. This study addresses this gap by exploring end-user insights with the use of a conceptual disaster app in the New Zealand (NZ) context. NZ has multiple public alerting authorities that have various technological options i...

Multiple disaster mobile applications (apps) already exist for public use; however, availability does not automatically translate to continued usage. Limited research has explored whether disaster apps are usable and whether the apps' usability affects users' intent for continued use. The paper presents a work-in-progress study that aims to test a...

Developing multi-stakeholder networks to transfer response and recovery related knowledge between government agencies and flood-prone communities has become an important component of contemporary disaster risk management policy development in South-Asia. Despite the growing desire of governments to engage communities in flood resilience, knowledge...

In countries exposed to natural hazards, population preparedness is an important component of a comprehensive disaster risk reduction strategy. Recognition of poor preparedness, despite risk acknowledgement, prompted the development of theories for identifying motivators and barriers to hazard preparedness. While the majority of preparedness theori...

Rubber industry, one of the growing industries in the world creates a vacuum to exploit foreign markets especially for countries like Sri Lanka. However, lack of strategic relationships and low quality products with higher cost keep Sri Lanka's rubber industry performance away from the global market. Since supply chain management (SCM) is implicate...

Purpose There has been a lack of meaningful information systems architecture, which comprehensively conceptualise the essential components and functionality of an information system for fire emergency response addressing needs of different job roles. The purpose of this paper is to propose a comprehensive information systems architecture which woul...

How members of society interact during disasters has significantly changed because of technological innovations and new media evolution. The modality changes in crisis communications, such as the popular rise of mobile applications use, may pose risks to the public if not properly studied, with results adopted and utilised. Crisis informatics, as a...

How members of society interact during disasters has significantly changed because of technological advancements and new media evolution. The modality changes in crisis communication pose risks to public misinformation and confusion if not adopted and addressed. This review, therefore, looks at the literature of crisis informatics from the perspect...

Being located in the Kalu river basin, the city of Ratnapura is frequently exposed to some of the highest annual rainfall totals and riverine floods, hence the city’s Public Administration Officers (PAOs) often deal with flood management activities. The main purpose of this study is to examine the effect of knowledge networks of Public Administrati...

The objective of this research paper is to develop knowledge on the current capacity of multiple stakeholders to develop networks for knowledge dissemination within and across multiple network levels during a flood strike, and the vulnerabilities associated. The paper presents the outcome of preliminary analysis of formal documents from Disaster Ma...

Four decades back, Granovetter (1973) postulated social capital as a collective resource to attain knowledge flow through weak bridging ties. Since then, scholarly work linking social capital with knowledge transfer has received attention of social researchers. Recent publications such as Bodin and Crona (2009) has focused more on structural dimens...

Abstract The contemporary generation of Disaster Risk Management (DRM) scholars is increasingly contributing to the ongoing debate of applying resilience into theory and practice. Nevertheless, theoretical foundations of resilience in DRM context are not yet sufficiently validated in empirical grounds. This paper produces a literature review in DRM...

Good information is vital for first responders in an emergency. However, although information systems can provide vast amounts of data, the information requirements of emergency first responders in complex, dynamic, ad hoc, and stressful environments cannot be systematically captured by existing requirement engineering approaches. This paper outlin...

Despite recent work on information systems (ISs), many first responders in the UK Fire and Rescue Services (FRSs) are unable to develop sufficient understanding of the situation to enable them to make good decisions. As a partial requirement of the development of IS for the UK FRSs, a software prototype consisting of a number of human–computer inte...

Good information is critical to a firefighters ability to respond effectively in an emergency situation. Without timely, accurate information, a firefighters capacity to save lives, protect property and reduce economic loss is severely compromised. Although technology is capable of providing vast amount of data, the Human Computer Interaction (HCI)...

During the past few decades, many organizations made substantial investments in implementing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems with the goal of enhancing their business performance. Successes of ERP implementations largely hinge on willingness of employees to utilize the benefits of ERP. Available evidences, however, suggest the functional...

Software development projects extended the boundaries set by a single company, or country. As the communication media available became more sophisticated and cost effective, advanced technologies forced the software development trend towards, " virtual " nature. In such environments collaborations at the project level involved a network of virtual...

The number of firefighter deaths and casualties (274 in 2007, 352 in 2006) published in the latest UK fire statistics demonstrates the demand for better support for first responders. More complete information can help the fire Incident Commanders (ICs) analyze the risks and deal with the hazards more efficiently. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) hav...

Raj Prasanna, Malcolm King, and Lili Yang share their views on benefits of a new wireless technology project, called Secure Adhoc Fire and Emergency Safety Network (SafetyNet) that aids firefighter safety and the decision-making process during operational response. The project has been funded by the Technology Strategy Board of the UK, with a parti...

As a partial requirement of the development of an information system for the UK fire and rescue services, this paper describes the development and application of a protocol capable of capturing the information requirements of fire and rescue first responders. After evaluating the existing techniques commonly used in difficult decision-making enviro...

Emergency response management demands certain characteristics of the individuals involved. They need to act decisively on often little or incomplete information within tight time schedules, or, sometimes, with too much data from which it is difficult to extract key information. Procuring the right information at the right time, in the right format,...

Emergency response management demands certain characteristics of the individuals involved. They need to act decisively on often little or incomplete information within tight time schedules, or, sometimes, with too much data from which it is difficult to extract key information. Procuring the right information at the right time, in the right format,...

This paper explores the design specification of on-site emergency response information systems. In particular how emerging technologies such as wireless sensor networks, RFID, and wireless communication technologies, might enable on-site dynamic information to be retrieved, shared, and presented to the first responders. The information needed for a...

Currently in the UK fire tenders carry computer terminals stored with static information such as building locations, fire hydrants and building plans. However, when the first responders arrive at the site of a fire, they have very limited access to the real time dynamic information such as environmental conditions within the buildings, status of th...

This paper will describe an integrated model of information management system for and emergency response, specifically focusing on managing domestic fire emergencies in the United Kingdom. The proposed model will address the much needed contextual requirements in managing fire fighting by providing an integrated decision making capability which is...

This paper will describe an integrated model of information management system for and emergency response, specifically focusing on managing domestic fire emergencies in the United Kingdom. The proposed model will address the much needed contextual requirements in managing fire fighting by providing an integrated decision making capability which is...

Value addition of Apparel comes from its identification. Without a proper identification, customer never believes in the manufacturer. As an example, if prestigious apparel manufacturer like Marks and Spencer releases new apparel without proper identification, none of the end customers will believe it is from Marks and Spencer. 100% value addition...

A Doctoral Thesis. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University. Despite recent work on information systems, many first responders in emergency situations are unable to develop sufficient understanding of the situation to enable them to make good decisions. The record of the U...