Projects

Disaster monitoring services and technologies - the Finnish offering and needs in the market understanding

Technology for disaster-tolerant telecom services especially in Japan looks potential. Voice based was down and fixed line internet not usable during tsunami.

China has faced several disasters including earthquakes, flooding, and drought. Chinese people have started to complain to some authorities, such as China Earthquake Agency, that they cannot give the public any early warnings or forecasts in advance.

1. China has recognized the importance of disaster’s monitoring and forecasting, and it’s expected to be one of the focus of future development.

2. The information systems on disaster prevention and response will be strengthened.

Finland has advanced technologies in information and sensor technologies, so the related technologies can be very useful in China.

Focus points: 

- Natural disasters
- In next 5 years time China has a plan to build a disaster warning system (based on information  29.11.2010  from NERSS in Beijing)  -> Finpro and Tekes Beijing could study this further and present Finland’s know how to Chinese Decision Makers. They do not know Finland’s  knowhow, but are aware of eg. Swedish offering.   
- To study the China specific needs and to build a commercial service offering which answers to these needs
- To look what knowhow we have in Finland which matches to these needs: e.g systems, early warning system, awareness building campaigns

To look from the business and technology point of view  and what would be area and who are the players Finland niche knowhow could be utilised in this sector in China.

Satellite communication:

relevant in Japan and Australia, but expensive. Use for personal communication. Still big antennas. Need business model for non disaster time as well to be sustainable. Transmission.Japan manufacturing sector is down. Difficult currently to technical survey. China not active satellite development currently.

Disaster monitoring and Services:

information systems and services on disaster prevention and response. Focus on disaster’s monitoring, forecasting and control technology and  services. Finnish companies offering sensors, equipment, systems, software and system integration to cover needs for building a disaster monitoring, early warning, control and information system in earthquake, flooding, tsunami, typhoon, wild fire, landslide danger and other disaster cases. Finland also has high level of expertise in nuclear power station safety issues. Target markets in Asia: China, Japan etc.

China activities: Finding out National programs related to the above, evaluating them and finding the most interesting ones. Identifying the key organizations and persons for presenting ideas for co-operation. Arranging seminars for presenting Finnish offering and for matchmaking.
-  governmental
-  Beijing project
-  EU project starting: disaster project

Next actions

There could be a seminar with the key players of the sector (10-15 companies, 5 authorities) during the week of Mid-Summer in Finland. This would be much better opportunity to discuss and measure our work with disaster management core business companies.

 Key findings

Market background:

•China has entered a period of frequent episodes of natural disasters. In the next 10-50 years China may face a variety of natural disasters, including extreme weather conditions, floods, droughts, earthquakes, etc. Mitigation and resilience pressure will be enormous and the corresponding market demand will be great.
•After Wenchuan earthquake disaster in 2008, the Chinese government got under criticism. Hence, there is pressure to establish a more efficient nature disaster management and monitoring system. This obviously should be accompanied with more suitable way of constructing in regions subject to earthquakes.
•The Chinese nature disaster management and monitoring technologies appear to be mature in certain fields but not yet in others. Considerable progress has been made thanks to investment  in communication and information technologies. At the same time, the central government has increased investment into research and development on technologies relative to these topics. Nevertheless, a significant amount of work remains to be done on technological status of the system of monitoring as well as its geographical coverage.
•However, there’s still today no integrated management system or platform for the nature disaster monitoring and early warning. The current system is mainly focused on individual disaster management according to the disaster types.
•The further work for integrated nature disaster management  needs scientific research and international benchmarking and other cooperation.
Key market demand:

•To get better knowledge of management framework for building the functional system and professional personnel teams via various training programs;
•To develop integrated data system to automatically store and retrieve data, to analyze, display information, and to perform the extensive calculations for nature disasters assessment in different phases;
•To strengthen tele-communication network to provide information to emergency management authorities and other users in time.
•To build national and community response capability

FinNode China 2 2011 Disaster monitoring Services & Technologies (pdf) (3.1 MB)

Jari Makkonen
Finpro Shanghai
+86 21 6104 2280
jari.makkonen@finpro.fi