UGM Luncurkan Aplikasi Informasi Pengungsi Korban Bencana
UGM Luncurkan Aplikasi Informasi Pengungsi Korban Bencana
UGM through the Center for Natural Disasters Studies launches a disaster information system in the form of mobile application, GOTRO (Gotong Royong) or community self-help, which provides information on the situation of evacuation centers.
The application provides various information regarding conditions in the evacuation centers. Information that can be obtained contains data of evacuees, including age, gender, condition, and the number of evacuees. Moreover, it also contains information on logistics needs, health worker, psychologists, as well as donation menu.
“So far, information of evacuees has not been delivered properly and it mostly focuses on the victims. Therefore, GOTRO is created as a complimentary for the existing disaster apps, especially for logistic distribution procedures for evacuees to support more effective and efficient community-based emergency response management,” explained Head of GOTRO Development Team, Dr. M. Anggri Setiawan, M.Sc., on Monday (5/14) to journalists at Public Relations office UGM.
Anggri mentioned that the current logistic supplies are not sufficient to support evacuees with their highly dynamic needs. The condition would be more concerning if some of the evacuees need to stay longer in the evacuation centers.
“The main challenge of this application is to be able to work on a national scale while providing detailed information on the dynamics of evacuees in every evacuation center,” said the lecturer of Geography and Environmental Science, Faculty of Geography UGM.
GOTRO has been developed since early 2018 with three sub-systems, which are GOTRO Volunteer, Administrator, and GOTRO Community. The procedure of this application begins with the update of reports from volunteers through GOTRO Volunteer as verified by administrators. Next, people who have installed the application will be notified and they can choose the form and amount of donation for the victims.
The community can donate in the form of logistics as well as cash donations. The donors will also be verified first by the administrators.
Anggri stated with this application, the wider community can receive information on disaster more quickly from the contribution of volunteers as local respondents scattered in various regions of Indonesia. After the source of information is verified by the administrators and uploaded to the system, GOTRO users will receive notifications related to disasters in Indonesia. They can sort the information based on the latest or nearest occurrence, as well as specific cities.
GOTRO has three main menus, which are disaster information, evacuation centers, and donation. The disaster information menu displays photographs of disaster occurrences uploaded by volunteers, evacuees, as well as disaster deaths and injuries.
Meanwhile, the donation menu provides two options to help the evacuees, including a noncash donation in the form of logistic needs of each evacuation center and a cash donation.
Next, the evacuation center menu displays the location of each evacuation center on Google Map. The application also offers the option of adding evacuation center points based on the real-life conditions.
“In the meantime, we are continuing our program development and planning to cooperate with expeditions and banks for goods delivery and funds transfer,” Anggri said.
GOTRO was launched at the 5th Annual Conference of Disaster Experts Association in Padang, May 1-4, 2018, which was attended by President Joko Widodo. The application becomes the first mobile application for disaster information in Indonesia to provide information on conditions in the evacuation centers.
“This application is free and available for everyone on Google Play Store,” he said.
The launching of this application is expected to help the evacuation centers that often slip from mass media coverage. Therefore, logistics distribution for evacuees will be effective and efficient.
“The completion of this application can be one of the instruments in operational standards of logistics distribution procedure and disaster emergency response management in Indonesia,” he concluded.