APAN Nepal Earthquake HADR Support Report Contents: Background 1. APAN Nepal Support Summary 2. PACOM Nepal HADR Community 3. NGA Nepal Earthquake Imagery and Maps Community 4. JTF-505 Component Command (III MEF) Site

Background On April 25, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal with epicenter in Lamjung District, located 81 km northwest of Kathmandu at a depth of 15 km, severely affecting 14 out of 75 districts and leaving over 8,000 people dead. On May 12, a 7.3 magnitude aftershock struck near Chilankha village in Dolakha District, causing additional damages and leaving over 150 people dead. As of 03 June, the Government reported a total of 505,745 houses destroyed and 279,330 damaged by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake on 25 April and the 7.3 quake on 12 May. The earthquakes killed 8,702 people (4,801 female; 3,899 male; 2 bodies remain unidentified) and injured thousands of people. Affected Population (Cumulative, as of 03 June) Deaths: 8,702 (GoN, OCHA) Injured: 16,808 (GON, OCHA); Total Displaced: 2.8 million (UNRC, WHO) Total Affected: A total of 8.1 million affected; 4,261,210 people are seriously affected, out of which an estimated 1.7 million are children. (UNICEF, IOM) Total Population of Nepal: est. 27.8 million (WB) The Nepal Army led the Multi-National Military Coordination Centre (MNMCC) at the Army HQ.  MNMCC briefs can be found at: https://www.humanitarianresponse.info/en/operations/nepal/civil-military-coordination The US Military's support was led by JTF 505, which operated from 18 to 26 May.  An archive of U//F0U0 information summaries and intelligence data is located at https://intelshare.intelink.gov/sites/jtf505/SitePages/Home.aspx .  Additional U//F0U0 operational update briefings and supporting documentation is located at https://intelshare.intelink.gov/sites/pacomops/Nepal%20Response%20Docs/Forms/AllItems.aspx .

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1. APAN Nepal Support Summary The APAN Team responded to request from USPACOM to provide unclassified information sharing and collaboration support to Nepal Earthquake response efforts. Using past experiences & lessons learned from prior HADR response operations (Haiti Earthquake, Japan Earthquake, Philippine Typhoon & Vanuatu Cyclone), APAN was ready to provide community creation and knowledge management consultation, platform training, 24/7 help desk, development & GIS support to include daily metrics reporting services.

Community Creation and Knowledge Management Consultation US Pacific Command’s (USPACOM) Knowledge and Information Management Working Group (KIMWG) HADR response business rules and SOPS enabled the APAN team quickly create the Nepal HADR community as a sub-group of the standing PACOM HADR community. Additionally, the quick response by the DOD CIO’s office to assume ownership & support provided authority to make the group public so more people could contribute to shared situational awareness. A detailed summary of response communities is presented in the next section. During the first few days after the disaster several organizations requested APAN groups be stood up in support of the operation. The APAN knowledge managers worked closely with group owners & organizations where able to meet their needs while keeping the number of APAN sites & groups to a minimum reducing duplication. Each community started with the general APAN HA/DR template and then customized to meet specific community needs. With APAN’s catalog of tools and capabilities a Community owner could pick and choose which tools best served their requirements. APAN team members also provided links to reference documents, SOPs, lessons learned and best practices to ensure the environments were optimized to meet information sharing objectives.

Metrics Reporting Starting on 28 April 2015, the APAN team produced a daily report that highlighted metrics for each of the associated earthquake response communities. The status update report was sent out via email to identified stakeholders providing timely situational awareness for all recipients. The last report was developed and delivered on 22 May 2015. Archived reports are currently located in the APAN Support Files Media Gallery in unpublished status, so they are restricted to viewing by APAN internal staff members only.

Help Desk Having the APAN help desk team available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week proved to be very beneficial especially due to the time difference between APAN headquarters in Hawaii and stakeholders in the US East Coast, Japan, Thailand, and responders in Nepal. At any hour, users were able to contact the support team for assistance with their accounts or basic training on capabilities. The Help Desk

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processed 18 tickets and also provided timely escalation of tickets to the on-call knowledge manager and developers as needed.

Product Development / GIS Throughout the duration of the event, the APAN development team was on standby to provide immediate support if any issues were identified that hindered the use of APAN. An APAN Geographic Information Systems (GIS) developer worked closely with community users to configure specific map feeds and other GIS solutions to improve how information displayed to end-users. Unfortunately, the map.apan.org service was unavailable during the response timeframe due to server issues, so APAN’s mapping capabilities were not used. The APAN team was still able to provide a quick turnaround for feature enhancements based on requests from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) POCs and feedback received during an APAN Adobe Connect meeting. A total of four (4) different maps were available to the public group.

APAN Nepal HADR Response Communities of Interest (COI) Organization

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2. PACOM Nepal HADR Community URL:

https://community.apan.org/pacom-hadr/nepal_hadr/default.aspx

Created: April 25 2015 Purpose: Shared situational awareness Platform: Zimbra Privacy: Public Open (Public access with open membership) Owners: 4 total - DOD CIO - PACOM J68 - PACOM J65 - PACOM J32 APAN Members: 451 Total views & downloads: 21,756 views and 11,748 downloads media (files) posted

Nepal Community Overview Summary: The Nepal HADR Response Community was established on 25 April within hours after the earthquake. As of 11 June, it has 451 members. The purpose of this community was to openly share information with response communities to include the Department of Defense (DOD), NonGovernmental Organizations (NGOs), International Organizations (IOs), and civilians. Over the course of approximately one month, all postings on the APAN community were unclassified and included a multitude of information ranging from openly available reports from education or news reporting outlets, news stories, situation reports, requests for information, requests for assistance, maps, links to publicly available resources for the UN, and Relief organizations donations and response information. The community served for members to interact, exchange information and synergize efforts. Of the 451 members, approximately 45 members posted situation updates or imagery responded to efforts initiated to assist, shared links to or re-posted publicly available information, and helped answer questions other group members posed. The active community members ranged from U.S. DoD military, to NGOs, to commercial and educational resources. Aside from U.S. DoD and NGO activity, representatives from Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Nepal participated in discussions and contributed 2015-06-30 Page 4

relevant materials. The primary organizations represented within this community are from the U.S. military Pacific Command (PACOM), DOD CIO, DODIIS, NGA, JTF 505, Pacific Disaster Center (PDC), Center for Excellence (CFE) and NGOs to include Team Rubicon, Humanity Road, Global Professional Nepali Network, the Military Auxiliary Radio System (MARS) and foreign militaries in the Pacific AOR. There were four owners for the community who were able to administer and moderate actions within the group from internal APAN support, the DOD CIO, PACOM J68, and J65. Primary group owner responsibilities were shared among PACOM J6, and the DOD CIO/MARS POC. Community member breakout (based on user profile email address) is as follows: 350 US DOD .mil (288) 300

US Government .gov (19) Australia .au (10) China .ch (1)

250

Japan .jp (2)

Malaysia .my (1)

200

Philippines .ph (1) Singapore .sg (1)

150

United Kingdom .uk (2) Commercial .com (89)

100

Universities .edu (2) Networks .net (16)

50

Humanity Road .org (3) Team Rubicon USA .org (3)

0

Other .org (13) User source networks, based on community members' email addresses 451 Total Members

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Contributing organizations (based on user profile) - Number of posts across all APAN applications 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0

There were a total of 45 unique contributors for this community of interest, from about 19 commands and organizations. This graph shows the number of posts per organizations who responded to information/requests in the APAN group.

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The number of posts per APAN application shows how the Media Gallery application was the most widely used feature, although other tools were also used by the diverse community.

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Lessons Learned: 

Navigation menu was visually stimulating and engaged member participation



Quick links to related external sites offered valuable resources to members: o External sites for U/F0U0 documents, UN OCHA VOSOCC information, Humanity Response documents posted by UN’s HUMOCC team for the MNCC, publicly accessible imagery, others



Tags within each primary tab allowed for quick searches



Open discussions - forums encouraged members of community to respond, although two (2) questions directed to JTF 505 were unanswered (addressed within next iteration of PACOM HADR IM/KM SOPs)

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Included link to community on APAN Front Page (and mobile/Lite) for easy access to all viewers



Due to file size limitations for the bulk “download media gallery” feature, limit the number of files in each media gallery to no more than about 200. About 43 files from JTF 505 were reposted to a separate gallery to ease difficulty in users quickly finding operational reports.



APAN improvements: modifications to the group content map and tag functionality are in development, along with a feature that will allow group owners to enable a “bulk upload” feature for members.

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3. Nepal Earthquake Imagery and Maps (NGA) URL:

https://community.apan.org/practice/imagery/nepal_earthquake/default.aspx Created: 2015-04-26 by PACOM JIOC (DODIIS) staff Platform: Zimbra Privacy: Private Listed (No Public access, select membership) Owners: PACOM JIOC / NGA community lead) Members: 79 Total views & downloads: 335 views, 80 downloads Items Posted: 31 files, 3 announcements

Community Overview Summary: On 26 April, the community owner for National Geospatial Administration (NGA)’s standing group created a private Community of Interest (COI) for the posting of licensed satellite imagery related to the disaster areas. The APAN Team spoke with Mr. Ronald Strong over the phone and assisted with the creation of group application features, content pages and map. A select number of APAN users were approved by the group owner to join the community. All posts consisted of file uploads to the media gallery; no other APAN applications were used within the group. Of the 79 members, only the owner posted images for the others to view and there were no responses or collaboration. The product source data was restricted to a select group of NGA watch officers who were responsible for making that content available on APAN.

Community Usage Summary: The site was created for the specific purpose of sharing Imagery and Maps that cannot be openly shared with the public. GIS was used for interactive viewing of data for two distinct maps.

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Organizations: The overall membership was comprised of the US DOD, various Aid agencies, some coalition partners and other interested parties. A detailed analysis of membership is shown to the right, and is based on APAN users’ registered email address. Membership email domain distribution, while not a completely accurate depiction of users’ corporate, government, or DOD affiliation, directly reflects the diversity of the group:

COI membership - military network domain based on user profile details

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4. JTF-505 Component Command (III MEF) URL:

https://wss.apan.org/s/iiimef-nepal/default.aspx Requested: 2015-04-27 2000 UTC Built: 2015-04-28 0200 UTC Platform: SharePoint Privacy: Restricted Access to US only, must be approved Owners: III MEF Members: 29 Items Posted: announcements, some attachments included within list items were cross-posts of files posted to the public group

Community Overview and Summary: Instructions on how to obtain a TAC-NIPR account and a short list of JTF-505 IM POCs was the only info posted until 13 May, when a few staff members started re-posting content from the JTF 505 TAC-NIPR portal up to the APAN SharePoint site. 22 SITREPS & INFOSUMS (files also available on PACOM’s NIPR Intellink Portal) were included within SharePoint Announcements. Web analytics is not available for APAN SharePoint during this timeframe, so there are no metrics included in this report.

APAN Support The APAN team responded to the request and built the SharePoint site within a few hours. Additional assistance with setting up the membership approval (pending requests) list was also provided.

Lessons Learned Recommend that if the US military component is going to use only a NIPR portal (CAC-accessible only) to share and store information with other US military, recommend using the publicly-accessible APAN portal to share unclassified instructions, announcements and documents that have been vetted and approved for release to the public and other non-government organizations supporting the event. In this case there would be no requirement to have a separate APAN “private” SharePoint site or group. The JTF 505 APAN SharePoint Community had no impact on the information sharing opportunities with other supporting agencies and militaries. 2015-06-30 Page 11