According to a news report by BBC, Mamun buried 16 of his family on the day that he had assumed he would be celebrating his wedding. While traveling to the event, lightning struck and killed them. As a strong storm approached, his family members — clad in their best suits and saris — boarded a boat to go to Mamun. The boat capsized in the torrential rain, and they sought refuge on the riverside beneath a tin shed before being struck by lightning.

According to the United Nations, lightning kills 300 people in Bangladesh annually on average because of the country’s harsh weather and violent storms. According to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief, 2,164 people died in lightning strikes in the country from 2011 to 2020. Every year, more people die on average in lightning strikes than due to floods, cyclones, and other natural calamities.

It was clear to see that the Department of Disaster Management (DDM) required a tool that would at least be able to better track the casualties resulting from lightning strikes. In addition, they required a platform for data-driven decision-making to achieve the following outcomes:

1) Combining lightning prediction with meteorological and climatic data

2) Lightning forecasts are distributed to potential strike areas

3) Increasing consciousness

4) Choosing a location for the lightning arrester and shed installation

5) Planning for causality management based on data

Bangladesh’s data leadership initiative, initiated by a2i under the direction of Bangladesh’s ICT and Cabinet Divisions, aims to contribute to a data-driven decision-making culture within the government, in line with the aspiration of achieving SDGs by 2030 and establishing Smart Bangladesh in 2041. The strategy is to bring participation throughout the whole government and facilitate the co-creation of readiness of the civil servants on data-driven decision-making.

Thus, a data-driven decision-making dashboard on lightning information management system was developed as a decision support tool. The hope was that it would act as a symbol of strategic cooperation in the design and development of a disaster management dashboard that supports data-driven decision-making for protection against lightning strikes.

Bangladesh’s foray into using the Internet of Things (IoT) will need to use data more and more to save lives

Why do this?      

Through the dashboard, the Department of Disaster Management is able to monitor the number of lightning strikes, deaths, and injuries, and make data-driven decisions on providing aid to the affected people and families. This dashboard visualizes the divisions, districts, and upazila-wise casualty data that supports effective and real-time decision-making.

Visual depictions of past lightning incidents, such as heatmaps or trend graphs, provide a clear understanding of the most probable locations and times for such events, empowering decision-makers to craft well-informed strategies for disaster preparedness and response.

Previously, data was stored in different manual formats which made it difficult to understand the real scenario of lightning strikes. Due to the manual format, data was oftentimes missing and no data visualization platform hampered the decision-making process for supporting the specific people and families. Now, through this dashboard, from 2015 to 2023, data is visualized efficiently. This dashboard gives an overview of the actual scenario of lightning in Bangladesh on a real-time basis.

Policy-makers can also monitor the number of males, females, and children affected by lightning that were difficult to monitor earlier. Through comparative analysis, this dashboard supports identifying the root causes and taking preventive measures as well. This dashboard also helps in identifying the most affected people and families, understanding the year-wise trend of lightning in Bangladesh, and taking action to mitigate this disaster.

Bangladesh’s foray into using the Internet of Things (IoT) will need to use data more and more to save lives. In this case, the department can decide whether to aid the affected family struck by lightning, with the evolution of this dashboard being the possibility to predict lightning strikes shortly and save thousands of Bangladeshi lives. Officials may now monitor the process of implementing various types of awareness programs by using data.

The Department of Disaster Management has installed 336 lightning arresters. Among them, 20 arresters have IoT devices attached. This IoT device will monitor the arrester in real-time including atmospheric conditions, detecting changes in electrical charge and assessing the risk of lightning strikes surrounding the devices. The dashboard will be used as the central monitoring system of all the IoT devices.

Data can significantly improve the efficacy and efficiency of disaster management. The effort is a prime example of the beneficial effects that strategic data use has on well-informed decision-making in Bangladesh’s disaster management sector. The hope is that as we build toward Smart Bangladesh, data becomes more and more an intricate part of policymaking, and in the process, we can make the lives of Bangladeshis better while saving countless lives.