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An important achievement by Study Group 2 in the field of Telecommunication for Disaster Relief was the March 2000 approval of ITU-T Rec. E.106, "International Emergency Preference Scheme (IEPS) for disaster relief operations". The Recommendation , updated in October 2003, describes a scheme for the use of public telecommunications by national authorities in emergency and disaster relief operations. The IEPS is needed when there is a crisis situation causing an increased demand for telecommunications when use of the International Telephone Service may be restricted due to damage, reduced capacity, congestion or faults. In crisis situations there is a requirement for IEPS users of public telecommunications to have preferential treatment.
Within ITU-T SG 2 Question 1 "Application of Numbering, Naming, and Addressing Plans for telecommunications and Service and Operational aspects of numbering, including service definition" an extensive list of projects address studies related to numbering, naming and addressing capabilities. With the continuing growth in new public services, networks, and capabilities, the list of projects is not expected to diminish and numerous new telecommunications services require unique numbering, naming and addressing capabilities that have been developed by this question. This include the Telecommunication for Disaster Relief (TDR) service.
Most recent results
In February 2007, SG2 approved Recommendation E.107 "Emergency Telecommunications Service (ETS) and Interconnect Framework for National Implementations of ETS".
This Recommendation provides guidance that will enable telecommunications between one ETS National Implementation (ENI) and another ENI, in addition to providing a description of ETS. It considers a potential for bilateral/multi-lateral agreement between cooperating countries/Administrations to link their respective ETS systems.
In June 2008, SG2 approved an amendments to E.123, "Emergency contact number notation", providing a method by which owners of mobile phones can identify people who should be called in case of emergencies.
In September 2008, SG2 approved Recommendation E.161.1, "Guidelines to select Emergency Number for public telecommunications networks", which encourages countries to implement the emergency calling numbers 112 or 911 in addition to existing numbers.
Study Group 2 continues work to develop other Recommendations in response to contributions and work on Cell Broadcasting is ongoing. Cell Broadcasting is a method for sending messages to large numbers of mobile telephone users, for example to warn them of an imminent threat such as a tsunami.
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