My friend Taran Rampersad from Knowprose (from Trinidad) has been saying it for a while now: When it comes to the use of mobile technology for emergency situations the first step is to have the technology setup before the disaster occurs. When SMS emergency systems are planned for, they can save lives. Seems like a smart idea right? Seems logical. But you would be surprised how many times a disaster somewhere in the world would occur and only after the fact do all these mobile activists race to the scene to start building and throwing together something like an emergency SMS call through center. This seems odd, right? Especially when disaster after disaster proves that "the things that worked for communication in all disasters were Ham radio and SMS text messaging."

I mean, its true. Just think about it. The first images from the horrible Tsunami that hit Thailand all came from MMS pictures via cameraphones. Our first image from inside the Super Dome in New Orleans during Katrina came to us when someone in the Dome was able to send out an MMS to his brother. The reason for this is simply because mobile messaging platforms like SMS can handle much more traffic than the standard mobile phone call or the land line call.

This became Taran#039s mission. Over and over again, like a doomsday profit, Taran told people that we must set up these systems BEFORE the disaster strikes. Taran thought he was spitting in the wind! But then he discovered that a group of people on the other side of the planet, in Indonesia, who he did not know and has never spoken with, did what he has been saying and, sadly, has actually had to use it. Check out WorldWideHelp for details.

As Taran himself said on MobileActive:

JALIN Merapi (site in Indonesian) had an SMS number in place for emergencies before the Earthquake happened, and it has been in use since immediately after the earthquake. This is what it#039s all about. A fragile human being capable of communicating to an outside number, through text messaging. They are not alone with such a device; simple communication can provide so much comfort in such circumstances. Hope. And Hope makes a difference.

The program is a simple SMS 2 Web application and while Taran does not know exactly how they did it he does know that it can be done with an Asterisk server with a few scripts. "Honestly," Taran told MobileActive, "this sort of thing is not expensive to set up. It requires bandwidth, and people to know what the number is to call before the disaster strikes." For those of you who do not know what Asterisk is I have written about it on Personal Democracy before (and even spoke about it at this past Politics Online conference). It is essentially an open source Private Branch Exchange (PBX) system that because it is open source can integrate and convergence with a plethora of multi-mediums including VoIP and cell phones.

Besides those mentioned in my article above you can see an example of such a system played out at the MobileActive website and read about one initiated in DC here (this is not the emergency SMS broadcast one).

Most of these were put together on a low budget using the best resources manageable at the time. Imagine what they would be like if actually pumped some money and resources into an emergency SMS broadcasting system!

I know that one is already implemented in DC, called Alert DC which uses the Roam Secure Alert Network to provide immediate text notification and update information during a major crisis or emergency. And I know that the Senate Subcommittee on Disaster Prevention and Prediction has been talking about expanding the Emergency Alert System beyond televisions and radios so that they can use SMS to automatically notify cellphone users about disasters or terror attacks. The system they are thinking about comes from the Federal Emergency Management Agency which has been testing a new Geo-Targeted Alerting System that would provide warnings only to potentially affected households and businesses (rather than just blasting warnings out to everyone).

But getting important messages to people about terrorism or a natural disaster is only half the battle. Letting people use the communication channel as well is just as equally important. Victims of a disaster need to be able to send messages out so people can find them and help them. As Taran himself put it "people trapped in the wake of a disaster deserve a voice. If you were trapped in a building, or you were without food and water and didn#039t even know which direction to go... wouldn#039t you like to use that phone? Of course you would."

The real question is, how many SMS#039 need to be sent during an emergency and how many people need to die in that same emergency before people realize that an SMS Emergency system is a viable and necessary option? During a disaster the most necessary thing is exactly what the mobile phone was built for, communication. Hey, I mean my very first cell phone was given to me by my parents when I first got my drivers license for exactly that reason, so that I can be reached or can reach anyone at anytime no matter where I am "in case of an emergency." The mobile phone is a communication device from its origins. Its time we started putting the implementations in place so that it can start saving lives.

And where voice fails SMS has proven, time and time again, to sustain.

Here is an archive of Tarans posts about SMS and Emergency situations on Knowprose. Also read this article from the BBC

Also, SMS Hubs in a Box like FrontlineSMS can be utilized for this kind of thing.

Technorati Tags: asterisk, disasters, emergencies, knowprose, mobileactive, sms

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