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IT and Natural Disasters
rikomatic writes "The Asian tsunami in December has dramatically shown how much SMS, email and the web are now indispensible parts of disaster recovery. The folks at the Digital Divide Network have organized a virtual conference on 'How New Media and the Internet are Reshaping Tsunami Relief Efforts' on Wednesday, Jan 12 at 10am, EST. Among the featured speakers will be Dina Mehta, co-founder of the Southeast Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog. In the hours following the tsunami, she and a group of South Asian bloggers created the volunteer-driven web portal for tsunami relief news and resources. Beyond using IT to coordinate post-disaster relief efforts, early warning is another critical need. Hopefully the UN's World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan later this month will address the IT infrastructure needed to make sure that people get advance warning before the next natural disaster strikes."
SMSs can make it over a patchy network when voice calls will not. It also allows easier cataloging and management of multiple nodes. Instead of having a person to speak to every remote outpost a computer can aggregate status reports, help requests and so on.
SMS? That has got to be the slowest way to cordinate anything... EVER.
Cellphone network operators can broadcast one SMS simultaneously to all cellphones in an area. If they had broadcast a tsunami warning by SMS right after the earthquake, a huge number of people would have been saved. Not only rich people with cellphones would be saved, since they would spread the warning to people around them, and those in turn would spread the warning further.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.