How an Android Phone and Facebook Helped Route Haiti Rescuers

One intrepid Android fan is extolling the virtues of the open smartphone platform that helped him to route SOS messages in the recent Haiti disaster. "Well, when you are in such a situation, you don't really think about going to Facebook, but it happens that I have a Facebook widget on my Android home screen that regularly displays status updates from my friends. All of a sudden, an SOS message appeared on my home screen as a status update of a friend on my network. Not all smartphones allow you to customize your home screen, let alone letting you put widgets on it. So, I texted Steven about it. As Steven had already been working with the US State Department on Internet development activities in Haiti, he quickly called a senior staff member at the State Department and asked how to get help to the people requesting it from Haiti. State Department personnel requested a short description and a physical street address or GPS coordinates. Via email and text messaging, I was able to relay this information from Port-au-Prince to Steven in Oregon, who relayed it to the State Department in Washington DC, and it was quickly forwarded to the US military at the Port-au-Prince airport and dispatched to the search-and-rescue (SAR) teams being assembled. So the data went from my Android phone to Oregon to Washington DC and then back to the US military command center at the Port-au-Prince airport. I was at first a little skeptical about their reaction: there was so much destruction; they probably already had their hands full. Unexpectedly, they replied back saying: 'We found them, and they are alive! Keep it coming.'"

Comments

Re:Internet saves

[F34nor]

Technically Haiti is referred to as the "fourth-world" in political science because it is so bad that they think it will never get better. Read Collapse by Jared Diamond about what deforestation does to a civilization.

Re:Internet saves

[iamhassi]

"First time,Facebook was proved useful...."

Wrong

But just like that story, if they have access to facebook why not just call the police?

Re:A more general solution

[TubeSteak]

Could we even deploy our own mobile cellular base stations for this purpose, if the local cell network is too badly damaged?

Portable cell towers are regularly brought in wherever large crowds are expected to gather.
It's basically a trailer/truck with a generator, cell antenna, and microwave/satellite/wired link to the telco.
The problem of course, is prepositioning such hardware in locations where it is within reach of the disaster area.
Then you have to get it where it's needed, which isn't so simple in the aftermath of a quake.