Category: emergency response

Trinidad and Tobago and [Insert Your Country Here] Needs Emergency SMS

January 19, 2010 by Taran Rampersad

Imagine being trapped under some rubble with only a mobile phone for company. You could be hurt, bleeding, hungry, dehydrated or any combination of the above. If the mobile infrastructure is even partially intact, calling people on the phone would be limited by the likely overload of the mobile system. But SMS messages get queued. They also drain less battery life which, if you're stuck, could be very important in saving your life or the life of someone you love.

Imagine a SMS equivalent of an emergency number (like 999, or 911) you could send a text to - where the right people could get your message quickly. And they could get to you and those you care about more quickly. Simple, isn't it? 

As I mentioned on KnowProSE.com, Haiti now has the number 4636 for emergency SMS messages . It was set up after the fact by a group of volunteers because it was of use in communicating after the earthquake. The mobile phone infrastructure seems to have survived, at least to a noticeable degree. It's under very similar circumstances that one of my own abandoned projects, the Alert Retrieval Cache, was constructed after the South East Asian tsunami. It's basically the same thing - and it's a good idea that keeps popping up independently all over the world. I've even seen it done by UWI students for a contest last year - and they had no idea about the Alert Retrieval Cache concept. Here's a diagram for the reading impaired. {Read more}