During a disaster, many NGOs/relief organizations and emergency services may not have appropriate information to respond to critical incidents that have been reported by individuals on the ground.  Many of these reports may occur when cell phone or internet connectivity is minimal or overwhelmed with traffic, thus preventing organization from using these resources to obtain appropriate updates and thus provide an adequate response.  We envision that this system could be used during these critical period when telecommunications infrastructure is stressed to provide communications between all these services.  We also see a potential role of this system even after connectivity is restored to ensure that there is a decrease in the overlap of NGO/relief organization responses to particular incidents or requests thus allowing resources to be better managed.

This project will require close collaboration between amateur radio operators and coding experts.  The amateur radio team is currently optimizing the data transfer over packet radio protocol.  While the amount of data that can be transferred using these methods is minimal, we anticipate that they will be sufficient to shuttle text based updates to disaster management suites such as Ushahidi or Sahana.  While the HAM radio team optimizes the parameters of this packet radio system, coding experts will be require to create a variety of software suites that could be used with this system. First, a group will need to make a program that would be able to interface with Ushahidi to create simple text based reports similar to the RSS feeds currently available (apparently the Ushahidi API allows for this).  Second, a team would have to create a simple text based Ushahidi interface that could be used with minimal data transfer.  The aim is to have the simple text obtained through the first program to be interfaced into this second program. This program would then be used by individuals in the field and at a disaster management headquarters to communicate regarding relevant incidents.  The HQ computer would also have a satellite uplink to the internet which would sync information obtained by those in the field (ie: no internet) to those who are reporting information on the net or by SMS.  Thus those in the field would have the ability to see incidents reported by those on the internet and vice versa.  An additional component to this software suite would be interfacing GPS information from those in the field to free mapping software such as OpenStreetMap so that GPS coordinates of incident can be viewed by those in the field allowing for a more timely response.  With this software suite, individuals would be able to gain access to reported incidents through Ushahidi in a vehicle using a simple netbook connected to an amateur radio with a Terminal Node Controller (essentially a HAM radio modem).  We believe this system would not only decrease response time to incidents but would also allow for better co-ordination of the overall disaster response.