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Message Carrier: Messages Without Connectivity

Blake Byrnes's picture
Submitted by Blake Byrnes on May 19, 2011 - 12:04
Revision #11ForkRecommend a Solution
A disaster occurs, there is no cell phone connectivity or wireless connection as you flee the scene.  You'd like to get messages out to people you are close with.  The needed solution is a way to transport messages from sender to receiver when no connectivity is available (ie, through the people - like passing paper messages, but smarter and faster)
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Example: 
  1. A tornado wipes out a geographical area.  Bob tries to send a message to his family that he's ok.  Since connectivity is not available - right now, he can't reach them until connectivity is restored, or he finds a location that still has a connection. 
  2. A hiker is trapped in the woods from a broken leg and passes out.  There's no connectivity.  Other hikers are walking nearby, but don't know that he's there.  There's no way for them to help him, or even know he's in need of assistance.

Extra Credit: 
  • Tagging messages with geolocation, so that sources can be retrieved
  • Tagging messages with destinations (ie, other cities), so that the system can be optimized to either head in that direction, or people are notified in some way so they can find people "going" in that direction (could be useful if a large geographical area is wiped out of connectivity)

Comments

This project was worked on by RhoK Toronto in June 2011. The lead Christian advised that he won't be available to work on it in December 2011. Please contact Heather Leson if you are considering working on it.


Thanks!


Heather Leson

Heatherleson Nov 30, 2011

Yesterday at RHoK Zürich, we had presentation from an ETH researcher who works on an application with the same problematics like this.

 

These networks are called delay-tolerant opportunistic networks. And it looks like it is a perfect fit for the problem you defined.

 

The application is a twitter client which can work in mode without connectivity and in the context of disasters. There are aleady examples of installation of this technology in India and it is currently very active in development and promises to take of in the future even on the bigger scale, like preinstallations in of-stock mobile phones.

 

Application is as well modular and plugins for certain use cases can be implemented.

 

Application source code

http://code.google.com/p/twimight/

 

Contact person for investigating deeper into this technology is Dr. Franck Legendre

http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~lfranck/ and he is very open to hear your use cases.

Ivan Jovanovic Dec 04, 2011

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