iRespond

There are a lot of ideas about helping out people during disasters, by coordinating resources, recovery-forces, volunteers etc. But when solving this problem we must remember that our basic assumptions about infrastructure (like availability of Internet / data connectivity e.g. 3G/EDGE) do not hold true (more so in 3rd-World countries). We plan do develop a working prototype of a robust system that connects and coordinates a network of recovery-forces and volunteers via SMS network. Here is a brief summary of how it'll work: a. There is an iRespond Command Center (iRCC), which is essentially a Cloud App with access to Internet + ability to send/receive SMS. b. Recovery-forces/volunteers install an iRespond App on their Android phones (which NEED NOT have 3G/EDGE/GPRS access). They can then report incidents / make resource-requests etc. to the iRCC or respond to outstanding-requests in a coordinated way. 3. iRCC knows the exact GPS location of every single node. So it can track and coordinate everyone. The app communicates with the iRCC via a custom protocol over SMS network. Example: An earthquake occurred in a 3rd world country, destroying most of its local Internet connectivity. A red-cross team equipped with medical-tools and an iRespond App is at Location-1. A volunteer finds some victims in need of immediate medical attention at location-2 . He just writes in a message "We need 2 stretchers and first-aid kits Urgently " on his iRespond App. The app then reliably sends this message with additional details like users current location etc. to the iRCC. The iRCC then notifies the iRespond App that the red-cross team have, with details like route etc.