I'm wondering where is the best place to get an update on the status of
the project? disaster.radio has nothing that I could find since March
2020 and I was wondering if the project was still alive?
I came across the project at the Dweb Summit in 2018 but it was pretty
early days then. I wanted to figure out what was happening as I'm part
of local resilience work in the northern NSW area of Australia where one
of our concerns is a backup communications system for when the mobile
phone system goes down during either storm or fire.
Currently .... we use Whatsapp, with dedicated groups for emergencies
that are only used for that purpose, they typically come to life during
floods, with up to the minute reports on creek crossing depths; calls
for help to pull a car out, or move a downed tree and so on. BUT ...
that won't work when mobile coverage goes down.
My ideal scenario is something that is geek-free to use, i.e. to be
effective we are going to have to set it up (which could use our
technical expertise) but then effectively leave it in place up till a
disaster situation occurs, at which point people are going to have to be
able to use existing mobile devices. The devices could use WiFi mesh;
directional antennas or Lora for example to interconnect but the users
are going to be limited to GSM or WiFi - to connect. Anything that
requires more setup during a disaster is going to be far less likely
since, by definition, this is a time when the technically proficient
among us might not be able to move around to help people setup, or even
have other communications channels to provide support, when power may be
out so laptops flat and so on.
I was trying to figure out whether disaster.radio had got to the point
where it was the closest thing to build upon, but so far I haven't been
able to figure out its status.
- Mitra
Mitra Ardron - mitra(a)mitra.biz
www.mitra.biz
+61-491-082-515 mobile; +1-510-423-1767 whatsapp