Text Messages Aid Disaster Recovery

Excerpts from the article follow:

"Text messaging technology was a valuable communication tool in the aftermath of the [December 2004] tsunami disaster in Asia. The messages can get through even when the cell phone signal is too weak to sustain a spoken conversation.

Now some are studying how the technology behind SMS [Short Message Service] could be better used during an emergency.

Sanjaya Senanayake works for Sri Lankan television...

He was one of the first on the scene after the tsunami destroyed much of the Sri Lankan coast. Cell phone signals were weak. Land lines were unreliable.

So Mr Senanayake started sending out text messages. The messages were not just the latest news they were also an on-the-ground assessment of 'who needs what and where'.

Blogging friends in India took Mr Senanayake's text messages and posted them on a weblog called Dogs without Borders.

Thousands around the world followed the story that unfolded in the text messages that he sent.

'SMS networks can handle so much more traffic than the standard mobile phone call or the land line call,' he says.

'In every rural community, there's at least one person who has access to a mobile phone, or has a mobile phone, and can receive messages.'

Half a world away, in the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago, Taran Rampersad read Morquendi's messages...

He wondered if there might be a way to automatically centralise text messages, and then redistribute them to agencies and people who might be able to help...

Last week, he sent out e-mail messages asking for help in creating such a system for Asia...

In only 72 hours, he found Dan Lane, a text message guru living in Britain.

The pair, along with a group of dedicated techies, are creating what they call the Alert Retrieval Cache.

The idea is to use open-source software - software can be used by anyone without commercial restraint - and a far-flung network of talent to create a system that links those in need with those who can help...

In an e-mail, Dan Lane calls it 'an early proof of concept.' Right now, the Alert Retrieval Cache can only take a text message and automatically upload it to a web-page, or distribute it to an e-mail list.

In the near future, the group says it hopes to take in messages from people in affected areas, and use human moderators to take actions based on the content of those messages..."