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In early 2017, Cyclone Debbie caused widespread damage and disruption to electricity supply and other infrastructure in Queensland and New South Wales. This placed considerable strain on citizens and responders alike, as they sought to find ways to keep their mobile telephones charged. Despite the advance warning of the cyclone, news reports suggest that considerable portions of the population were...
Social Media plays an increasingly important role in humanitarian and disaster response scenarios. However, typical social media applications rely on internet connectivity, and as a result are often not available during the acute phase of disasters. The MeshMS service of the Serval Mesh established the practicality of implementing a secure and private SMS-like textmessaging facility that can be used...
Self-organizing Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) based on Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN), are powerful tools for maintaining or reestablishing telecommunications following disasters and other infrastructure disrupting events. However, such networks typically have very limited bandwidth compared with infrastructure-based networks, with the practical effect that they cannot satisfy every demand placed...
The Question Box is a ruggedized cellular phone-booth designed to allow low-income communities the ability to access expert advice on a variety of topics, free of charge. This simple concept enables such consultation irrespective of income or literacy level, and has proven its value in deployments in rural India and in Sierra Leone during the Ebola crisis. The system consists primarily of the Question...
Existing ad-hoc wireless communications systems are based around Wi-Fi communications, owing to the ubiquity and cost-effectiveness of Wi-Fi; no other open wireless communications channel offers the capabilities and benefits of mass-production consumer markets. However in some situations even long-range directional Wi-Fi links are not suitable. For example Pacific nations spread over island groups...
Ad-hoc Wi-Fi is well known in disaster communications systems, because of its ability to form infrastructure-free peer-to-peer networks. However, ad-hoc Wi-Fi has a major disadvantage due to the lack of coordinating infrastructure: Its energy consumption is very high, reducing battery life to as little as 1.5 hours. Thus, while it would be highly desirable for mobile phones to use ad-hoc Wi-Fi communications...
The Servai Mesh Extender is a low-cost open-source infrastructure-independent telecommunications relay device developed to support telecommunications during and following disasters, as well as in remote and isolated locations. The Mesh Extender has been under development for five years, and is just now transitioning from a primarily University research system, into a mass-producible and deployable...
The Servai Mesh and new Serval Mesh Extender 2.0 low-cost, weather-proof, open-source, infrastructure-communications device is being piloted in Vanuatu during 2017 with the support of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trades Pacific Humanitarian Challenge. This pilot will test the applicability and utility of the Serval Mesh software and hardware in one of the world's most disaster-prone...
HF and VHF radios retain considerable operational benefits for disaster communications. In particular, they can be the only available communications channel into a disaster zone, and are capable of communications over tens to thousands of kilometers. However, their bandwidth is extremely limited, as low as 1 bit/second, which has previously limited their utility as a backbone for public telecommunications...
The great strength of satellite communications for humanitarian applications is independence of terrestrial infrastructure. However, satellite telecommunications systems typically suffer high recurrent costs, for example, monthly service charges, which are levied on each terminal device. This makes the pre-provision of satellite communications in disaster-prone regions very expensive. This is especially...
Smart-phones are useful in disaster response. However, they have limited battery life, and during disaster situations, there may be fewer opportunities to recharge them. The result is that the endurance of a smart-phone on a single charge may become a limiting factor to the utility of smart-phones in such circumstances. None of this is controversial. However, and perhaps because of this, there has...
Serval is an open-source, delay-tolerant wireless ad-hoc networking system designed to allow communications anywhere and anytime, despite the total loss of supporting telecommunications infrastructures provided by mobile phone operators. In emergency situations, Serval can be used to establish a disaster-response communications network spontaneously formed by mobile phones and/or battery powered wireless...
The battery life of most mobile phones is insufficient to enable their effective use throughout a disaster or emergency situation, without requiring recharging. Therefore in this paper we survey and classify a number of strategies that can be used in either disaster response or for people living beyond the reach of ubiquitous reliable mains electricity supply. In doing so, we aim to make available...
Communications play a vital role in the response to disasters and crises. However, existing communications infrastructure is often impaired, destroyed or overwhelmed during such events. This leads to the use of substitute communications solutions including analog two-way radio or unsecured internet access. Often provided by unknown third parties, these solutions may have less sophisticated security...
Blast[2], FASTA[4] and related algorithms are popular tools for searching genomic data. Accelerating these tools is an increasingly important goal as the growth of the databases outstrips Moore’s Law[6]. Many of the existing hardware designs are little more than direct translations of existing algorithms from the software to hardware domain[3, 7]. In this paper we summarise a novel approach which...
Temporary telecommunications systems are often deployed in humanitarian situations. Such systems typically require or operate more effectively with the antennae elevated above surrounding structures, maximizing line-of-sight coverage. Achieving this elevation for all deployments is problematic for several reasons.
Field communications play a vital role in disaster relief and other humanitarian responses. However, the acute phase of these events is frequently characterized by scarcity of communications capacity, confounding the efforts of responders to develop the situational awareness that would enable them to maximize the effectiveness of their activities.
The challenges of many crisis communication needs can be summarised as: the need to allow civilians to safely communicate with one another, and with the outside world, without reliance on any domestic terrestrial infrastructure, or on the import of physical materials. Therefore, any solution should place high precedence on infrastructure-independent operation, and the re-use of existing hardware technology...
VoIP (Voice over IP) over mesh networks could be a potential solution to the high cost of making phone calls in most parts of Africa. The Village Telco (VT) is an easy to use and scalable VoIP over meshed WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) telephone infrastructure. It uses a mesh network of mesh potatoes to form a peer-to-peer network to relay telephone calls without landlines or cell phone towers...
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