3 posts categorized "Emergencies"

The New York Times ran a story over the weekend over a different usage of text messaging related to the Haitian earthquake. The mobile donations story is important in so many ways, but so is this:

From his makeshift workstation, Ryan Bank spends hours sifting through thousands of electronic cries for help from Haitian earthquake victims, many detailing the horrors of dead family members, hunger and homelessness.

“I’m hungry and I have no one,” says one text message from a Haitian man living in a tent city with thousands of others whose homes were destroyed in the quake. “People are unable to breathe due to the smell of the dead,” says another.

Mr. Bank, a Coast Guard volunteer who runs his own technology company in Chicago, said he had received more than 18,000 messages. “Most of them are utterly heartbreaking,” he said while staring at a list of messages sent to him through a new emergency relief effort that relies on text messages and social networking Web sites to help coordinate humanitarian aid in Haiti.

Read more @ the New York Times.

The innovative uses of SMS never cease to amaze us:

In keeping with its "Putting People First" philosophy, Cleveland Police has now launched a dynamic text messaging service specifically for deaf, hard of hearing and speech-impaired people. The service has been designed and delivered by mobile messaging leader Mediaburst in conjuntion with partner Teleware and successfully piloted by Cleveland Police since January 2008 with deaf people in its jurisdiction.

So how does the system work?

All that the deaf community in Cleveland Police's boroughs need do to report an incident or ask for assistance is to text the word Police to the dedicated shortcode 87202 giving their address and explanation of the problem. The message is automatically converted into email and forwarded to Cleveland's communication centre where incidents are recorded and actioned.

Read more @ TMCnet.

Text messaging works well as an alert system during emergencies:

Oxfordshire County Council is to send flood warnings to residents via text message.

The project forms part of the council's Emergency Planning procedures and is scheduled to go live this month.

Local authorities have been told by the Environment Agency to make better preparations for natural disasters following the damage done by last year's floods across the UK.

How's this for a techno-savvy local government:

"We reviewed the use of our existing system and decided to improve resilience by introducing the text platform," said John Kelly, county emergency planning officer at Oxfordshire County Council.

"We believe it is vital that we can give warning to the public and alert our staff though text messaging."

Read the entire article @ VNUnet.