How the Internet of Things Could Aid Disaster Response 60
jfruh writes While the Internet has made communications easier, that ease had made us very dependent on the Internet for communications — and, when disaster strikes, power and infrastructure outages tend to shut down those communications networks when we need them most. But now researchers are examining how the so-called "Internet of Things" — the proliferating array of Internet-communicating devices in our lives — can transmit emergency messages via ad-hoc networks even when the Internet backbone in a region is inoperable.
Packet radio (Score:4, Insightful)
And how, way I ask, does packet radio [wikipedia.org] not accomplish the same thing, across considerably larger distances than a peer-to-peer mesh network? The mesh isn't useless, but at some point it still needs to connect to some place with proper connectivity. This may not be within the range of the Internet of Things. Given the right band and the right gear, radio will be considerably slower but also considerably further-reaching. Otherwise I see no substantial use for the IoT that satellites don't already solve.
Re:Packet radio (Score:4, Insightful)
To be effective it really needs to be deployed in advance. Packet radio is good, but it still needs some semi-trained operators. By the time rescuers get in with the equipment, it's already too late. The IoT proposal is to use existing devices to form the network. If you're already going to install solar-powered mesh nodes in every bus stop to track arrival times, it doesn't take a great deal of modification for that network to also handle disaster communications. The hardware is much the same. Any phone with a bluetooth interface could serve as a point of access into the network. It wouldn't replace old-fashioned handheld radios, but rather supplement them - allowing coordinators to track in real time the positions of rescuers, and to transmit instructions to survivors via their own phones.