"Indonesia plans to use text messages to alert people of impending disasters predicted by early warning systems. The system would allow more than 80% of wireless users in a given area to be quickly informed of any impending natural disasters and would generate a rapid response from government officials. The Meteorology and Geophysics Agency will run the early warning system, as well as liaise with the media to ensure the messages are sent out as quickly as possible. (Source: AFP)"
Right after the recent tsunami disaster, there were a number of calls from technologists for the failure to produce technology that would have been able to avert this kind of disaster in countries that can not afford robust notification systems because of lack of infrastructure. Of course, such technology already exists in the form of wireless phones and instant messaging and could simply be piggy-backed for these purposes. Here is a first example of such an attempt. However, I remember seeing a while back that mobile phone penetration in Indonesia is about 8% of the population. Although before the tsunami disaster Research and Markets reported expectations of high growth of adoption and use it is unclear what the patterns are like now. While an SMS alert system is nice, it is important to keep in mind that at the moment it is likely to reach only about 8% of the population. However, if high growth in adoption and use of the phones is sustained (and this will depend on supporting rapid growth of wireless infrastructure), this is a reasonable approach. I wonder though, just how much information can be packed in to 128 characters? "tsunami coming, run?" In order to be useful, this kind of system would also need a hefty amount of education for the end users. Using this system for government officials may be a better solution but just how much time would a system like this provide for regular methods of notification in a given region?
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