On my way to the IDRC meeting in Penang I spent two days with Prof. Ahmad Zuri et al in Cyberjaya, Malaysia evaluating the Sahana Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) messaging over HF spectrum data platform. Prof. Zuri's team through, a grant from the Malaysia Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and the support from Mr. Zolkhonain Norizan and Mohd Aris Bernawi of MCMC, a prototype of the transport and application layers were developed by June 2009.The lab setup was replicated at MCMC with two HF radios connected to two laptops through Pactor II modems; one acting as the remote client and the other as the IP-HF gateway transforming the HF data to the Internet. A third laptop was hosting Sahana on the LAMP stack. A CAP message sent through Sahana could is first received by the IP-HF gateway, which resolves the string and relays it to the remote station transported as HF data.
Other than a few flood incidences, Malaysia (MY) is perhaps one of the least disaster prone country in the Asia-Pacific. With that in mind, the idea is to setup a hub in MY to transport Sahana specific emergency information through the HF spectrum. As of now, Maldives, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka have agreed to pilot this system. We await hope a Pacific Island or New Zealand may join the consortium. Proposal is in the working to seek funding.A short video demonstrating the concept
