Mobile Pictographs for Alerting and Incident Reporting on the way

We have been working on the idea of using pictographs to empower the linguistically challenged with communicating disaster information for several years. The concept was first presented at the 2013 Common Alerting Protocol Implementation Workshop. Later the Federation of Internet Alerting considered our work in their efforts to communicate pictograph-enabled warnings through their online Ad Spaces.

Spot-On as a Service Provider to the Sahana Software Foundation (Sahana) is providing expertise in emergency communication. This is in part of a project Sahana is leading on realizing the concept of Mobile Pictographs in support of Linguistically Challenged.  The project is made possible through the Humanitarian Innovation Fund of ELRHA.

State of Nepal's Emergency Comms, after the 2015 Gorkha Earthquake

With the assistance of LIRNEasia, we carried out a comprehensive evaluation of Nepal's Emergency Communication; August 2015 - April 2016. The report was presented at INET-Kathmandu.

The key message that I delivered was that for any Information Technology to triumph during crises and emergencies (shown by the green pinnacle in image to the left), a sturdy foundation of ICT resilience is compulsory. Robust infrastructure is the shouldering basis for ICT resilience. Thus, roads for engineers to travel to fix ill-fated BTS and Transmissions and electricity to power the telecommunications are essential elements for keeping the ICTs alive.

The venn diagram, to the right, illustrates the elements contributing to “Resilient Emergency Communication”. Robustness requires ensuring survivabilty and availability of the telecoms; especially a Government Emergency Communications (GECO). The GECO weaknesses are complemented by a Rapid Restoration of Access to Telecommunications (RREACT) program. The two complementing elements contribute to an effective Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan (BC-DRP).

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Strix ideal for ITU's Smart Sustainable Development Model

Spot-On's STRIX application coupled with YAZMI satellite system is an ideal solution for ITU's Smart Sustainable Development Model. Strix is capable of receiving syncronous (live streams of audio & video) and asynchronous data (files) and then making them available through a local area network. STRIX & YAZMI combine to provide the internet experience to those undeserved digizens who do not have access to quality broadband communications.

The Odyssey Tablet PC is designed to connect directly to the Yazmi satellite with the Yazmi antenna or connect to a Strix receiver-server box though the WiFi. The school solution provides live streams of classroom lectures on to the Tablet PC. Students can visit the library to access text-books to read, watch videos, or listed to audio sound bytes. Health educators can utilize the same applications to provide health education programs and sophisticated medical procedures to rural practitioners

During a crisis the Strix and Yazmi solution can be used to provide early warnings and support emergency response operations with situational-awareness information.