Three IITs, Madras, Hyderabad and Kanpur, the Indian Meteorological Department, and the National Geophysical Research Institute, as also a host of institutions from Japan, have come together and developed a portable system that can be installed within an hour and offer rescue teams/authorities unmitigated communication channels.
The system is helpful when mobile network connectivity is either jammed or unavailable during natural calamities such as the Uttarakhand cloud burst last year.
The system, comprising a GSM base station and wi-fi access point, is created to start communication. These primary deployment areas (PDA) are then connected to a Master Operations Control, which also has GSM and wi-fi connectivity. All information collected from the affected site by the various PDAs will come to the MOC, explained David Koilpillai, Dean, Planning, IIT-Madras.
The helium-filled balloon with the transmitter is placed at the MOC and will float at 40 metres height and act as a transmission tower. Each tower can cater for several primary deployment areas.
The project, costing Rs. 50 crore, has been funded by Japan. In that country, the government transmits message over a dedicated TV channel which is available on all smart phones. In India, researchers said they were planning to seek a separate bandwidth on FM radio to broadcast messages. Through the FM channel the disaster communication authority, such as the Collector, will issue instructions to relief workers and messages to victims at the disaster site. Victims can send out an “I am fine” message, which will be uploaded on a website along with their mobile phone number and can be viewed by family members, said Kotaro Kataoka, visiting faculty at IIT-Hyderabad.
Relief workers will use the system to register the victims, make calls to other rescue agencies, take photos or videos and transmit them to the base station.
IIT-Hyderabad has designed a pre-disaster communication system in association with universities in Japan to track the patterns of rainfall and identify areas requiring evacuation in an emergency.
