Text messaging could help combat catastrophes like tsunami

April 30th, 2006

A new report, which was presented at a summit in Jakarta, Indonesia, this week, has suggested that a feature already built-in to most cell phones could be used to alert every mobile phone user in a specific region to impending disasters, such as the tsunami that devastated south east Asia on 26 December.

Experts said that the combination of a tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean and the ability to broadcast text messages to every mobile phone in the area has the potential to save many lives should another tsunami strike, reports New Scientist.

The experts said that their should be an emergency warning system in all parts of the world and that early warning sensors would be relatively simple and, at a cost of about 20 million dollars, relatively inexpensive to set up. But experts say these must be combined with an effective means of alerting the population to imminent danger.

They said that it would require a customised PC to be installed at the headquarters of each network operator. This contains the geographical co-ordinates of all phone masts, enabling operators to target emergency messages to all phones in the required region.