Mobile Communications for Emergencies and Disaster Recovery in Developing Countries

In the current international context, the theme of emergency preparedness and response has become a hot topic for the communication community. In particular, the role that new ad hoc communication systems can play in the set-up of efficient, coordinated rescue operations is often discussed in the media, mostly in connection with the perceived terrorist threat that looms over the developed countries. In this paper, we try to address a broader concern, namely the variety of humanitarian crises that occur all around the world and mostly in least developed and developing countries. We first look at the technical and political challenges that the relief community faces today. Then, we investigate the specific needs in communication that affected populations and rescue organizations may have. We show that these needs can be converted into technical requirements that open new challenges for research in mobile communication systems.

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