--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> Kevin;
> 
>    You are correct.  These systems are going to be the most useful at
> the periphery of the disaster area, logging and triaging survivors
> and
> logging remains as they are removed from the affected areas.  We saw
> in New Orleans that the first things to drop out were travel and
> network.  There was a lot of emergency services that could not get
> into the affected area because of basic infrastructure failure (roads
> impassible, power and communications lines down, batteries running
> dry).  Cell phones worked for a short time, until the batteries died.
>  There were some satellite phones, but they were scarce and the
> bandwidth was not really very reliable.   But having these systems on
> the edge of disaster is where they will find their greatest service.
> 
A couple of thoughts:

There's a lot you can do without (immediate) network access. You might
not be able to access a patient's records (say), but the system can
still be used "off-line".

How sure are we that a disaster sitation you won't have any kind of
network access? In a catastrophic situation like Katrina, pretty much
all infrastructure is going to be gone, but what about other cases? How
about an influenza outbreak?

Finally, there are a lot of ways to establishe network access (both
wired and wireless). Something like 802.11g might not be readily
available, but what about GPRS? Is it possible to leverage the existing
mobile telephone infrastructure?


===
Gregory Woodhouse  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>



"Einstein was a giant. He had his head in the clouds and his feet on the 
ground."

-- Richard P. Feynman












-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by:
Power Architecture Resource Center: Free content, downloads, discussions,
and more. http://solutions.newsforge.com/ibmarch.tmpl
_______________________________________________
Hardhats-members mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members

Reply via email to