Computing Community Consortium Blog

The goal of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer range, more audacious research challenges; to build consensus around research visions; to evolve the most promising visions toward clearly defined initiatives; and to work with the funding organizations to move challenges and visions toward funding initiatives. The purpose of this blog is to provide a more immediate, online mechanism for dissemination of visioning concepts and community discussion/debate about them.


“When Disaster Strikes, New Tech Saves Lives”

October 24th, 2011 / in research horizons, Research News / by Erwin Gianchandani

Disposable computers for hurling into infernos, underwater robots that team up for search and rescue, and other new tools are coming to the aid of emergency responders during calamities [image courtesy msnbc.com].Robin Murphy, Raytheon Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University (and a member of the CCC Council), and Mary Fernández, Executive Director of Distributed Computing Research at AT&T Research, are among several computing researchers featured on msnbc.com’s Future of Technology website this afternoon — as part of a series of wide-ranging videos about new technologies for emergency response.

This last decade has seen one disaster after another hit every corner of the earth. And for each catastrophe, researchers and tech companies have deployed new tools to help search for victims, clear rubble, and aid survivors…

 

For even faster search and rescue, [researchers] are working on a project that can create a network on the fly, and identify and connect people who are stuck in rubble. The idea is that it would link all the smartphones in a disaster area, plot them on a map, and communicate between them…

Check out the overview video after the jump…

…and see the entire collection of videos here.

(Contributed by Erwin Gianchandani, CCC Director)

“When Disaster Strikes, New Tech Saves Lives”

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