Mobile technology is crucial when disaster strikes

However, increasingly vital is the ability to charge mobile devices and access to WiFi. Obviously there is the pressing need to contact concerned family and loved ones but also, without a sufficient communications infrastructure, aid agencies find it all the more difficult to distribute much needed food, shelter and medicine.

Therefore, some technology companies have stepped-up to the plate to find solutions to these very real problems. For example, Croatian firm MeshPoint has designed a portable rugged, all-weather WiFi and 4G mobile device that can connect up to 150 people to the internet at the same time, and Vodafone Foundation, the telecom giant’s charitable arm, has developed ‘instant network mini’, an 11kg backpack containing a 2G mobile network that can offer a coverage radius of up to one kilometre, a six hour battery and a small solar panel.

The instant network mini has in fact already been deployed in the Kathmandu valley, Nepal, following the devastating earthquake that hit the region earlier this year, and larger versions of the instant network kits have been used in South Sudan and the Philippines. The widespread use of the smartphone has meant that most people these days enjoy a fraction of the battery life of their early mobile phones (that really were just phones).

Therefore, the Vodafone Foundation has also developed charging blocks that can be screwed onto makeshift tables. They feature 20 USB ports for phone cables, can be linked in groups of three, and are recharged using generators or solar panels.

That’s not to say modern smartphone technology doesn’t play its part. The confusion a disaster creates means that information can get lost or is not shared where it is needed. A number of organisations are therefore developing apps that act as a single point of information when a disaster occurs, for example connecting different aid agencies together and offering a point of contact between doctors in developed countries and health workers in the field.

Data from the mobile devices can also be used to track the movement of people in a disaster situation so that governments and aid agencies have a clearer picture of where to channel resources. This type of data analysis has been used during the west African Ebola crisis. Mobile phones, widely owned in even the poorest countries in Africa, proved a rich source of data in regions where other reliable sources were lacking.

Earlier this year a report by Nanyang Technology University (NTU), in collaboration with the Global Disaster Preparedness Center, looked at the development of flood hazard preparedness mobile apps in the four target countries of Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Vietnam.

In addition, this year the GSMA Association launched the Humanitarian Connectivity Charter, which unites mobile operators around shared principles of preparedness, co-ordination and co-operation.