> Emergency communication vehicle to aid Sri Lanka
Emergency communication vehicle to aid Sri Lanka
January 22, 2008
Sri Lankans will soon be able to take disaster communication capabilities directly to a disaster, thanks to the work of SFU communication professor Peter Anderson.
Anderson is laying the groundwork for a new Advanced Mobile Emergency Communications (AMECom) vehicle for Sri Lanka’s disaster management program. The project will be based largely on his work on the versatile mobile vehicle he and his team designed and produced for emergencies in B.C.
He is currently completing the new vehicle’s operational and technical design plans in collaboration with the government of Sri Lanka and the U.N. International Telecommunications Union.
The vehicle designed and built to serve B.C. communities was completed in 2005. It can provide advanced communication systems to both urban and remote locations where there has been damage caused by natural disasters.
Housed at SFU, the vehicle has also enabled researchers to test a variety of communication technologies in extreme and remote environments.
The vehicle is equipped with its own satellite dish and a variety of other communication capabilities including wireless internet, phones, two-way radio and a vertically extendable remote camera.
The vehicle has been dispatched on a number of occasions to areas of the province in the wake of forest fires, extreme weather and flood monitoring.
Since the Boxing Day 2004, tsunami Anderson has been to the Indian Ocean region several times and has played an integral advisory role in helping various areas develop and improve their own capacity for dealing with deadly disasters.
“This will be a significant addition to Sri Lanka’s planning efforts that have been underway since the disaster struck,” says Anderson, noting that many of the country’s villages are remote and difficult to serve with adequate telecommunications during emergencies.
The new truck will be built and operated by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka. Anderson is also actively involved in another Sri Lankan community-based project aimed at improving last-mile hazard information dissemination among villages.
Anderson is laying the groundwork for a new Advanced Mobile Emergency Communications (AMECom) vehicle for Sri Lanka’s disaster management program. The project will be based largely on his work on the versatile mobile vehicle he and his team designed and produced for emergencies in B.C.
He is currently completing the new vehicle’s operational and technical design plans in collaboration with the government of Sri Lanka and the U.N. International Telecommunications Union.
The vehicle designed and built to serve B.C. communities was completed in 2005. It can provide advanced communication systems to both urban and remote locations where there has been damage caused by natural disasters.
Housed at SFU, the vehicle has also enabled researchers to test a variety of communication technologies in extreme and remote environments.
The vehicle is equipped with its own satellite dish and a variety of other communication capabilities including wireless internet, phones, two-way radio and a vertically extendable remote camera.
The vehicle has been dispatched on a number of occasions to areas of the province in the wake of forest fires, extreme weather and flood monitoring.
Since the Boxing Day 2004, tsunami Anderson has been to the Indian Ocean region several times and has played an integral advisory role in helping various areas develop and improve their own capacity for dealing with deadly disasters.
“This will be a significant addition to Sri Lanka’s planning efforts that have been underway since the disaster struck,” says Anderson, noting that many of the country’s villages are remote and difficult to serve with adequate telecommunications during emergencies.
The new truck will be built and operated by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka. Anderson is also actively involved in another Sri Lankan community-based project aimed at improving last-mile hazard information dissemination among villages.