Time and time again, emergency action drills take place in
cities to target where their weaknesses are in "crisis" handling. Usually
they involve planes crashing or explosions (mock of course). Obviously
they were never prepared for this sort of disaster in their recovery plan.
I've participated in a few ARES/RACES drills and have to say that much could be
done to improve upon the "HAM" infrastructure.
Most of the time, communications is coordinated through 1
repeater system. When this repeater goes down, of course people would
switch comms to another but in a case like this, where all the repeater systems
go down except for maybe one, there needs to be a better
plan.
In Amateur Satellite Service, these orbiting "Repeaters"
employ a system called RUDAK where a chunk of spectrum is repeated.
Obviously this isn't feasible in terrestrial repeaters but they do have the
ability to turn off radios and switch bands at will depending on operating
conditions. With software controlled radio and Asterisk, the repeater
system could be made to be more resilient to disaster by linking to other
repeater systems via radio where it could connect outward.
If you figure the overhead of a repeater's transmitter and
receiver plus the controller, replaceing the controller with an asterisk based
unit (integration) would make more sense as it would give the repeater system
much more capabilities in the same footprint and power. Additionally,
these repeater systems are located on hilltops with other radio systems so they
should have emergency power available (if you've ever been to a hilltop repeater
site, you'll know what I mean).
I think the biggest thing that hurts ham radio's ability to
react to a crisis is the lack of equipment and operators. Most of the
traffic we pass is "Health and Welfare" with "Logistics" being the second to
it. What defeats this is that in a disaster where local/high band long
haul capabilities are diminished, is simply the one repeater that is functional
because everything is squeezed onto one VHF/UHF repeater.
Where I could see thing being improved? Installation
of 802.11b/g WLAN under Part 97. It would allow for more users into the
system, there are less hardware and power components and allows the system to be
dynamically configured. Asterisk could play a huge role then as it's made
for IP based traffic and could re-route in a split second.
-Don
The two best forms of communications in a real disaster and one
always has been is #1 Ham radio. and #2 satellite telephone. Ham radio is global
and has proven time and time again to be the most reliable when the
infrastructer has been damaged. The U.S government is the biggest user of
satellite telephones which is also becoming a valuable tool again when the
communications infrastructure is down. It would be nice If Asterisk could
be used but in this case but it's useless. People are displaced and most
of the communications infrastructure for the city is unusable. I don't
mean all of the telco's systems. It's the flood that wiped out most home
and business systems. For us, The best thing that a provider can do is to
have redundant servers in different cities. This should remind us all how
fragile our lives are.
Chris Travers wrote:
Mark
Phillips wrote:
Hold on here folks,
I'm guessing that the
original poster of this thread isn't a member of his local RAyNet team.
Whilst I don't profess to be an expert at this I have been doing
emergency radio for quite some time and have seen service at the Lockerbie
bombing, Docklands bomb, Ground Zero (I'm sure I'm a terrorist target y'know
- they seem to follow me everywhere) and soon I'll be in Louisiana.
In all of these events the KISS principle must and does prevail. We
need a system that is a simple and energy efficient as possible.
Building a network of * servers and Wi-Fi links
is all very well but how are you going to power them?
These are excellent points. I have a few
interesting suggestions here.... The first is that the only obstacle to
any sort of longer-range point to point line is merely power. This is
true whether you are talking HAM or fiberoptics. Note that if you have
the power, it would take disruption of the physical line to disrupt a fiber
line. Note that DirectNIC in New Orleans remained operational without
*any* downtime or loss of connectivity with the rest of the world.
The
suggestion that I have is for various areas to have dedicated civil emergency
com units with strategic reserves of fuel (3-4 weeks worth), battery backups,
etc. These units would have links (fiber, microwave, and/or satellite,
better to pick 2 of 3) to areas outside expected disaster zones.
Asterisk could then run across these links. (Sattelite links would best
be POTS-type).
The point is to a disaster-tolerant communications
infrastructure which could then be used to to provide additional
communications services to the relief workers. With various point to
point wireless capabilities, it might be possible to use them to provide cell
service to relief workers etc through the installation of GSM microcells
(which could be brought in after the fact).
See where I am going?
Generators require fuel which is always in short
supply and batteries die out quickly. Adding Ham Radio to the picture
doesn't really add much when you are trying to do something like a *
network. The radio gear just isn't designed to integrate with the * server.
Ham radio is being used down in the Katrina affected area with great
results for both emergency and heath/welfare related traffic. They are using
both "phone" (that's when one talks in to the radio) and data modes and can
be heard all over the 75 and 40 meter bands here in the US.
Power
for most of these stations comes from batteries they loot (with Police
approval) from abandoned cars or a combo of solar and batteries. Many
stations are only hear on the air after dark so that they can put as much
sunlight into their batteries as possible.
Yes, electricity is
available in some places either all day or across the peak hours (allowing
the workmen to restore power to other areas).
Yes, there are radio
to phone interconnects but these really are a single phone to a single
radio. Think of it as a cordless phone in that the radio user can be
anywhere within reach of the base station.
Such technologies, whilst
legal here in the US, may not be legal elsewhere. When last at home (UK) I
was not able to connect my radio to the phone system by law (this may have
changed recently - not been home for 8 years). Many countries have such
restrictions and as we saw during the Tsunami, rules don't get relaxed just
because there's a panic on.
Without question a phone system would be
much better than a radio station. As such I'll be taking a portable * server
I've built, all the IP hard phones I can find and 5 DirectTV style Internet
systems.
How do IP hardphones work with satellite
internet? I always thought people had real trouble getting them to work
at all.....
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
Metatron Tecnology
Consulting
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