Foundation Projects

Development of emergency networks training and tools kit

The Internet Education and Research Laboratory (intERLab), Asian Institute of Technology

The aim of the project “Emergency Networks Training and Tools Kit” is to develop an easily manageable emergency communication system. This would also require a training manual that anyone who with very limited technological knowledge could understand. In particular, the target audience of the training manual is experienced in post-disaster recovery and resettlement operations.

DUMBO (Digital Ubiquitous Broadband OLSR) – “Wireless 'DUMBO'” is an emergency communication system that turns ordinary laptops/ PDAs into life-saving network devices without relying on any fixed infrastructure and gives a platform for effective rescue and recovery operations.

The motivation behind DUMBO’s development arose during the 2004 post-tsunami period. DUMBO, one of intERLab’s prominent research projects, was jointly undertaken by the Internet Research and Education Laboratory of AIT (Thailand), the HIPERCOM Project of INRIA (France) and the WIDE Project (Japan). Project DUMBO deploys mobile wireless networks on an ad hoc basis for emergency conditions; when a fixed network infrastructure is not available or has been destroyed.

To serve this purpose, we aim to make the DUMBO system more easily manageable, so that non-technical people can participate in developing their own communication network out of the box in an emergency situation following few simple steps.