Without meaning to hijack this thread: does anyone know of any volunteering opportunities deploying / maintaining communication networks for disaster relief? Ericsson Response (https://www.ericsson.com/en/about-us/sustainability-and-corp...) is a group doing exactly what I'm after, but seems to be internal-only.
We have a good number of local hams working on mesh networking projects here in rural norcal, including exploring options for emergency use. I know of 5-7 locally and at least another 4-5 one small city over. There have been some recent test runs locally for distance and coverage.
One of the goals is to set up a pan tilt camera to remotely watch for wildfires, and we are seeking Ubiquiti gear for use on the project. We'd like to link it from inland to the coast which will take some doing but is probably possible. There's a really impressive mesh network project in Washington state, one I recall in Texas, etc...we are talking hilltops and mountaintops connecting whole communities.
Ham radio has served us well here during recent emergencies. After the recent 4-5 day power outage & wildfires, one of the county-coverage repeaters that didn't have backup power was set up with backup power.. Other than that even my non-ham friends were saying that listening to the ham radio frequencies was more helpful than listening to first responders via radio. Also, broadcast FM radio was really nice and there were hourly updates, calls with county officials, etc. Facebook was ridiculous because it has no idea that you are suddenly needing updates from your sheriff first, and everything else later. Cell data speeds were about ISDN level or maybe a tad faster. I accidentally made duplicate purchases on Amazon because I couldn't tell if my first purchase went through due to slow load times.
On ham frequencies we had people on hilltops directly watching and monitoring the fires, calling out what they were seeing long before the fires hit the news.
Anyway if you want to get into this, definitely get your ham license. Give yourself 2 weeks of study and dive in. Working with hams you'll find it much easier to get access to know-how, gear, people, etc. Even if you work independently somehow, the free education is worth it.
I actually had an interesting experience relating to this. A small handful of remote disaster coordination groups have self-organized over Zello (a PTT walkie talkie app for phones that uses data.) Their primary purpose seems to be to organize broadcasts of relevant information to groups of people who would "listen in" during dangerous conditions. The groups volunteers consist primarily of people that have internet connections and can broadcast from a safe location during the storm. These are similar to this idea [0].
I participated in one of these groups during a major hurricane in the US a year ago. My experience was mixed. It was interesting and fun to monitor social media, news sites, and NWS for alerts, hazards, and announcements. On the other hand, I was struck with how disorganized the groups were.
It was like there was a "vigilante" group of disaster responders who were giving guidance and advice that was of questionable quality. I encountered more than one member of the group that actively used the channels to spread fear and uncertainty, (like claiming that the hurricane would cause a risk of "meltdown" at a nearby nuclear power plant.) After I tried to bring up the fact that this was potentially harmful, I was verbally abused by the group leader and banned from the channel.
While these "bad eggs" are not the only part of these groups, other more well-meaning members might still not be well trained to handle very real crises.
I'm not sure the best way to handle this sort of problem, but I felt like sharing my story might provide value to anyone else who might consider getting involved with this sort of thing.
I get what your seeking now - I wish I knew of an org to suggest. I’ve long felt that there should be some sort of comms focused volunteer org like this. I guess you could say all of the major network operators already have things like mobile lte towers so there may not be a need — but then you see things like Irma and think how well did they do during that event and could ordinary people have coordinated more quickly and effectively? I guess another possibility might be the Red Cross? But again using the examples highlighted in this thread where folks were literally scanning for new fire outbreaks and sending alerts via ham... I don’t see that within red cross’s mandate... seems like there there should be an existing org, I just don’t know what it is called unfortunately.
