In the event of a natural disaster like an earthquake or a flash flood, there has been cases of relief workers being stranded, excommunicated from the rest of the world in the process. Well, we all know that keeping a clear and open line of communications is ideal under such situations, but just in case the mobile phone networks fail, there is a backup idea that German researchers are willing to explore – through the harnessing of domestic Wi-Fi connections in order to create emergency mesh networks. Researchers from Darmstadt, Germany, intend to have crisis communication networks which are smart enough to ride “piggyback” on domestic wireless routers via Wi-Fi automatically, making it the ideal solution in densely populated urban areas.
Of course, all of it could amount to a huge nothing if there is no power supply to that particular area. Still, this is a fallback idea which is better than nothing, especially when one takes into cosnideration that Internet routers are so commonplace in many countries these days, that even emergency service personnel in medium sized towns such as Darmstadt with a population of just 142,000, are able to take advantage of wireless signals when the situation calls for it.
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