technobiz
AMRITA’S DISASTER MANAGEMENT APP An app designed by researchers of Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham for disaster management has helped locate, rescue and provide relief to more than 12,000 people stranded in floods all over Kerala, potentially saving dozens of lives.
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BRAND KERALA
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esearchers at the Amrita Center for Wireless Networks & Applications (AmritaWNA) customized the app, called AmritaKripa, to specifically cater to the recent Kerala floods once news hit of the devastating situation in Kuttanad in Alappuzha District. Within a few days of the app’s launch, over 3,000 entries were recorded in real-time, which helped to locate, rescue and provide relief to more than 12,000 people in all districts of the state. There were also more than 500 entries from people willing to provide reliefand-rescue services. The app was used in tandem with the “Amrita Help Line” set up by students and faculty volunteers at the university’s Amritapuri campus. AmritaKripa is a high-performance, multilingual, user-friendly mobile and Web application for the effective and timely management of rescue, relief and rehabilitation efforts towards the management of any kind of disaster such as earthquakes, floods, hurricanes
SEPTEMBER 2018
and tsunamis. It is available for free at Google Play Store. According to Amrita officials, the app was developed keeping in mind the various needs of the end users, including disaster survivors, relief providers, relief-camp coordinators, rescue teams and administrators. Once registered, app users can select options such as “rescue me now,” “request medical,” “request supplies” and “offer supplies.” Currently the app works in Malayalam and English, but AmritaWNA will continue to add languages, with the goal of making AmritaKripa an app that can be used by anyone, anywhere in the world. Dr. Maneesha Sudheer, Director of the Amrita Center for Wireless Networks & Applications (AmritaWNA), said: “Under the guidance of our Chancellor, Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, researchers at Amrita are focussed on delivering solutions that directly benefit the people. This is yet another testimony to that commitment. By directly linking the helpseekers and providers in a post-disaster environment using smartphones and the Internet, we are helping expedite the relief-and-rescue operations and improve their effectiveness by making them targeted at the individual level. We want this to be a worldwide app. The Kerala floods were its first deployment, but it is ready to be used in future disasters as well.” During rescue scenarios, Amrita researchers found that people who required help were not always able to reach helpline numbers due to the limited number of parallel calls that helplines
