TECHNOBIZ

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.

Researchers 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

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

could handle. This was impacting rescue efforts and their timeliness. To address this gap, researchers at AmritaWNA developed the app to connect survivors and rescuers in dynamic and volatile disaster situations.

Professor Sethuraman Rao, Team Leader of Amrita Center for Wireless Networks & Applications (AmritaWNA) said: “The use of smartphones with data services is widespread, even in rural areas. Even though mobile networks may get disrupted during a disaster, they also get restored quickly. Phone lines may get busy but the data network stays resilient. In disaster situations, pinpointing locations of survivors is the key. In the AmritaKripa app, location data is picked up automatically based on user location using real-time GPS data. Users can also enter data to the nearest landmark location, and the app has the capability to automatically identify the user’s location. By building a robust, durable suite of applications that can be readily deployed in these situations, Amrita seeks to improve the effectiveness, traceability and scalability of such efforts.”

Key features

Ability to request for rescue, medical help, supplies such as food, clothing,

INFO

medicines, shelter, and services such as water, electricity, telephone services, etc. This feature can be used by disaster survivors and relief-camp coordinators. Ability to offer rescue, medical help, supplies such as food, clothing, medicines, services and shelter. This can be used by the relief providers — individuals, organizations and the government.

Ability to report people missing, people found orphaned, either conscious or unconscious, or dead.

“Within a few hours after the launch, we started to see a lot of activity,” said Mr. Ramesh Guntha, Group Lead, Amrita WNA. “App users were able to log in and enter their information, which resulted in the ability for call centres, including our own 24x7 Compassionate Kerala

AMRITA VISHWA VIDYAPEETHAM

Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham is a multicampus, multi-disciplinary research institution that has been ranked among the best universities in India by NIRF, Times Higher Education, QS, etc. The 2018 NIRF Ranking has judged it the eighth best university in India. Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham is spread across six campuses in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Haryana (coming soon) with headquarters at Coimbatore. It has more than 18,000 students, more than 1,800 faculty, more than 200 academic programmes, 5200+ Scopusindexed publications, 33,000 citations and Rs. 250 crores in research funding. World-renowned humanitarian and spiritual leader Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi is the founder and Chancellor, who has encouraged the university’s R&D departments to focus on developing technologies for uplifting the poor and the needy. In the past few years, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham has become known for its work in gender equality, disaster management and sanitation outreach. For more information: www. amrita.edu/

call centre at the Amritapuri campus, to coordinate the rescue-and-relief efforts in the state. This app is useful in coordinating efforts for large-scaledistributed operations by collating and processing multiple requests from multiple geographical locations in realtime. The app provides a platform for survivors, volunteers, rescue workers and administrators to collaboratively work in an effective and timely manner to achieve optimal response.” Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham and its parent organisation, the Mata Amritanandamayi Math, have been in the forefront of early disaster warning, disaster management and disaster relief. During and after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, Amrita demonstrated exemplary work in rescue, relief and rehabilitation efforts, such as building more than 6,000 homes, providing vocational training through haptic technologies, providing free medical care through telemedicine units, and providing trauma therapy to hundreds of children. Amrita is also conducting research on the use of computer vision algorithms to estimate depth of flood waters based on photos taken from the field.

AmritaKripa, is now available for free download at Google Play Store.