Mobile Phones help target disaster aid

People utilize new technologies everyday, but for most of the time its uses are predictable and social, the article I have chosen to analyse for my ITGS class is about the use of mobile phones to locate and rescue people within disaster scenarios. The most effective example of this was during the Haiti earthquake, people communicate with each other and used GPS tracking to aid rescuers in a more efficient aid operation.

Social Impacts

Mobile devices have become a multipurpose device and with that GPS tracking has been incorporated into the smart phone.Stake holders include those being rescued (victim of the disaster), search teams or aid rescuers but also technology companies that can further improve their smart phones to suit events like this better. The advantages of such systems would be that an easier and more efficient rescue could be performed of victims if their exact location is known but also a major disadvantage would be that nowadays batteries of smart phones can finish quickly as well as how fragile phones have become adding to the unreliability of this method of rescue. Lastly to overcome this problem a new rescue mode could be featured in smart phones that would allow a continuous broadcast of a signal that could be detected and traced back by authorities to locate victims.

Ethical Issues

Responsibility is hard to determine under such circumstances but accountability would fall under those owning a smart phone, companies who are able to track those mobile phones using GPS and also under disaster situations rescue teams. According to the law using GPS tracking without someones acknowledgement of it is inappropriate but within disaster rescue it is justifiable and it should be used by authorities, what we have to be careful with is the use of tracking outside of emergency situations which would be an invasion of someones privacy. The consequences of unauthorized GPS tracking outside disaster situations could perhaps lead people to turn off their GPS tracking system from their phone and consequently stopping them being rescued in a future emergency situation.




Here's the link from the article:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14761144