Puerto Rico Lures Tech Developers As Hurricane Season Looms

In dark and isolating days after Hurricane Maria, people across Puerto Rico invented new ways to communicate: Elderly couples in need of food or water would raise a flag at ir home. Neighbors created amateur security systems, banging on pots for a minute each night to mark start of a curfew after which any human ise would be considered a call for help.

With telephone service blown away by Category 4 hurricane, goverr took to only rio station still operating and asked listeners to tell mayors of all 78 municipalities to drive to capital and update authorities about ir needs in person. Access to devastated areas was impossible, and police, firefighters and emergency responders were unable to talk to each or for days.

“ biggest crisis after Maria was communication,” said Nazario Lugo, president of Puerto Rico’s Association of Emergency Manrs. “That unleashed an endless number of problems.”

w several groups of young tech developers are trying to prevent that from happening next time a major disaster strikes. y are roving Puerto Rico with laptops, transmitters and drones to test new systems that could help survivors communicate with authorities and speed up response times to minimize number of deaths.

Puerto Rico is considered an ideal site to test and refine se inventions due to Sept. 20, 2017, storm and its aftermath that claimed an estimated 2,975 lives. Techlogy is also lagging on an island where police and firefighters lack an interoperable system to communicate with each or.

One team of developers backed by IBM is sticking transmitters to trees with Velcro as part of a hardware and software system y invented called Project OWL, which stands for Organization, Whereabouts, and Logistics. It won a $200,000 prize at a Call for Code competition late last year in which 100,000 developers from 156 nations participated — an event focused on natural disaster preparedness and relief.

“We were thinking, ‘How can we make this in a way so stupidly simple to be used that you don’t even have to think about it?’” said Project OWL team leer Bryan Kuse. “It’s really hard to tell people who have been through a disaster, ‘Downlo this app or go to this website.’ t gonna happen.”

tiny transmitter boxes emit a low-frequency Wi-Fi connection that users can link to via smartphones. Once connected, a pop-up box in English and Spanish automatically appears and people can enter information including name, location, number of pets, medical needs and hazards such as fallen trees, downed power lines, fires or blocked ros.

information is relayed back through network and eventually to emergency officials.

team recently me its first large-area test of system in rthwest coastal town of Isabela. One group got into a car and stopped repeatedly to affix transmitters around a 1 square-mile area while ar group led by Kuse stayed at home base, which that day consisted of roof of a barbecue joint that provided eugh height to collect signals. Furr boosting signal were two large cream-colored balloons bought at Party City fitted with a transmitter.

transmitters are powered by batteries and maybe eventually solar power, and team envisions system working in places from U.S. mainland to India to Japan.

Every couple of minutes, Kuse’s computer dinged with messs that included names, location and details of roving group that popped up on a map with messs such as “Help me please!” and “NEED WATER!!!” team later met with members of a local Boys and Girls Club to introduce techlogy to young users in hopes y could teach and share it with ir neighbors.

Isabela’s mayor, Carlos Delgo, said he was impressed by project and wishes it was invented before Maria shredded island’s telecommunications system. He lamented how city officials h to walk to dozens of neighborhoods to learn about people’s needs after hurricane, which delayed delivery of food, water and medicine.

“It was a bit like going back to start of humanity: everything was done on foot,” he said.

Ar project is led by Pedro Cruz, a self-taught Puerto Rican tech developer who recently won a local hackathon with a project called DroneAid.

He recalled seeing messs such as “SOS” and “WE NEED FOOD” scrawled in big letters on ros so y could be seen from air after Maria. He envisions before a storm giving people 5-foot-long mats with standardized symbols indicating needs — such as food, water or medical care — that could be spre out on flat surfaces. Programmed drones could fly overhe, re symbols and process m into data about needs and locations for emergency responders.

idea came to him when he was physically unable to reach his grandmor after Maria. He could t communicate with her and worried about her respiratory and heart conditions. So he flew his drone to her house, and she waved through window.

“She heard drone and knew it was me,” Cruz said, ding that his grandmor died two months after Maria from respiratory and cardiac failure at an intensive care unit in a hospital hit by frequent blackouts.

As he continued to fly his drone across Puerto Rico in days and weeks after Maria, he ticed that sometimes food and water were being delivered to neighborhoods that alrey h been supplied, while ors went begging: “re were a lot of duplicated efforts.” He said his system might help avoid that.

Or tech companies have jumped at opportunity to provide connectivity in storm’s aftermath, including Google, which obtained an experimental license from U.S. Federal Communications Commission to provide emergency cellular service through Loon balloons. project helped connect more than 200,000 people and began winding down in March 2018.

However, Lugo, a former emergency manment director for Puerto Rico, warned U.S. territory still needs to strengn and update its communications system before hurricane season starts on June 1. He also stressed that authorities should allow regular citizens and amateur rio operators to participate in that system.

“Communication should t be restricted,” he said, ding that government needs to embrace new techlogy. “We’re still far behind.”

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