Emergency smartphone technology wins big prize

An emergency smartphone communications system developed at Flinders University has won a prestigious international award for post-disaster relief work in the Pacific.

Dr Paul Gardner-Stephen’s mobile phone system, which can operate without mobile phone towers, is one of five winners in the Pacific Humanitarian Challenge, announced by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.

The challenge, which attracted 129 applications from 20 countries, aims to acknowledge and develop outstanding efforts to improve faster, cheaper and more effective aid responses to Pacific nations.

In collaboration with New Zealand Red Cross and based on the Serval Project at Flinders, the free Android mobile phone system, called Serval Mesh, provides cellular-like communications in the absence of cellular signal or internet.

Dr Gardner-Stephen said the $279,000 prize will be put to good use.

“The award funding will be used to make technical improvements so that the Serval Mesh is even easier to use,” said Dr Gardner-Stephen.

“In conjunction with the NZ Red Cross, and with support from our collaborators in the German NICER project and trials in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary in South Australia’s outback, we will extend our testing to a pilot in the Pacific, ahead of the first large-scale rollout of Serval in a post-disaster situation in the Pacific.”

Serval Mesh is a software suite enabling off-the-shelf Android phones to perform infrastructure-free, peer-to-peer voice, text and data services. To improve the range of the Mesh communications, the software has also been integrated with optional, pocket-sized, inexpensive radio hardware units called Serval Mesh Extenders.

The Serval Mesh software is free to download and its mesh network is simple and inexpensive to deploy, which is important when responding to disasters.

Image caption: Dr Gardner-Stephen testing the remote communications system at Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary in South Australia’s Flinders Ranges. Image courtesy of Flinders University.