ResearchKiosk Software at Disaster Sites - Linux to the rescue!
Twenty years ago, the Internet was the domain of geeks; today it is considered a utility as essential as having a phone. In times of mass disaster such as a hurricane or tsunami, the aftermath of the devastating chaos can leave many stranded and cut off from their primary means of communicating with the outside world. Far from being a luxury, computer communication can be essential in co-ordinating disaster-relief team efforts, finding news, tracking the path of the storm graphically, and most important to the victims, finding lost loved ones quickly.
The need was first seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. As huge numbers of survivors unable to go home showed up scattered in towns all around the affected area, many found themselves in need of getting online to meet their daily needs in getting their families reunited and pulling their lives back together. The honor of finding the solution goes to one Steve Hargadon, who already was in the business of setting up Linux thin clients for schools, libraries, and businesses through his company Technology Rescue. It was Steve Hargadon who showed up at the disaster site with Linux disks in hand, offering to set up easy and secure thin clients to facilitate disaster communications. And for that, he just may go down in history as the Henry Ford of affordable, secure Internet utilization.
For those of you just tuning in, a thin client is a live CD that contains an operating system and all the programs to run on it ready to go. To run it, you simply put the CD in and reboot the computer. Thin clients are designed to run on any kind of PC computer at all - even the ones that are ten to fifteen years old or more. No hard drive is required. When you're done, simply remove the CD and reboot - it's back like it was with no trace. The beauty of this is that it is the ultimate secure system - a virus cannot possibly write to a CD, which is factory-burned already with all the permanent data it needs. No record can be kept of what goes on while the thin client is running, and hence the privacy of the user is assured. And since it runs Linux with Firefox for the browser, it is reliable and efficient; it never crashes or freezes. The address for the central communications website and other emergency sites can be burned into the CD so it's available instantly from Firefox's bookmarks - nobody has to waste precious time searching to find out where to go.
Since the idea was born after hurricane Katrina, the system has been re-deployed throughout the world wherever disasters strike; most recently, the Boxing Day tsunami, hurricane Rita, and cyclone Larry. New websites have sprung up at sites such as publicwebstations.com and livekiosk.com which now act as permanent resource sites for setting up communications for disaster victims. Disaster victims have repeatedly expressed tearful gratitude at being able to quickly locate their spouses, children, siblings, and loved ones.
But moreover, the world's attention has been drawn to the quality of Linux thin clients. Organizations and businesses have expressed a desire for these simple and secure thin client web stations in non-emergency contexts, because they can save thousands of dollars in computing expenses. The future may show a standard usage for this new kind of Internet access as a standard fixture, and not just for emergencies. Just another case of necessity being the mother of invention.