KOCHI: The Amrita Centre for Wireless Networks and Applications (AmritaWNA) on Sunday urged the people to use ‘AmritaKripa’ Mobile App in smartphones during Cyclone Fani, which is about to hit Tamil Nadu.Designed by researchers of AmritaWNA, ‘AmritaKripa’ has proved that it can help victims during a disaster and will be able to connect disaster survivors with relief teams in real time.
The same app was instrumental in locating, rescuing and providing relief to 12,000 people stranded during the 2018 Kerala floods.According to Sethuraman Rao, AmritaWNA, this high-performance, multilingual (English, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Hindi to name a few) and user-friendly AmritaKripa app is available on Google Play Store and is used for effective rescue-and-relief management during occurrences of any kind of natural disasters such as cyclones, floods, earthquakes and tsunamis.
‘AmritaKripa’ was developed keeping in mind the various needs of end users, including victims, disaster survivors, relief providers, relief-camp coordinators, rescue teams and administrators. Once registered, the users can request any services like rescue, medical help, supplies and also allows people to provide rescue, supplies and so on during disasters.
This Mobile App uses real-time GPS data to show the location of the nearest rescue-and-relief providers.
Says Dr Maneesha Sudheer, director of AmritaWNA: “Often people who need help are not able to reach the helpline numbers due to the limited number of parallel calls that these lines can handle. This negatively impacts rescue missions, and precious lives are lost.
“The worldwide app directly links the help-seekers and providers in a post-disaster environment using smartphones and the Internet, where the location data is picked up automatically using real-time GPS data. In disaster situations, pinpointing locations of survivors is the key.”