Many people have now read the original ARC proposal (see the history of this page). The original ARC proposal has in some ways evolved and in other ways devolved (in order to get a service up and running as soon as possible). This page now reflects the progress made in the development of an ARC service that is both realistic and quick to deploy.
What does ARC do at the moment?
In it's current state, ARC accepts SMS messages from Sri Lanka and Thailand (untested), forwards them to an e-mail list and places them
on a webpage (http://sms.x11.net/arc).
This is a simple system that was developed in a matter of hours as a
proof of concept, but may be useful for some in disaster areas.
What will ARC do in the near future?
The current plan for ARC is to recieve messages from people on the
ground in the affected areas and use human moderators to take actions based on the content of the messages we recieve.
We hope to be able to respond by SMS from within the ARC web
application.
What will ARC do in the distant future?
There is a school of thought that suggests a fully automated system and there is an opposing school of thought that suggests computers shouldn't be allowed to make such important decisions about people's lives.
We could argue this philosophical problem forever, but that wouldn't
help anyone.
We have decided to pursue the human moderator route in order to keep
development times down and we will look into providing a more elegant solution in the future.
What can I do to help?
We need people on the ground in Sri Lanka and Thailand to start posting useful updates for their area, any news that may be of relevence to the outside world will be of great help to the ARC project.
We have yet to get anything from Thailand, so we are looking for contacts over there that can send us some updates and test that SMS routing from Thailand to the UK works.
Examples of real posts are available at http://sms.x11.net/arc/
If you work for a commercial SMS provider and can volunteer an SMS route into an affected country, please contact Dan Lane.
Who is ARC?
Dan Lane - Technical Architect and SMS Specialist
GV - ARC Developer
Taran Rampersad - Project Coordinator
Many of us have day jobs we can't afford to lose so please excuse
us if we are unable to work as quickly as we'd like, if you feel you
have skills we can use please contact Taran Rampersad; comment below or email at 'cnd__AT__knowprose.com'.
This was removed from South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog's Socialtext Wiki since it's an idea that must stand on it's own. It is not a personal agenda - this is just a temporary resting place until we have a neutral collaborative area.
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