What is ARC?

Alert Retrieval Cache. It's a system of collecting, sorting and routing SMS messages for the puposes of alerts and relay communication.

How can a single SMS can save people's lives?

If all the people relevant to that message can receive it, instantaneously. In the following system, the SMS message also contains a way of deciding which recipients are relevant to the message.

Here's a scenario -
Morquendi is a relief worker in Middle Earth, and he runs short of medical supplies, specifically antibiotics. The supplies are needed immediately. He needs to inform someone from his location. He sends out an SMS to ARC, which goes in a format, like

Date    Time           Number              Where       Related to     Major Issue

Jan03   06:53:26   919819107418  Mid earth   Supplies          Medical

Specific Need    Suggested Action

Antibiotics         Dispatch

The Sorter program looks for similar keywords in the cache, as in Morquendi's message. After the program is done sorting, it links this message to all those numbers that are attached to similar attributes as in Morquendi's original message. Then it flashes this message to all these numbers.

Real-time, instantaneous. People in the vicinity, and anyone across the world who is awake, or knows Morquendi, receives this message.

Compare this approach to the CAP approach of disaster response professionals <# on this blog> or to the commercially motivated PINS (Personalized Intelligent Notification Service) used for shark alerts among other things. <# on this blog>

Also consider the opinion of David Cousrey (eWeek) that technology might not provide a positive solution to getting people to react in an appropriate manner <# on this blog>

The three approaches mentioned above all call out for CEP. 

Any viable solution (wide spread and usble for general not just specific purpose) must use the tools of CEP for the event processing --- perhaps with a dose of Bayesian Statistics thrown in for good measure (e.g. one message --- well it may be a false alarm or an indicator of something confined to a very specific locale so raise an alert but don't YELL   ..... while hundreds of messages - either wide spread geographically or from a number of independent sources in a specific locale - are likely an indicator or a large scale emergency ... so raise an ALARM as widely and as loudly as possible... hopefully before the messaging infrastructure at the nexus collapses in the wake of the disaster.....)

Sometimes the situation calls out for getting what Stafford Beer would call an Algerdonic message directly to people that can react NOW .... ignoring the normal communications protocols of the organization/system...