EventWeb and saving lives

The Virginia tech incidence is raising many questions.  One of them — a very important one — is why can we not have an infra structure to propagate information more rapidly in such situation and warn people about the potential danger?  If the information about this event could be propagated in time in the areas that could be affected, then many lives could be saved.  We have such a powerful wireless infrastructure available now and people use it for sharing all kind of trivial information.  But we don’t have any infrastructure for sharing such information with everybody who could be in the area that could be affected.

Given all pervasive computing technology, cameras being placed everywhere, and the powerful wireless infrastructure, it should be possible to build such structures easily along the direction of creating the EventWeb structure.  In such a structure a horrific incidence or any emergency situation could be detected using cameras and microphones or could be entered manually and this could be immediately broadcast on phones to everybody in the area that could be affected. All specific people who should be informed could be informed easily and they could take appropriate actions.

 It is clear that many emergency situations are really events that should be notified to relevant people and proper warnings and remedial actions should be conveyed timely.  Considering the emerging sensor infrastructure, and already available wireless technology it should be feasible to do this in very near future. All it needs is support from correct organizations to build such infrastructure.