It’s 2018, and though we have made significant strides in accessibility to cellular devices and telecommunications networks, there remains many areas that lack these services. In this day and age, collaboration has become an integral part of our lives. We are increasingly expected to work within and across various teams to produce the most innovative solutions. This captures the spirit and philosophy of our mission here at HumanITas – creating innovative solutions by collaborating with like-minded but diverse partners, for the purpose of further extending and enriching collaborative opportunities in the most vulnerable areas of the world. 

We have teamed up with Halys, a French company, to create the state-of-the-art Heterogeneous Embedded Ad-hoc Virtual Emergency Network (HEAVEN). This proposed solution is naturally designed to extend existing 3G, 4G, or LTE networks. Backed by an ad-hoc network, the days of needing direct service to communicate, coordinate, and share information are over. HEAVEN provides a synergistic approach to achieving this – allowing for cell phones, smart watches, and sensors on the ground to communicate with drones in the air as well as satellites in space. Combining the latest technologies in communication, computing, and geolocation, we believe HEAVEN has the potential to change the way emergency personnel and other teams in remote locations coordinate their operations. Additionally, the technology is cost-effective, compatible with iOS and Android, and requires no special configuration or set-up.
 

The HEAVEN network has several potential uses in health care, developmental, and humanitarian contexts. Doctors, nurses, and personnel working in a field hospital can collaborate and share information with more ease, no matter the location or accessibility to a network of the hospital. Volunteers and coordinators at refugee camps will have the opportunity to seamlessly carry out their operations and perform their life-saving work more efficiently. For less-developed countries with network connectivity issues, the HEAVEN network can be utilized to facilitate the operations of an infrastructure or building site. How can a country with infrastructure issues and unemployment attempt to boost the economy when they are deprived of the beauty of collaboration? Best of all, the ad-hoc network can support multiple sites up to 100 kilometers apart, further expanding the set of opportunities out there to be seized by working teams. 

In a world with growing disparities between and within countries, it is our duty, as digital humanitarians and citizens of the world, to not only assist those less fortunate, but empower them to act as efficiently as possible independently of direct external assistance. Best represented by the proverb “give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime”, it is our priority to harness the power of technology to extend the realm of opportunities for those working in the least-developed and remote areas with limited access to telecommunication services.