MARIUS: Send emergency text messages from the sky

Link: Emergency SMS from a Helicopter

The European Commission has selected a project called MARIUS which enables the dissemination to the inhabitants of a stricken zone of SMS alerts thanks to a helicopter equipped with a mini-mobile network.

Thanks to that technology, the rescue teams will be able to send SMS even on a zone where the mobile network is off and then will be able to send information which will facilitate rescues and save more lives.

The “Mobile Autonomous Reactive Information System for Urgency Situations” or MARIUS is a project aiming at developing a pre-operational autonomous Command Post which can be deployed very quickly to manage every type of crisis.

This is pure genius. I reckon it could be extremely useful for a whole load of different circumstances. Fantastic.

I wonder exactly how it works? If you’re currently using Orange, and there’s a disaster, but your phone is *still* subscribed to Orange (because, let’s say, the Orange transmitter is uneffected), would you still get the text message?