Greg: How the proposed system routes the messages?

M: GPS information can be used together with naming/DNS services.

Q: It looks like there is a significant additional engineering effort needed to add proposed functions. What are the guarantees that the system will work? It would be difficult to characterize what are the likely benefits, in particular, would you be able to quantify how well your system would work in case of a disaster scenario?

A: It is an important quantification question. One can determine probabilities for different events, especially of larger events happening and calculate possible benefits. For smaller events, such as fires, the calculation is more difficult.

Q: If we re-design these low-bandwidth wireless networks to carry data, wouldn’t they collapse? What policies would prevent that?

A: There are some general policies applicable in each scenario. For example, it is possible to apply specific time slots for rescuers.

Comment: The Catrina was brought as an example, however it wasn’t that bad, was it? Land-line phones worked, pay-phones worked, communication installations in downtown worked. Was it that bad?

Q: Wouldn’t it be more cost effective to deploy specialized nodes after the disaster strikes instead of re-engineering conventional networks? The cost benefits might be huge.

A: Maybe, good idea! The questions is whether the coverage could be as complete as it is in proposed case. There is also advantage edge, because it is difficult to match the coverage of something as ubiquitous as millions of ZigBee devices.