Asha is an enquiry into the possibility of using mobile phones and Bluetooth to create improvised communication networks in situations where phone and internet fail. Designed as an iPhone application, Asha helps reunite families and loved ones torn apart by disasters and conflict, through simple relay-based networks using humans and cell phones to carry tiny packages of information – like a name cross-referenced with a location/time stamp.
Using simple Bluetooth technology, Asha allows rescue workers to automatically collect names and locations of people they meet during their normal routines and sync them across platforms. Meeting a person who is missing a loved one, the resulting database can be searched – revealing where and when the loved one was in the vicinity of an Asha equipped phone.
Asha – reuniting refugees across the world from Ulrik Andersen Hogrebe on Vimeo.