The IEEE modular MOVE disaster relief project

Whenever a natural disaster strikes, IEEE members have wanted to help. To address this commitment to serve humanity, IEEE designed and built a mobile disaster relief vehicle committed to assisting victims of natural disasters. This unit provides short-term communications, computer, and power solutions. While it has performed admirably during natural disasters, it is too large and too expensive to deploy in hundreds of locations worldwide. Many IEEE volunteers have requested a smaller, perhaps even highly portable, version of the vehicle. This “Modular MOVE” model has the benefit of being replicated hundreds of times for deployment by hundreds of IEEE Sections around the world. This paper provides the requirements and initials designs of such a disaster relief device. A modular approach fits the needs for different disaster events in different parts of the world, for example, Caribbean hurricanes, Indian floods, or California earthquakes. IEEE Sections can store these subsystems locally, and then deploy them quickly when needed.