Kobe's Lesson: Dial 711 for “Open” Emergency Communications
Eli M. Noam, Harumasa Sato · Science · 1996
The 1995 earthquake that devastated Kobe, Japan, showed that conventional top-down emergency communications sytems—even those with satellite connections—can easily fail. Immediately after the quake, however, citizens began to contribute information to a computer bulletin board system, which quickly became a trustworthy alternative to official information. The Kobe experience suggests that an open-access emergency communctions system could be designed that would allow such citizen input not only from computer terminals but also by telephone.