#HumanitarianTech

[sedahewitt]

How Mobile Satellite Access Is Changing Disaster Response

By Seda Hewitt

When disaster strikes, it doesn’t always look like it does in the news footage. Sometimes it’s slow—like floodwaters rising inch by inch. Other times it’s sudden—a blackout, a landslide, a wildfire overtaking a dry hillside in minutes. But one thing is nearly always true: communications fail before anything else does.

Cell towers collapse. Fiber gets severed. Even battery-powered radios go dark once the infrastructure behind them disappears.

And that’s where space quietly steps in.

Over the last few years, mobile satellite access—particularly via small, responsive satellites—has begun reshaping how emergency teams respond. It's not perfect. It's not fast everywhere yet. But it’s changing the baseline. It’s creating resilience where there was none.

Communications as the First Casualty

Let’s start with the obvious: without communication, coordination unravels.

During wildfires in the western United States, entire regions have gone dark for hours, even days. In remote Pacific islands hit by cyclones, emergency calls become impossible within minutes. And in earthquake zones, even knowing who’s alive—or where they are—can take precious days.

For first responders, aid workers, and government agencies, the absence of a basic signal slows everything down. It delays rescue. It fragments supply chains. It turns already fragile moments into full-blown chaos.

But increasingly, low-Earth orbit satellites are offering a workaround. Especially when paired with compact, mobile ground receivers.

Small Satellites, Big Reach

In many cases, we're not talking about large, traditional geostationary satellites. Those still play a role, yes. But newer SmallSats, like CubeSats and PocketQubes, offer a different kind of agility.

They're cheaper to launch. They orbit closer to Earth, which reduces signal lag. And with enough of them—working in constellations—they can offer frequent revisit times over disaster-prone areas.

What does that mean, practically?

Picture this: a regional health coordinator in a flood-affected village pulls out a ruggedized handheld device. No cell towers for 100 km. But with satellite access, they ping a message. A short one—just coordinates and status. The message travels upward, then down to a command center in another country. That loop might only take 3–5 minutes.

Not instant. But not a blackout either.

Making It Mobile

Mobility matters here. One of the biggest innovations isn’t just space-based—it’s how we access it.

Interstellar Communication Holdings Inc., based in the United States, has focused heavily on this idea: enabling lightweight, field-deployable devices to link directly with satellites in orbit. No trucks. No dish setups. Just a small piece of equipment, running on solar or battery, doing work where it’s needed most.

And this isn’t theoretical. In our HADES‑ICM mission, launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9, we tested real-time beacon transmission and remote configurability in-orbit. Those lessons are now shaping how small payloads can deliver usable comms infrastructure in future disaster-response kits.

Imagine sending up a shoebox-sized satellite specifically to cover a high-risk zone during hurricane season. Or having one that activates only when a seismic event is detected. This isn’t science fiction. It’s slowly becoming protocol.

Human Layers in a Technical System

All of this, though, still depends on people. Tools are great. But the real success of satellite-based disaster response lies in training, trust, and timing.

Take the Philippines, for instance—a country regularly battered by typhoons. Government responders now include satellite message relays in their drills. Local NGOs distribute simple terminals in rural villages. It’s not just about reacting; it’s about building communication literacy before disaster hits.

The more people are trained to use these systems, the more seamless they become under pressure.

A Global Conversation on Innovation

This kind of work doesn't happen in a vacuum. It’s part of a broader conversation about innovation, resilience, and cross-border collaboration.

That’s why our team at Interstellar Communication Holdings Inc. is honored to be a nominee for the 2025 Go Global Awards, held in London this November and hosted by the International Trade Council.

But it’s not just an awards show. It’s something bigger: a gathering of global businesses, each trying to solve hard problems in smarter ways. Disaster response is one of those hard problems. And mobile satellite access, though still evolving, is beginning to offer something meaningful.

An emergency connection. A window to the outside. A signal that someone’s there.

The Path Forward

We’re not claiming satellites will solve everything. They won’t.

Bandwidth remains limited. Cloud cover still affects optical sensors. And no system is immune to failure. But when terrestrial options collapse—as they so often do—satellite access becomes a lifeline. Quietly. Reliably. Invisibly.

That’s the role it’s stepping into now.

And as costs fall, payloads shrink, and apps improve, we may soon reach a point where satellite connectivity is not the backup system—but the default.

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"He Turned a Toy Into a Weapon Against Landmines"

[the-compiler]

What do people working in the humanitarian sector think of drones?

Drones in Humanitarian Action - A survey on perceptions and applications Published September 2016

The Swiss Foundation for Mine Action (FSD) has released a survey on how drones are viewed by people in the humanitarian sector - the first of its kind. It’s part of a wider initiative by the European Commission to study the use of drones in humanitarian crises.

Only one in ten respondents had actual experience with drones in humanitarian work. Those who had experienced them were more likely to see them as a good thing.

Overall, the majority (61%) of respondents viewed the use of drones in humanitarian work positively. The key benefit cited was that drones can provide faster, better access in dangerous situations or hard-to-reach areas. Interestingly, though, opinions were split (40% to 41%) on whether drones should be used in conflict settings.

Many emphasised that drones can improve – but not replace – the work of ground teams.

A significant minority (22%) viewed the use of drones unfavourably for three main reasons:

The technology creates distance between beneficiaries and aid workers.

Potential association with military applications.

Lack of added value delivered by the use of drones.

Most respondents agreed that clear guidance and rules for using drones in humanitarian work was needed, as well as better coordination and experience with using the technology. This is vital to ensure that the data collected with drones is handled safely and responsibly by humanitarian organisations. This was summed up well by one respondent:

“I have no doubt that there’s potential in the use of drones for humanitarian activities [but] basically, I don’t trust the humanitarian industry to use them responsibly at this point in time.”

[the-compiler]

Mapping and Comparing Responsible Data Approaches

Download paper here [PDF]

by Jos Berens, Ulrich Mans, and Stefaan Verhulst

This paper, released in July 2016, looks at the scope and reach of various policies which address elements of responsible data. Interestingly, only one of the 17 policies chosen for inclusion here is actually labelled as a “responsible data policy” (from Oxfam) - the others are labelled as addressing Data Protection, Privacy, or Data Sharing. 

The paper goes through various elements of these policies, looking at similarities and differences between them. The takeaways from this analysis centre around implementation of policies (leadership, accountability, feedback loops), accessibility (clear language), and learning (what works, what doesn’t, and iterating.) 

The paper seems to be aimed at those working in the humanitarian space rather than more broadly, but has useful and interesting lessons for people looking at creating privacy/data sharing policies. 

[the-compiler]

Mapping Refugee Media Journeys

The "Mapping Refugee Media Journeys" project, by the Open University and France Médias Monde, looks at how Syrian and Iraqi refugees use technology and suggests ways of using this to help the most vulnerable refugees.

It’s based on interviews with more than 50 Syrian and Iraqi refugees in France and the UK, analysis of refugee social networks (Facebook and Twitter), and interviews with the European Commission, international media and NGOs.

Here are some of the key points we picked out:

Unsurprisingly, responsible data was a big concern: 

Refugees will not share personal information online, preferring to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, surveillance, detention and/ or deportation. 

The digital tools and resources that help, guide and comfort refugees are also used to exploit, monitor and track them.

For example, researchers found that interviewees followed news on Whatsapp mainly because they trusted that the service (unlike Twitter and Facebook) wasn’t under surveillance.

Refugees also rarely used resources produced by national or state­‐funded organisations, and were often driven towards “unofficial, potentially dangerous and exploitative resources” as a result. 

The report gives practical recommendations to deal with this (informed by Aspiration Tech guidelines and Oxfam’s Responsible Data policy, among others). They include designing tools that don’t asking refugees to disclose any information about themselves, and recommending that any information sources  include warnings about the known risks of financial exploitation by taxi/private drivers or smuggling networks.

Highlighting the daily changing nature of the situation in border areas, the researchers criticised the plethora of hackathons to create tools, saying:

any resource must be frequently updated in order to avoid it doing more harm than good with misinformation....there is a real danger that quick tech fix initiatives are not viable or sustainable. A sustainable resource of the kind that international news organisations might provide would offer a more viable alternative.

They argue that any digital outreach project should be “highly personal” and ensure that "trusted individuals” should have a continuous physical and digital presence at key sites. In particular, they recommend drawing on sustainable existing networks (such as by encouraging refugees to ask for help and counseling from local NGO staff) and understanding shifting local conditions on­‐the­‐ground experience. They also found that, despite the range of tools available, there was little content available in key areas, notably "relevant high quality legal information...and sources of information about language learning facilities”.

Download paper here

[the-compiler]

Applying Humanitarian Principles to Current Uses of Information Communication Technologies

This paper by Nathaniel Raymond and Brittany Card argues that we need minimum standards for mobile network access and coverage, providing ICT services for vulnerable people, providing early warning to people at risk, involving communities in ICT programme design, and assessing the data accessibility needs of particular populations.

Download paper

The goal of this paper is to identify and address current gaps, challenges and opportunities that face the humanitarian sector as it seeks to apply traditional humanitarian principles to the increasingly central role information communication technologies (ICTs) play in 21st Century humanitarian operations. While much has been written about the roles ICTs may play in support of humanitarian action, there is an absence of literature addressing how core humanitarian principles should guide, limit, and shape the use of these technologies in practice.