August 4th, 2005
Avaya's IP solution to nuke waste accident risk
Fellow VoIP blogger and TMCnet President Rich Tehrani is at his company’s VoIP Developer Conference in San Francisco.
Last night, he put up a fascinating blog entry that he titled Avaya Touts Just In Time Communications.
Rich recounts a session yesterday in which IP telephony solutions provider Avaya’s director of application enablement services Scott McKechnie talked about an IP-enabled application Avaya built for crisis management in nuclear waste transport.
You’re talking nuclear waste transport accident, you are talkin’ trouble. Not a nuke bomb trouble- but I should point out that it was 60 years ago Saturday that residents of Hiroshima experienced the ultimate dimension of nuclear harm.
"He (McKechnie) gave an amazing example of an application they built for a railroad hauling nuclear waste across the country," Rich writes. "At every stop in every small town the police have to block off the railroad tracks to ensure there is no car accident with the trains carrying waste.
"Avaya worked with the railroad company and integrated a system that merged the company’s GPS receivers in the trains to a communications system that automatically calls the sheriff in each town ahead of schedule to tell them that they need to protect the railroad crossing," Rich adds. "The sheriff’s office has to press a button to signify they understand the message.
In case of derailment, the system "automatically launches a conference with the appropriate people, " Rich explains, "notifies emergency services and does whatever else is needed."
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
