A system for smartphones, tablet computers and PCs that can warn students, teachers and school personnel of emergencies is to be developed for the Norwegian Akerhus county. The solution will be built by the Danish ICT service specialist Magenta, using open source components.
The early warning system assists school personnel and the authorities, combining video, audio and maps. The system will also send SMS alerts and other warnings to students, school staff and all relevant organisations.
On Thursday Magenta announced it won the NKR 6 million (about EUR 680,000) public tender for development and delivery of the early warning system. “The solution will help to ensure that a crisis can be handled in the best possible way” Magenta quotes Morten Kjærsgaard, its CEO, as saying. “It will be a challenge, but such solutions can be useful for many others.”
Components that will be used for the system include the CentOS Linux operating system, the Apache web server and the Postgresql database management system. Management and control of the systems will be done using Open APC, and for real time communications Magenta is considering WebRTC.
More opportunities
The ICT firm will also share its own contributions as open source, confirms Kjærsgaard. “Everything we have developed in our 15 years is available as open source - no exceptions. Other companies can reuse it for their own service offerings; that creates more opportunities that benefit us too. Open source is better for our clients too, since they can share the solution with others and will always be able to find support.”
He expects the solutions will be made available under the Mozilla or GNU public licence.
If all goes according to plan, the system will be in use at the end of 2015 or the beginning of 2016.