Mobile technology aids Swedish evacuation

By Thursday morning, almost all Swedish citizens had been evacuated from Lebanon after a gruelling four-day, round-the-clock operation coordinated by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Stockholm.

The Swedish evacuation effort, supported by mobile phone technology, has been held up as a "model of order" by commentators in other countries such as Canada, Australia and the US which, on Thursday, were only beginning their own evacuations.

According to foreign ministry spokeswoman Nina Ersman, text messaging has been a major tool in the Swedish evacuation operation.

Over the course of the last week Swedish citizens were sent a series of five text messages on their mobile devices letting them know what to do. Additional messages informed Swedes to get to a certain hotel at a certain time, depending upon their priority status.

"The GSM technology allows us to do this," said Sjöberg.

The Swedish government also footed the tab for the entire operation. Wow!


http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=4384