NEED OF ANDROID APPLICATIONS IN DISASTER MANAGEMENT IN NEPAL

The penetration of communication technologies is getting stronger in Nepal. As of February, 2014 telephone users in Nepal has increased to 86.82% and the internet users has increased up to 30.70%. As of February,2014 there are 20961942 users of mobile phones compared to only 828828 users of fixed land lines i.e. 79.11 % of total population use mobile phones compared to only 3.12% landline users. The data shows a vast difference in the number of mobile phone users and landline users is mostly due to convenience, efficiency, and its mobile nature. Comparatively, the introduction of mobile phones is new than fixed landlines, but they are able to penetrate to the users quickly and efficiently. The mobile phones also have wide coverage, and seeing the progress of penetration of mobile phone to the users in Nepal it seems the implementation of mobile phones in a disaster management can be an effective tool. A study in Bangladesh shows that wireless mobile technologies can be effectively used in disaster information management. Based on the study mobile technology may be used to disseminate pre-disaster warnings and post-disaster information and alerts, to receive information about relief needs and requirements.

In modern times, mobile phones are not only intended for sending texts and making calls. These days they offer more than what you had excepted ten years back. They are called smartphones now. A smartphone (or smart phone) is a mobile phone with more advanced computing capability and connectivity than basic feature phones. Early smartphones typically combined the features of a mobile phone with features of other user device, such as a personal digital assistant (PDA), a media player, a digital camera, and/or a GPS navigation unit. Later smartphones have included all of those plus the features of a touchscreen computer, including web browsing, Wi-Fi, and 3rd-party apps. Based on research released by Smartphone Summit, smartphones account for 10% of all cell phone sales and it is still growing and driving more interest among people. One of the reasons for its continued growth is that it provides information valuable to the users. According to Stephenson, people with information all the time feel more secure in disaster times which also allows responders to focus on those  in greatest need of the rescue or services. Smartphones are growing in popularity even in Nepal. Be it students, professionals or retired people, everybody wants to own a smart handset. The main reason for the popularity of smart phones is the addiction of people towards social media sites. People want to use social networks any time it is possible and nowadays every smart phone is equipped with integrated support for social networking sites.

Among all available smartphones in market, smartphones with three major OS are popular in the market. The major market leaders are Apple’s iPhones and Blackberry smartphones and Android smartphones. Android is the open source platform for the cellular telephones and mobile computations. Many other open sourced cell phones have been developed like Moblin, LiMo, Openmoko, FreeRuneer and even Symbian OS but none of them became popular and came in use as Google’s android. Apples’ iPhone, Blackberry and Microsoft’s Windows phone are some closed source platforms which are established and popular among people. These closed platform are popular for their own reasons like portability, design, security and reliability. But the major lack is their OS is not available as open source. This has led to the popularity in the use of android mobile and many vendors such as Motorola, Samsung, Colors, Google phone, Karboon, HTC, Micromax who were using their own operating system has changed to the android operating system. As many vendors use the same operating system, the user can develop a single application which can be used in all the mobile phones. A study shows  Apple's share of the world market was 22.95%, and Android’s 23.81% in May 2012 but by November, 2013, Android was on 43% of all the world’s smartphones while Apple iOS still was on one in five smartphones. The study also shows out of the 227 countries, Android was the market leader in 135 countries, whereas Apple was the market leader in only 38 countries, including the U.S. In this age, mobile applications are the simplest way to reach to people, as every person has the mobile with them. If android platform is used as the application development, maximum number of the users can associated with that application.