Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird. It's a plane. It's an internet balloon?

For first responders to do their job effectively, they need to be able to communicate with the masses ( in large humanitarian crisis) and amongst themselves for situational awareness. This is the type of help Puerto Rico really needs while trying to recover from hurricane Maria. If a Wi-Fi internet balloon can provide internet to the masses during a time of need, that will definitely lead to saving lives and bringing Puerto Rico back on its feet one small step at a time.

Google is one company that is looking at innovative solutions to help Puerto Rico. Google had a goal to map the world and did just that with Google Maps and Google Earth. Then they thought, why not give everyone the ability to connect to the information highway in rural areas. That is the exact idea behind a project they started called “Project Loon“. This project was started out of Alphabet’s X lab. The X lab is located not too far from the main mountain view Google campus. This highly secretive lab allows Alphabet Lab researchers to work on the company’s forward-thinking disruptive technology projects such as augmented-reality glasses (Google Glass), autonomous cars, and of course Project Loon (balloon-powered Wi-Fi networks).

Just like Elon Musk of Telsa is offering to help Puerto Rico get back on its feet with supplying power, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is looking into supplying Puerto Rico with Wi-Fi balloons.

The ideas are along the right path, the way it is implemented will be the challenge.

One thing is for sure, technology is leading to more innovative solutions to a humanitarian crisis.

Watch this to learn more about Project Loon,

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s an internet balloon?

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