A community of survivors have established base camp, and the community is humming with tasks being done, enjoying life as best as possible, and the community needs to communicate. There are several ways of doing this, and mesh network text messages and radios are the best ways. So do you need someone to handle dispatch? It depends.
If you have enough people in your community, and someone is capable of managing communications but not so capable of doing physical tasks, that person would be the best candidate for dispatch. What the dispatcher does is quite important. Here are some things that a dispatcher will do.
- Listen for community communications for any assistance or help
- Group message to the entire community through mesh network and radio
- Relay messages via radio or from one format to another (someone from radio to a mesh network device)
- Frequent check on people outside of community area (this can be hourly but staggered)
- Emergency communications
Important note for the community is that a time should be established for outings and return. When I go out to a large camp outing is no one leaves before 8:00AM (except maybe for people out to go fishing), and everyone must return before dusk (usually 5:00-6:00PM). Dispatchers will focus on the radio and mesh comms during the entire time people are out of the community area.
