Protection of the vulnerable should be the heart of all scientific and technological innovations, Union Minister of Science and Technology and Ocean Development Kapil Sibal said on Monday. He was speaking after launching the pilot project of Geneva Software Technologies Limited.

“Whenever the Nature surprises us, it is always the poor who get affected, as seen during the tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. When we do a scientific or technological innovation, we have to ensure that it protects the vulnerable. That will truly mark the progress of the country’s march of technology,” he said.

The Minister said the Geneva NDIS would be integrated into Tsunami Early Warning System, set to be operational by September 2007.

Mr. Sibal said that Geneva – NDIS was both a remarkable technological achievement and a cause conceived for the public good.

The Geneva – NDIS is a solution developed to alert people about potential disasters through SMS, Voice and wireless Public Address Systems in less than a minute according to the promoters.

The alert message is fed into the system from the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) units in New Delhi or Chennai, from where the message is sent to the Geneva server in Bangalore.

Later, the message gets translated to 14 Indian languages along with dynamically generated voice.

While the language messages are sent to mobile phones in languages based on the location, the voice is streamed as outbound called. As the third output from the system, the voice is also sent to wireless Public Alert Systems for direct audio alerts.

The facility was on Monday kicked off at the Geneva campus, where links to Chennai and Nagapattinam – sites chosen for the pilot stages – were demonstrated. “The wireless Public Address Systems are stand-alone systems which can be operated with solar power. The total cost of the project comes to around Rs. 4 crore, of which 3.5 crore has come from the Ministry of Science and Technology,” said Mr. R. Amar Singh, Director – Marketing, Geneva.

The product took six months to reach its operational stage, has already found takers in countries like Singapore, Canada, South Africa and Kenya, the promoters said. BSNL has provided the bandwidth for the system.

Mr. T. Murali Krishna Reddy, MD – Geneva, Prof V. S. Ramamurthy, Secretary – Department of Science and Technology, Mr. H. T. Sangliana, MP and Mr. A. Krishnappa, MLA were present.