Panic ensued after the two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Runners lucky enough to escape without injury were left with the task of locating loved ones and letting others know that they were uninjured. This is a huge problem for a person who just ran 26 miles. Not only are they tired, but they do not have their cell phones (they leave personal items on the bus). Even if they did have a cell phone they would not have worked because the cell networks crashed due to all of the demand.
The city of Boston established a hotline for people to call. The thought being that the person on the other end of the line would have some information about the person you are looking for. With more than 25,000 runners, this is a huge task. Google set up a people-finder which in all intents and purposes functions like a message board or craigslist posting. Neither of these are good solutions.
I wonder why the RFID race chips were not used to solve this problem. The one item each runner did have with them was their race RFID chip. These chips are used to track runners at checkpoints along the course. With the internet, your friends and family can go to a website or receive text messages to know where you last checked in, at what time, how fast you were running, and when they should expect to see you at mile x / the finish line / etc.
Once the bombs went off race organizers or local businesses should have mobilized their people to provide check-in locations for runners. Surely the Boston Athletic Association could have moved some of their checkpoints (their RFID reader and power supply) to hubs within the city (North and South Stations, Boston Common, etc.). All check-ins would appear online as they had during the race. People searching for friends and family members could visit the same website they had been using all day long to know that 1) Their loved one checked-in after 2:50PM (after the blasts) and 2) They checked in at mile marker 22 with a note that could let the reader know that mile marker 22 was moved to North Station -->i.e., My loved one is OK and was at North Station at 3:20PM. That type of information would be incredibly useful to calm people down and to allow them to locate their friends and family.
I hope this becomes standard protocol should future attacks occur.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio-frequency_identification#Sports
