When the British government delivered emergency aid to people fleeing Islamic militants in northern Iraq last month, one of its primary concerns was how the refugees might charge their mobile phones.
Alongside tents and drinking water, RAF planes dropped more than 1,000 solar-powered lanterns attached to chargers for all types of mobile handsets to the stranded members of the Yazidi religious community below.
It is the first time the lanterns have been airdropped in such a relief effort, but humanitarian workers say it is part of growing efforts to develop technology designed to make a difference in disaster zones.
In 2010, Dr Paul Gardner-Stephen, a computer systems researcher at Flinders University in Australia, was driving to work in his car when he first heard radio reports of the devastation of the Haiti earthquake, more than 10,000 miles away.
With roads blocked, infrastructure reduced to rubble and mobile networks down, he realised something needed to be done, and quickly.
"You typically have about three days to restore the communications before the bad people realise the good people aren't in control any more," he says.
His solution was to develop the technology that allows mobile phones to communicate directly with each other even where there is no network coverage, or when mobile masts have been knocked out of action - a system known as "mesh networking".
His Serval Project work means users can send text messages, make calls and send files to other users nearby, creating a mobile network through a web of users.
It is just one example of the dozens of technologies developed in the wake of Haiti to help relief efforts in disaster zones.
Another project born out of the Haiti disaster was the Trilogy Emergency Relief Application (Tera), a mass text messaging programme now being rolled out by the Red Cross in 40 countries around the world.
Dr Paul Gardner-Stephen Dr Paul Gardner-Stephen is part of a growing band of researchers working on technological solutions for disaster relief efforts
It allows aid workers to navigate a disaster-hit country from a computer screen, identify all the mobile phones being used in a given area, and blast them all with urgent 140-character updates with a click of a button.
It was first developed in Haiti with the help of local mobile network operators, allowing messages with advice on water sanitation and medical aid to be distributed to millions of people across the Caribbean country.
"I don't know of any other means of communication where you could reach that many people, that quickly and that directly," says Sharon Reader, a communications adviser for the International Red Cross currently working on setting up the Tera system in east Africa.
"It's not like the radio when someone has to be switched on and listening. It's a buzz in their pocket and they're going to be able to see that information immediately."
She says the sheer volume of mobile phones now sold in developing countries makes text messaging the ideal way to communicate.
Global mobile subscriptions are expected to reach seven billion this year according to the UN, with developing countries in Africa and Asia seeing the fastest growth.
The Tera project also allows disaster victims to send messages back to aid agencies, telling them where they are and what they most urgently need.
That makes it similar to other recently developed applications designed to harvest the huge volumes of information generated in the immediate aftermath of a sudden-onset disaster, like a war or earthquake.
The Ushahidi project was used in Haiti to crowd source information from the Haitain population, using social media sources like Twitter and Facebook alongside text messages, with information visualised on an online map for humanitarian agencies to use.
"There has been a huge shift in the aid world in seeing people who are affected by a crisis not as victims but as people who have the capacity to look after themselves."
that's what I call thinking outside the BOX...
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