Safety Maps & planning for the unplannable

Safety Maps is a nice low-fi concept from Do Projects. The site enables you to create a printable, wallet-sized map giving directions to a meeting point in cases of emergency. You give these maps to friend and family, put them on your fridge, even upload them to your facebook profile (if skynet hasn't taken over of course) so that if something nasty happens nearby people will know where to look for you.

I love the idea of this, but what I'd love even more was for the responsibility of maintaining the system to lie with someone (or something) else. I just don't trust myself (or most of my social network, apart from the super paranoid few) to keep the system updated as to where I'm likely to be if disaster struck or where my preferred safe spot would be. I know that relying on electronic devices in times of crisis raises a whole other set of issues (power, network, security), but I'd love to be able to input a few designated safe spots around the city, which would then be uploaded to the cloud. Disaster strikes, the network goes down (hopefully only locally, if it's nationally then we're pretty much all screwed), my device uses cached maps to direct me to my nearest safe spot whilst the cloud notifies my loved ones of my last known position as well as where I'm most likely to be heading. Networks of safe spots could be calculated on-the-fly to create 'travel maps' to reunite you with chosen contacts (all off-line, of course).

Designing for post-apocalypic futures, now that's interesting...