To an extent, I feel good that the Secure Scuttlebutt guys are behind this.
A good direction to develop would be to talk to FEMA and its global counterparts. There is literature on what is needed in disaster. Instead of an insular tech-world development of such a platform having disaster response practitioner insights might be useful.
And agreed, once we have stable hardware and firmware, talking to local disaster response practitioners would be a great way do test deployments and get feedback on the software design and usability. I'm curious about the disaster-related literature you referenced, would love to read it.
A good direction to develop would be to talk to FEMA and its global counterparts. There is literature on what is needed in disaster. Instead of an insular tech-world development of such a platform having disaster response practitioner insights might be useful.