Public Wi-Fi as civil protection infrastructure

Public Wi-Fi directories usually answer where people can connect. A resilience-oriented map should also ask whether a hotspot can remain usable when ordinary communications are disrupted.

Estonia could investigate publicly accessible connectivity at libraries, municipal buildings, transport facilities and other civic locations, taking inspiration from Tokyo’s reuse of existing infrastructure.

Useful attributes include backup-power availability, independent upstream connectivity, public opening hours, accessibility, last verification, and emergency operating arrangements. These should be collected with appropriate operator permission.

Proposed evidence levels: public hotspot (known location), resilience assessed (documented attributes), and emergency-ready (independently verified against a published standard). Ordinary Wi-Fi must never be represented as guaranteed emergency communications.

Potential conversations include municipalities, the Estonian Rescue Board, the Estonian Information System Authority and network operators. Sensitive technical dependencies and vulnerabilities must not be exposed publicly.

Next step: define a small, consent-based pilot and an evidence model before adding emergency-readiness badges to the public map.