After a shipwreck people wear life vest and the available telecommunication systems for rescue operations offer, in the best case, just approximate localization of relicts or lifeboats. A communication system tailored to provide a reliable and real time updated map of positions and health conditions of floating people can improve efficiency of rescue operation. The aim of the SMARTSOS system is to introduce the capability for each person, equipped with GPS receiver and health sensors, to send information at low cost to a remote location, maximizing delivery probability and quality of service, ensuring also data integrity. Each life vest will be equipped with a terminal able to exchange data only with other life vest terminals; a subset of all life vests (masters) will be equipped also with very small Low Earth Orbit (LEO) 01 GEO satellite terminal to provide long range connectivity; the space segment and the remote service center will complete the architecture. To maximize message delivery probability and to limit power we propose a joint exploitation of linear Network Coding and a store-And-forward mechanism. Each node overhears broadcast communications of neighbors, gathers messages and code them with its own message to re- broadcast the result with an uucoded copy of its message. On the other side, the rescue team will get the position grid and health information of shipwrecked people, planning operations accordingly. The paper describes the system architecture and a project that will include the design of the Network Coding scheme and its validation via simulations and trials with prototypes.