Internet & cell phones, & online volunteers, helping in disasters (not just Haiti)
14:12, 25 January 2010
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Last week, I talked about how micro-blogs, tweets, texts and other technology were spreading misinformation about Haiti and elsewhere. But, ofcourse, Internet technology and online volunteers can help and are helping in Haiti and other disaster areas, so I want to concentrate on those positive examples today, to reaffirm my pro-computer-tech-use street cred.
There are several competing web sites and efforts trying to track people who are alive in Haiti to connect them with family and friends outside of the country (people "lost and found"). So many, in fact, that I'm just going to skip listing them. I hope they will combine those efforts and link to each other, as having so many individual efforts is creating confusion, me thinks.
What's much more interesting, at least to me, are these examples of Internet and phone technologies helping Haiti:
- Haitians needing help can send free text messages from phones on the nation's Digicel service to the number 4636. The text messages are translated, categorized and geotagged by volunteers, including Haitian-American members of the New York City-based Service Employees International Union. This has helped the Red Cross and other relief groups dispatch rescuers, food and water. For more details, see these articles: "The Nuts and Bolts Behind 4636 in Haiti" and "4636: How four little digits are saving lives & reconnecting loved ones in Haiti".
- The OpenStreetMap "crisis mapping" project,where volunteers layer up-to-the-minute data (such as the location of new field hospitals and downed bridges) onto post-quake satellite imagery that companies including GeoEye and DigitalGlobe have made freely available. The digital cartography — informed by everything from Twitter feeds to eyewitness reports — has helped aid workers speed food, water and medicine to where it's needed most.
- A Colombian rescue team leader who uploaded the maps to his crew's portable GPS units before the team arrived on the scene and another volunteer, Talbot Brooks of Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, has been converting the maps into letter-sized documents that aid workers have been printing out before traveling to the quake zone.
- CrisisCamp, which drew some 400 people in six cities including Washington, DC (USA), London, England (UK) and Mountain View, California (USA) to meet-ups where they devised, built and helped refine tools. Among them: a basic Creole-English dictionary for the iPhone.
Also see Handheld computer technologies in community service/volunteering/advocacy, an article I wrote back in October 2001 that talked about more than a dozen similar initiatives. There is nothing new about handheld technology helping in situations like this -- we're just becoming more aware of them!
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