IT and disasters

The recent events on Haiti made me remember what happened in Colombia, my home country, in 1994. There was an earthquake that devastated the city of Armenia. At that time I was working as an IT project manager and it stroke me that despite the increasing popularity of geographical information systems (GIS), there was very little effort in putting this technology to the service of disaster recovery and city regeneration. More than 10 years on, Armenia is now back on its feet, thanks to a collective effort, sustained investment and more importantly, the hard work of its people.

Last Friday (January 15th 2010) when beginning a seminar I then raised the same issue: Where are the IT experts when it comes to disasters? A few hours later I got an email from ICT4D, a collective umbrella organisation. One of the participant organisations had created a wiki with videos, photos and other items from Haiti. You can see it at http://inventory.ict4peace.org/Haiti+Earthquake+-+January+2010

Today (6 days after the earthquake) I have seen the following links that indicate that there are many people whose knowledge and software or technology products could be used to support the work on the ground in Haiti.

• http://wiki.crisiscommons.org/index.php?title=.php&title=Haiti/2010_Earthquake This is a wiki that has a number of entries with people who could contribute with software or skills; there are already organizations offering help in locating victims, mapping the different efforts that are being undertaken, and organizing events to 'think of' new possibilities. One of this events is called crisis camp (http://crisiscamphaitiwdc.eventbrite.com/), and will explore how to produce some layers of information that could be available graphically and made accessible through mobile applications. According to CNN, there are other suggestions to be discussed in the event that include:

• Creating an online locator system for families seeking lost loved ones

• Setting up an online communications tool similar to Twitter that would allow relief workers and others to talk with each other in real time

• There is another event called BarCamp, a series of events in different countries, in which possibilities for projects and ideas are discussed freely and without formal agendas. When going through the link, I discovered that these events have / will take place in Africa, Asia and South America among other regions. Interesting. There is one BarCamp scheduled for Bogota, Colombia, on the 27th of February 2010.

• The online locator system (http://www.haitiwelfare.com/) is a database (sponsored by Google) in which you can type names of people with the aim of either giving information about them or asking for information about them.

• Back to the wiki technologies. In November 6 2009 Recently I attended an event called know how now in London (http://www.knowhownow.org.uk/) in which an organisation called apropedia (http://www.appropedia.org/Welcome_to_Appropedia) has developed a wiki to put all information about building simple and sustainable solutions. It gathers such information from all those who have experience on the ground. The idea is to offer these knowledge and in different languages to people, so they could build their own solutions for. An entry I just saw in this repository is called 'building a basic shelter'. Anyone could contribute.

So it seems, technology is there and can be made available to provide information. A key issue is to make information simple, accessible and easy to edit / update. With these and for sure other possibilities, a question that comes to my mind is: do we need some kind of co-ordination mechanism so that people can find easily links to this information? When looking at some of the above links, unless I had them referenced somewhere else, it was not easy to find. Our friends from Google should take notice of this. When it comes to disasters, maybe we need some keywords.

And another question: What about different languages? Unless you know English, you might not know how to look for this information. This seems to reflect what is happening now in the ground: lots of nationalities together, everyone wanting to help, but it seems, there is very little co-ordination. IT guys should try to promote co-ordination and user intake of these technologies /possibilities to help in disasters.