In Part 3, we looked at how the US Military uses shared informational awareness to coordinate millions of troops through collaborative platforms. In this post, we'll look at how mainstream technology—i.e.social media—is being adapted for disasters relief purposes.

Social Technologies for Disaster Response

Founded in 2008, Ushahidi was created as a website platform to track events in the wake of Kenya's controversial presidential election by geolocating first-hand accounts of violence in Google Maps. Ushahidi made headlines after it was implemented during the Haiti Earthquakes to track emergencies, public health problems and other hazards. The platform represents a shift towards responders relying on on-the-ground, up-to-the-minute, crowd-sourced information.

Similarly, during July's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, residents in the city began circulating a Google Doc called "MumbaiHelp" that contained the "names, addresses, and phone numbers of residents who could offer their houses to stranded commuters." Lastly, the virtual sense of community seen on websites like Facebook and Twitter can be applied to disasters, similar to what was recently seen during the mass protests in Egypt, where protesters organized and communicated via these websites.

The Evolving Role of Facebook

The benefits of using Facebook during disasters are largely about reaching a community, as "it's not about the government helping the public; it's about the public helping themselves... It's peer-to-peer aid." Facebook has recently hosted conference events with disaster relief agencies to "discuss the important role social media can play during crisis."

Data from an American Red Cross survey showed that television, radio stations and social media are the main sources for information during an emergency, while Facebook was the "most commonly used channel for posting eyewitness information on an emergency." The majority of respondents expect disaster response agencies to monitor and communicate through their social media sites so as to "respond promptly to any request for help posted there." These expectations, though, are not likely to soon be met, as Red Cross faces an "enormous challenge to monitor the volume of social media traffic."

The United Nations's Attempts at Technological Innovation

The United Nations's Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs (OCHA) has also joined the fray with their suite of web-based offerings for the humanitarian aid community. Their ReliefWeb services "help make sense of humanitarian crises worldwide by scanning thousands of sources of reliable humanitarian information" and also "produces maps and info-graphics to illustrate and explain humanitarian crises." But these tools miss the mark—they merely represent more news aggregators in a world dominated by an already-pervasive information highway.

The United Nations's Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS), on the other hand, is a more focused attempt at a coordination system. Features include Asgard, an alert notification and threat estimation tool; the Virtual OSOCC, an information exchange system; and UNOSAT, satellite mapping data. The downside, though, is that the user interface for GDACS is set-up as a combination of a discussion forum, with moderated discussions about evolving emergencies, a database of static map imagery, and a text-based database of response teams and their statuses.

The United Nations asserts that the benefit of GDACS is that countries "can be [an] integral part of international response systems" and that "decision makers will get access to real time information of disasters anywhere in the world to facilitate decision making." In reality, GDACS appears to be a poorly designed attempt towards a collaborative coordinated response.

Social Technologies for Humanitarian Aid

The Ushahidi approach has also been utilized for collaborative assistance during humanitarian crises. Aidbrella, formerly known as Aidbook48, was conceived in a workshop last January as an online networking platform to connect organizations "dedicated to alleviating poverty and advancing wellbeing," while combating a "lack [of] knowledge as to the actions of others working in their geographical... area" and preventing "duplicated efforts."

Collaborative Tools for Responders

InSTEDD, which stands for Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters, works to create "free and open-source software for collaboration toward collective action." In terms of software for disaster response, InSTEDD believes the goal is for "all actors [to] maintain a common operating picture" with information shared "across geographic, cultural, technical and organizational boundaries."

Aspects of their common operating picture requirements include: collaboration (social networking, virtual teaming), decision support (geospatial visualization, predictive modeling), analysis (data fusion), information flow (translation, geocoding), and mesh synchronization (offline work, security). InSTEDD's suite of software includes GeoChat for "self-organizing group communications... visualized on the surface of a map," Resource Map for tracking projects and resources, and Riff to "help groups analyze and visualize multiple streams of information."

A Future Direction

At least one arm of the United Nations is starting to jump on the social media technology train. Their Global Pulse initiative (name-checked in Panthea Lee's recent Core77 article and incidentally run by InSTEDD's Board Chairman Robert Kirkpatrick) leverages data visualization, social networking and, well, good design for the benefits of the underserved populations of the world. So why not use these methods for international disaster response? Ushahidi will give you on-the-ground intelligence; Aidbrella will let you know where responders are working during a disaster; and InSTEDD will help you work together. Now is the time to lead the disaster response charge with collaborative technologies for when the world goes to hell... in Apocalypse 2012.

Suggested Reading: "Social Media in Disasters and Emergencies" - The American Red Cross

For more from the Redesigning International Disaster Response series:

» Part 1: The Players
» Part 2: The Challenges
» Part 3: Looking to the US Military