Most folks don’t realize that some aspects of crisis response can be done from anywhere in the world using social media tools. Donating money is important, but it’s not the only way to help. I participated in an education panel at the Relief 2.0 for Haiti conference at Stanford last Friday as part of Stanford’s eWeek. It was amazing to see such a diverse group of talented people, united by a desire to help more efficiently using various forms of technology. There were folks from Google Health (I bet you didn’t know there was such a thing), Harvard Operational Medicine Institute, ESRI (Geographic Information Systems experts), and many others (list of speakers and links).
There were many great ideas and projects shared — too many to mention them all (although I tried to capture many of the links using delicious tag “rlf2haiti“). One example of how technology can be used in agile crisis response is the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and Operational Medicine Institute’s use of iPhones to collect patient data. An existing app, iChart, was modified to allow relief workers to collect photos as well as electronic medical information in clinics. One specific need was the ability to locate amputees in order to provide follow up visits once prosthetics become available. Representatives from Sutter Health also shared expertise on ambulatory electronic health records. (Interestingly, Sutter Health also recently made the largest disaster-relief donation in the history of the health care system. Now that’s a company I want as my health care provider.) A group called CrisisCommons shared several project at the conference including WeHaveWeNeed, a site for connecting resources with needs in Haiti, and Tradui, a Kreyol to English mobile app.
One of the most interesting projects that was shared was Mission 4636, which allows people in Haiti to text their requests for medical care, food, water, and shelter. Many people in Haiti have cell phones, and It’s a little known fact that cell phones still worked in the hours after the earthquake. The 4636, toll-free number was set up to established to meet the urgent needs of the Haitian people. Mission 4636 connect volunteer Kreyol translators to convert the messages into English so relief workers can respond. Here is how it works (from the Ushahidi blog):
- People in Haiti text location, name and requests for aid / reports etc. to 4636.
- The data is streamed from different celtels to a server hosted by Ushahidi.
- 100s of Kreyol-speaking volunteers translate, categorize and plot the geocoords of the location if possible.
- The structured data is streamed to different orgs on the ground like Red Cross and InSTEDD, who act on it / pass it to appropriate people there.
- It is also streamed to the main Ushahidi database (the publicly viewable one) where it is combined with other data, further annotated etc. and made available to other orgs.
If there was a central message that came out of the conference, it was the importance of including locals in solutions in crisis relief, especially in long-term rebuilding efforts. Aid workers are here today and gone tomorrow — or in a few months, anyway. Many of the larger aid organizations are simply not set up to cooperate with others. They do good things but they cannot offer agile crisis response. Carlos mentioned how UN workers were not allowed to drive anyone else in their vehicles, even if there was space in the vehicle and someone was going to the same location. I guess the UN is not big on carpooling, even in a crisis. In contrast, much of the work done by SF-based Inveneo focuses on identifying and certifying ICT partners in-country. Inveneo was responsible for setting up a long-distance wifi system to allow relief organizations to communicate days after the earthquake. (Note to self: add Inveneo to list of companies I want to work for someday.)
Many of the ideas shared at the Relief 2.0 conference involved reusing existing tools to meet urgent needs in a crisis. These include tools we use every day, like SMS, Google Maps, and Twitter. Many of the same tools will also apply to rendering assistance in the aftermath of the earthquake in Chile, which hit less than a day after the conference ended. The hashtah #rlf2haiti was used during the conference, and now #rlf2chile is also being used on Twitter. There is also a Relief 2.0 Google Group. If you are looking for a way to help, I highly recommend getting involved with the folks at CrisisCommons.org. Thanks to Carlos Miranda Levy, Margarita Quihuis (both Stanford University Fellows), and all the coordinators for a fantastic job organizing the Relief 2.0 conference.
Edit: Just came across a ReadWriteWeb article on 4636 back in early February called Disaster Response from the Cloud.