Personal Blog #8: They Know Everything Which Could Help Save Lives Maybe

Majority of us in college have a cell phone and most likely it is a smart phone with apps on it.  Whether you are carrying around a BlackBerry, iPhone, or a phone will Google’s Android platform.  Since I believe that BlackBerry is being pushed out by the competition, I will be focusing this paper more on the Android and iPhone.  I was using the Droid X for a while but since it was giving me all sorts of problems I decided to buy the iPhone 4S, and all my friends gave me hell because I said I would never make the switch. 

            However, what I want to bring to everyone’s attention is that “many people have no idea how much data their cellphones collect about them” (NYT).  These types of phones come with many apps and there are other apps that can be downloaded on the phone’s respective “Market” (Android) or “App Store” (Apple’s iPhone) that can obtain information about the phone user.  These phones are getting personal information about users without their knowledge and not just getting the location, but the person’s name and birthday. 

            So far we have seen that these apps and tracking companies have imposed our customer privacy by sending out a large amount of our data at any given time.  This could get pretty personal to some people because now these app developers and tracking companies have access to our personal information that most of us want to hold private. 

            In a New York Times article they discuss how smart phones have helped make lives of everyone easier by making information accessible at the touch of a button or just screen.  However, the law is not keeping up with the new technologies being produced.  There was a case in the federal appeals court; it is a battle about “how much protection to assign to the information that phones gather about where their users have been and when” (NYT).  The government wants to be able to access location information, when others do not want their locations to be known because of privacy and security issues.   I believe that our locations while using our cellular devices should not be known to these tracking companies.  However, with the court case in the appeals court, they are stating that the government could acquire location information by obtaining a search warrant per the Fourth Amendment.   I just do not think that third party and tracking companies should be allowed to have some very sensitive information just by people using their cell phones.

The groups who are taking this to the courts “contend the Justice Department should be required to first obtain the equivalent of search warrants from federal judges in which they would have to establish "probable cause" that the records will actually yield evidence of a federal crime” (The Daily Beast, 2010).  This is a vital push in the legal system in the United States to help establish a privacy protection for cell phone user’s information and especially locations. 

            Why am I writing about this in my blog well all this stuff about the location of people being found in the Phone’s ID information can help locate people easily.  They just need to get access to the wireless provider’s information in the area.  This could be a new way to locate people and all you would have to do is get people on the ground with a system that they can see a map with the locations of all these people on it.  They can see where the crowds are and they can see where the people who are hurt are.  Yes, sometimes the accuracy of some of the locating tools on cell phones put it in the middle of a city because of cell tower usage but it is a start sometimes when a disaster strikes.

I feel that there could be so much more done for the people in need of help during a disaster and that the current system is good to an extent.  There seems to be no order between NGOs and I feel that they slow the process down sometimes.  I believe that the United States Military is one of the best response teams in the world, yes it is government organized and funded but it is structured and they have the resources and the capabilities to get the job done when saving lives. 

Personal Blog #7: Recent Earthquakes in last 24 Hours

This video below is awesome it reminds me of the extreme events lab a little bit because of how the guy’s screen looked and was displaying the information about the last 12 hours.  It is a cool way to show where the earthquakes are happening in the world.  There was an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.0 in the South Sandwich Islands which is off the southeastern coast of South America.  There was also an earthquake of a 6.5 magnitude about 100 miles away from Mexico City which I wrote about below this paragraph.  There were also two more earthquakes that were in the Pacific region a 3.7 in Hawaii and a 5.8 in Japan.  This was all within the last 24 hours, there might be more to come but so far no tsunami warning.  At least our Tsunami warning technology centers are well equipped and can warn areas of the world in a matter of seconds. 

When I woke up this morning I turned my TV on, I saw that there was an earthquake that rattled Mexico on Saturday.  The earthquake was a 6.5 magnitude which killed two people and knocking out lights in parts of the capital and sent people running into the streets to see what was damaged and who might need to be saved.  The two individuals who were reportedly killed were killed by something falling on top of them.  The one a roof collapsed on him and the other a rock fell on a small van on the Mexico City-Acapulco highway. 

Residents of the port city of Acapulco felt the earthquake and telephone services were down, there were no reports of major damage.  To me this is a rare occurrence kind of like the earthquake that hit the United States a few months back, not much damage was caused just a few places shook pretty good but not a lot of destruction.  There was an earthquake in 1985 that killed tens of thousands of people with a magnitude of 8.1 which makes the one that happened on Saturday look like nothing especially when you look at the death tolls, Saturday’s quake took 3 lives as a FoxNews report says and the 1985 had 10,000 plus. 

I believe that our detection system for tsunamis is superb, it saves many lives and is probably why there are fewer deaths due to tsunamis in the last 15 years than the previous 15 years because of the kinds of technology that the weather guessers use to monitor the oceans and seas.  This helps keep people safe by having a warning system, like Hawaii has a bunch of sirens that go off to warn people to get away from the ocean and beaches. 

Personal Blog #6: Navy SEALs to the Rescue

United States Navy SEALs are the most elite special operation forces in the world and in the history of mankind.  They go through training that some people would refer to as hell with no end, but after the training and the preparation the men who endure the training become SEALs.  These men are not just trained in killing their targets or gathering intelligence they are used in humanitarian efforts across the globe.  They are deployed on a moment’s notice with the world’s most powerful Navy. 

The United States Navy SEALs have been used for humanitarian efforts by taking out some of the world’s biggest dictators.  The SEALs were the ones who pulled the bastard, Saddam Hussein out of his hole in the group where he hid like a coward.  This is a weird look at how Navy SEALs are a humanitarian group but they are. 

There is a book that I am currently reading called The Heart and The Fist by Eric Greitens, which looks at how our military and our humanitarian efforts work and talks about starvation, suffering, tyranny, oppression, and genocide.  These are topics that make someone who cares about people and wants to help the people who are living everyday life in fear of starvation, suffering because of tyranny and oppression, and even genocide.   

I know not many people would agree that a special operations group would be a group of individuals who would carry out missions to protect people of a foreign nation.  I have a strong opinion and believe that the US Navy SEALs and other Special Operation groups play a vital role in combating tyrants and oppressive governments that just kill their people just because they speak out against the government or just kill them because they are not the right religion. 

It sounds a little bit ironic to say it but kill a few assholes that are killing people to save a whole country from oppression and tyrants killing their people because of unjust reasons. 

The video is of a group of Navy SEALs and what they do on a daily basis. 

Personal Blog #5: US Navy as Humanitarian Responders

Currently I am watching the Army-Navy Football game!  Both my parents are United States Naval Academy Graduates (’86 and ’90), and my dad is still on Active Duty and step-mom is on Active Duty Reserves.  So GO NAVY BEAT ARMY!  Anyway, this made me think about my blogs and if there was any possibility I could write a personal blog about the United States Navy and their way of helping with the humanitarian effort across the globe.  I called my dad to ask him some questions about the Navy and humanitarian response, since I have only been on Active Duty for a little less than 2 years and he has 20+ years of experience and knowledge.   First, he asked me why I was calling during the game and if this can wait til after the game?  I told him just a few questions after I said GO NAVY!

He said that USNS Hospital Ships Comfort and Mercy.  Just a brief terminology lesson, USNS stands for United States Navy Ship which are non commissioned ships that are property of the US Navy.  They are usually auxiliary support vessels and operated by Military Sealift Command.  These ships are commanded and crewed by civilians.  Commissioned ships have the prefix USS and are crewed by Navy personnel and officers.

The USNS Comfort is not the first ship of her class and ability to be part of the United States Navy.  If anyone would fire at the medical ships would be committing an act of war and the ship does carry weapons for self-defense.  This ship was once a oil tanker but was rebuilt into the hospital ship it is known as today. 

It is used to provide emergency, on-site care for the US combatant forces deployed in war zones or operations.  They are also used as a mobile surgical hospital service for U.S. government agencies in disaster or humanitarian relief or limited humanitarian care incident to these missions or peacetime military operations.

Although this hospital ship may be far from land or in an area that does not have the ability to supply first class medical attention, this ship has that ability.  Just to give you some numbers about this ship it has over 1000 beds (varying from intensive care, recovery wards, light care, and limited care wards).  The ship has many departments like, casualty reception, intensive care, radiological services, medical supply/pharmacy, dental, optometry, morgue, laundry, and many others.  It also has a flight deck that can handle the world’s largest military helicopters. 

This ship has been deployed to many different operations and to respond to different emergencies.  It was deployed for Operation Iraqi Freedom, for Joint Task Force Katrina, and Haiti, and even responding to the NYC Harbor to help with the victims from the World Trade Center.  The USNS hospital ships might be protected by other ships and aircraft carrier.  The video I am posting shows some of the obstacles even the United States Navy and other Military units faced in Haiti but was able to overcome those obstacles. 

Personal Blog #4

I was reading a bunch of articles online at FoxNews’ website about current events. I was reading about the different issues with the earthquakes that were shaking Oklahoma. Then I stumbled upon a link about the Chinese Government having spent 1/3 of their National Capital Investment from 1967 to 1979 on a tunnel system throughout the country that houses nuclear warheads. The Chinese Government mobilized 300,000 citizens to dig the tunnels. The tunnels have the capability to roll a missile out of the tunnels then launch them off.

This can raise concerns for a war with the Chinese in the future. The Chinese have been developing and buying military assets from many countries. They are also building up a large number of military personnel. You might be wondering how this has to do with our class but it does in to an extent. If the United States or any other country gets into a dispute with China it could send the number one and number two world’s best Navy’s and militaries to war. I have learned that in history dating back to the BCE time, that the number one and number two Navy’s end up going to war at some point in time. This can happen if relations between the two countries go south. This could put a strain on the NGO world and Humanitarian world because of the destruction that these two countries could cause. It might be far fetched but it is possible especially with the fact that the top 2 navies end up fighting each other at some point in history. So because of this technology of tunnels for the Chinese to deploy missiles to all ends of their reach. This would cause lots of need for a humanitarian effort.

Thinking about the Chinese and their long system of tunnels has made me think about Iran’s Ambassador of Death (an unmanned drone bomber). Iran has been on the United States watch list for a crazy ass leader who recently in the past few months told the United Nations General Assembly that 9/11 Didn’t happen and a lot of other crazy stuff, which call shows how crazy and out of touch with the truth that the President of Iran is. He has threatened many lives in the past and continues to do so and does not seem to be developing weapons to show its might but to possibly use them in the future. If so I believe that the Iranian Government and their weapons could cause great destruction to the country they strike if they obtain the nuclear weapon.

The links below are the sites I used to obtain my information and some of the information I used I learned in my International Relations course (PL SC 014).

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/happening-now/index.html#/v/1304832331001/students-uncover-china-nuke-tunnels/?playlist_id=86919?test=faces

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/08/22/ahmadinejad-inaugurates-irans-unmanned-bomber/
 

Personal Blog 3

After doing a little bit more probing about our semester project, one of my teammates and I traveled to the Center Country Emergency Dispatch Center.  I have to say that it was a really cool experience to see everything that we got to see in the center.  We got to talk to the head supervisor about what happens step by step as a call comes in to be processed. 

When a call comes in you can see all the information about the caller on one screen (number, name, address, wireless provider).  The second screen was awesome too because it was a CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) that could have multiple overlays (rivers, counties, lakes, roads, jurisdiction zones, etc.) via GIS.  The third screen is a very details map that the county takes of the whole county with aerial photography.  The fourth screen displayed the pagers the dispatcher could set off with the message of the new call that came in. 

We also found out that if you call an 800 hotline and there is a large volume of calls all 9-1-1 calls will jump right above the 800 calls and that 800 call may never be answered. 

I also like the way the supervisor said within the 30+ years he has worked in the center the protocols and policies have not changed all that much.  The only thing that has changed is the technology used to view the incoming calls. 

In the video link I have posted below you can see some of the systems and screens dispatchers are using on a day to day basis.

http://www.youtube.com/user/911EComm?blend=22&ob=5

Personal Blog 2

After the Japanese earthquake and tsunami tons of debris from both events ended up in the Pacific Ocean.  On the link that I found it states that 20 million tons of debris from Japan’s tsunami is moving toward Hawaii.  I believe that most of the debris will most likely sink to the bottom of the ocean due to aging and exposure to the water. 

The article also states that crew members from the Russian training ship the STS Pallada spotted debris a few thousand miles from Japan.  People could see all kinds of debris passing Midway islands, like appliances and furniture. 

This is another issue that could happen from all kinds of disasters.  It leads me to think about Hurricane Katrina or the BP oil spill.  Could follow in one of my next few blogs as a I think about these things randomly. 

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/envoy/20-million-tons-debris-japan-tsunami-moving-toward-143640503.html

BLOG 12 finally

Reflecting on the readings and speakers of the entire semester, in what ways do you see IST, SRA and Penn State students as perfectly well-suited to address issues arising with the integration of technologies into crisis response?

In my opinion, I do believe that Penn State SRA and IST students are equipped to a degree but I believe that SRA students who complete this class, SRA 397A: Crisis Informatics will have the upper hand over other PSU Students.  However, I do not think IST students have the skills or knowledge to help address issues arising with the integration of technologies into crisis response.  I feel this way because IST students are thinking of coding and that nonsense and SRA students I feel have a more critical view of looking at emergencies.  But yet without SRA 397A I do not think SRA students, IST students, even Penn State students would understand the importance of the class. 

I see SRA students leading the way because of the class and any other IST student who took the course.  We have read documents from the United Nations and other federal agencies within the United States to get an inside look at crisis response.  We first got very frustrated with why these people do not see what is effective and why they are so afraid of using new technology like Ushahidi and how effective they were during the Haitian Earthquake Response. 

Most Penn State students if asked wouldn’t know what NGO means, or that the United Nations is a major player in emergency response after natural disasters and/or man-made disasters like (political violence).  I just feel that for someone to have a full or semi understanding of issues arising with the integration of technologies into crisis response they need to read articles and listen to the speakers we had and/or take SRA 397A or take a class like it somewhere else. 

Personal Blog 1

I came across this article about the Pentagon, the easy way of saying the Department of Defense, saying that it is warning of smallest force since World War II.  Everyone knows that right now the country is going through some economic hard times, what they all call a recession.   All parts of the government are cutting programs, and cutting expenses to help “manage” an out of control national debt.  Well getting down to the facts, the Pentagon says that with the failure of the House-Senate debt “super committee” to produce a plan to cut $1.2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years, that they are scrambling to change their war strategy.  However, this could very easily jeopardize the nation’s safety. 

With the fail of the so called super committee to slash a few billion dollars from DoD spending, this will result in a smaller nuclear force, fewer overseas bases, cancellation of new equipment and the smallest ground force since before Pearl Harbor. 

I think our President should have thought twice about all his job “creation” bills and wasteful spending stimulus packages.  Anyway this all made me think about the United States Military’s part in the Humanitarian world and how these cuts could or might affect the military’s presence across the globe for humanitarian aid. 

Will this bring forth an era where the US Military is no longer a strong force to help respond to natural disasters around the world and even here at home?  That is my biggest question.  Will they also cut the USNS Mercy and Comfort to massive hospital ships?  Hopefully the military doesn’t cut its humanitarian efforts. 

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2011/11/22/pentagon-warns-of-smallest-force-since-wwii

GeoVISTA

The beginning of class was a usual beginning to the class with a little talk about the project and the issues everyone seems to have with the project.  I think this could have been avoided if we would have started the project ahead of time to help weed out some cobwebs.  Everyone also sucked at the requirements analysis, oh I wonder why, that is because the Wikipedia page sucked.  No one in my group could make a clear decision as to which “Requirements Analysis” section we needed to complete. 

This project has been more of a pain in the ass than I originally thought it would be.  I just wish we would have discussed the project more throughout the semester about what the report will look like, what does it need to have in it, and so on.  Before class a few of us were outside the classroom discussing our individual team’s feedback. 

The speaker we had come speak to us today was very interesting.  He was from the Department of Geography at Penn State University.  He works in the GeoVISTA part of the Department of Geography at Penn State University also.  He looks at geography in text, which is a very interesting topic in my opinion.  He showed us a program called SensePlace2 which is a cool looking program that takes all the tweets about a certain query you place in the search box and then it shows a map from all over the world looking at that certain query. 

Check out the video on this site about SensePlace2 to see how it works.  I think that PSU should publish this program to the public or figure out what they want to do with it and who they want their end users to be. 

http://www.geovista.psu.edu/

Extreme Events Lab!

This class by far had the best start to the class!  We went to the Extreme Events Lab to see a demonstration of the cave, also known as a big screen that you can see things in 3D with special glasses.  We saw a completely different way to view data that is transferred into information viewable through 3D images. 

The 3D images made you look at information in a different way, not just looking at a boring old map that everyone uses to view information.  It reminds me of sitting in my useless GEOG 160 class that I am taking right now that is all about viewing boring maps that everyone views.  However, people only look at the map as for what it shows and depicts.  They just don’t get anything else out of the map.  But with the visualizations, not just maps, visualizations that we saw in the Extreme Events Lab with the flights in and out of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). 

The LAX visualization showed flights by Airline Company (shown in different color pyramids) all having the information of the flight imbedded in each pyramid.  Each pyramid showed altitude, speed, airline, Airline Company, and flight number.

We talked about how situation awareness is used in the military and emergency services (i.e. police) and that it is being used in education and many other different areas of everyday life.  Situation awareness is very important in the military and emergency services because most times lives are on the lines.  Especially with pilots, pilots need to be constantly aware of what is going on around them and the condition of their aircraft. 

We watched the Rainbow 6 Patriot trailer in class, it was awesome thank you everyone for taking the time to pause class.

The video I have embedded in this blog post is amazing showing all the Twitter traffic after the Japan earthquake.  It reminded me of the extreme events lab demonstration we saw tonight. 

Japan Blog

Since this course is about technology being used during natural disasters and all types of crises.  I thought the video that was in the folder for Monday’s class was very interesting.  The technology used during this crises well I guess you could say the two different crises was seen from all kinds of different perspectives. 

The first part of the video showed the people living in Japan at the time which showed real time footage from people in their homes where items were just falling and shaking from their places.  Then you saw what the earthquake did to an office building the ceiling was falling and again items shaking and falling out of place.  As I am here listening to music in my room my subwoofer seemed to be a great analogy as to what was happening. If I placed anything on my subwoofer it would fall right off, this is what seemed to happen with the earthquake hitting, everything just fell or broke.  Next you could see the helicopter’s getting footage of the huge tsunami set for a course right for the shores of Japan.  Then you could see the waves just destroying anything in the path.  However, this only does any good if these people survive the earthquake and tsunami as in Japan’s situation. 

I find the live footage from anyone on the ground at the time of the earthquake and tsunami to be very important to looking at how people react to crises.  What do these people do when something strikes?  Do they try to gather up emergency equipment they have in their homes like food, some sort of shelter, water, cell phones, any other communication mediums?  There are a lot of socio-demographic things that could be answered from these videos such as who these people are, their location, how many people are with them. 

It is no surprise that during the earthquake in Japan, communication spiked because people were trying to contact their loved ones and friends.  I am not surprised that the Japan earthquake was the first major disaster of a developed nation in the age of social media with Twitter, Facebook, and any other social media site.  I could have told you that Twitter and Facebook would be used the most by people after the earthquake with 38% using Twitter, and 22% used Facebook, and 16% used YouTube to post videos of what they were seeing all around them for an up close view of the events. 

If you barely watched the video in the Angel folder watch it, it is a powerful video even if it might be a bit long just skip through it a bit just to see what people in Japan saw and experienced.  And just think that this stuff didn't stop many people from using social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Ushahidi by Far My Favorite

He started off very interesting by talking about the history of communicating.  He touched on how soldiers communicated during World War I, and how the radios were extremely large for soldiers to communicate so they referred to mirrors.  Then he jumped all the way to Ushahidi being used in Haiti.  Then he showed how it was created in his living room and the director of FEMA said Ushahidi was the most comprehensive map available. 
They started getting people from all over the world to help map all the information coming in about the situations on the ground in Haiti.  He then said Google Maps didn’t have half of the capital of Haiti so they used Open Street Map.  Then he showed an animation of the process of creating the map, very impressive.

They got Mission 4636, because they contacted Digi-Cell for a free SMS code so people could text Ushahidi.  They then got a whole bunch of people to help translate the messages from Creole to English, so they got over 1200 volunteers.  I liked that they looked at the correlation of text messages and damage caused by the earthquake, and there is a strong correlation. 

I extremely enjoyed how he used case studies to see how things were done during the aftermath and the response to what happened in Haiti.  Then he touched on some of the studies that were done by other people after the Haiti earthquake.  One very interesting one was the locations of cell phones right before the earthquake compared to after to see the movement of the cell phones as crowds move. 

Overall I have to say that this presentation was my favorite in the series.  I liked the whole initiative thing the group took to start helping out with Haiti.  It was definitely a humanitarian effort for sure, it was caring for people you will most likely never meet.  However, they had a huge impact on the whole humanitarian community because even the UN made references to the maps Ushahidi was using.  THE UN PEOPLE, the UN ended up using the techniques and technologies that were used by non-profit organizations in future disasters.  Imagine that people the UN stepped out of their old comfort zone to help people and holy smokes it worked. 

This impressed me, this being Ushahidi, by far the coolest thing ever.  Check out this video that illustrates the mapping project/process that was possible by yours truly Ushahidi. 

Check this out! Sorry the video is not embeded but watch this.

This was all done because of some initiative people in a living room took.  Awesome what people can accomplish in so little time.   

Edward Happ Blog Post

I would like to thank Edward Happ the Global CIO of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and Chairman of NetHope.  Take a look at his website and look at some of the videos he has linked to at the bottom of his page.  I found his lecture to be the most interesting so far in the series of guest speakers for SRA 397A.  I feel that he was more effective than the first two speakers.  He was effective because he used life stories, but he should have tied a lesson to that story.  I feel that these speakers are yes qualified in their respective fields, but they are not good teachers.  I just learn stuff that we go over in class, this is my biggest criticism of the speakers we are having come in to talk.  I do get a lot out of these speakers, it’s just not something we didn’t really talk about in class before the speaker series started

One part of his lecture that I liked was when he talked about the Eight Information Challenges in need of dire solutions.  He talked about how the following topics that needed solutions:

Relevance- is it actionable?

Verification and Authentication- is it true or is it a hoax?

Duplication- Has this already been dealth with?

Access- Do the most vulnerable have the tools?

Privacy- is confidentiality respected? Security risks?

Expectations- are we creating unrealistic expectations?

Impact- converting data into aid delivery?

Proximity- understanding new proximity dynamics

I find that some of these are repeat issues from earlier classes and speakers but I feel that this has more direction as to where the solutions need to be made and what needs changed. 

I believe that Verification and Authentication is very important to responding to disasters because you don’t want to send man power to help someone and that person is not there.  This can be solved by having a lot of man power on the ground but that is difficult to organize sometimes well it seems to be a trend with disaster response. 

Duplication is another really big issue because you don’t want to try to redo something that has already been done.  Like my dad and grand father always told me and still tell me, Do it right the first time so you don’t have to do it again.  Something like that so you don’t have to redo anything because it is a waste of time and resources. 

Impact is critical because you have to be able to translate data you are receiving into aid.  How you do that well I believe that is a good project idea I think I will claim this idea as mine, so if you read this don’t take my idea.  I believe that if you want to give aid, you have to be very quick in the turn around from the time you receive the message or information until the time you translate it (if applicable) until the time you dispatch aid workers. 

Andrew Alspach: Where Good Ideas Come From!

I found, Mr. Andrew Alspach to be a very interesting individual who comes from a farm in Ohio.  I will forgive him for being an Ohio State fan.  I liked that he didn’t go right to college, something I almost wish I didn’t do so I figured out what I wanted to do with my life instead of figuring it out as I go through college. 

I think it was very ironic the story he told about how he interviewed with the Peace Corps and they denied him because he didn’t have a college degree.  However, they said if they have a special skill set like a beekeeper there would be a place for him in the Peace Corps.  Well low and behold; he was the beekeeper on the farm he grew up on.  Then he went on to become part of the United Nations (UN).

Mr. Alspach mentioned his work in development, and then he made a comment about how long term and short term goals should be present in a disaster effort and in decision making.  I agreed with him when he mentioned that most disaster relief aid decision making does not usually involve the long term, but just focuses on fixing short term issues.  This is a critical part in disaster relief in my opinion because, it requires critical thinking and understanding the countries already political, economic, and social situation of that country in need.  The decision making process in disaster relief projects, needs to keep in mind of the reconstruction of the area if it needs it.  If you do not consider those things in your plans then sometimes the relief efforts you are doing just might hurt the process. 

The information management circle chart that he showed with the eleven different sections of Emergency Relief that some NGOs have to worry about, made me think, Why do they have one person over seeing all of them.  I believe that for each of the eleven sections (water, protection, nutrition, logistics, health, emergency telecommunications, emergency shelter, education, early recovery, camp coordination and management, and agriculture) should all have their own coordinators that reports to a head person or head team.  I think if there is a team there would be better results in times of crises because one individual might get over whelmed with everything that is going on. 

Finally, I would like to add that I found the video he showed done by Steven Johnson to be 1) extremely effective in how it delievered its message, 2) very creative, 3) very cool, 4) right on the money.  Take a look at it and tell me what you think of this video and not just that it is cool, but do you agree with some of the things he says?

NetHope Blog Post

First I would like to say thank you to the Emergency Response Director of NetHope, for speaking to the SRA 397A class on 3 October 2011 via a video conference.  It was quite interesting for my first guest speaker through video conference.  I do have to say that the audio was the major issue for us tonight, I guess it goes to show how communication can even be an issue in a country without any large disaster issues at the current place and time. 

I asked the question, You have been involved with many disaster response missions throughout the world, in your opinion which one tested NetHope’s capability and effectiveness the most, and why?

His response was not a surprise to me, he said Haiti was the most difficult disaster to deal with, very difficult.  One road block to starting the recovery process was that two of the top UN officials who were already in Haiti at the time of the earthquake, are now dead.  They died in the earthquake and some other UN representatives who were there were searching for loved ones.  This caused the UN to be down and slow to get going after the initial shock of the earthquake. 

However, organizations like NetHope, who when they arrived created a wireless network using long range wifi that connected all NGO offices.  This allowed for better communications between all the NGOs that responded to the natural disaster in Haiti.  He did continue to speak about how NetHope set up these academies where they take computer science students and train them to their standards, giving them internships and chances to start working as local staff.

He talked about a few things my favorite was the part on innovation.  He made a good point, but I also find it to be common sense.  If you want to use technology in disaster response you have to be willing to get rid of the piece of technology that worked for you the last disaster for a new and improved system or piece of technology.  The bad thing that FEMA did is that they put a water distribution center in the middle of a Wal-mart parking lot that just reopened its doors. 

A good way to be innovative would be in the famine area of Africa most of the refugees have cell phones.  The NGOs print these vouchers for the people to eat, but the cost to print these vouchers is $1.60/voucher.  If you have 100,000 refugees that is $160,000 worth of vouchers, however if you use mobile technology for people to receive vouchers it only costs $0.03/voucher equaling out to cost only $3,000.  This would save NGOs $157,000 per 100,000 refugees.  This to me is one of the things I might want to do my final project on, creating ways to save money in how they hand out food vouchers in areas where many refugees or survivors have cell phones. 

In the video below it talks about how NetHope lost 15 students in the Haiti Earthquake.  They are providing technical training and internships to humanitarian staff and unemployed youth in developing countries.  This is great on multiple levels within the international community.  They teach the students practical experience so they can fix real life problems. 

9/26 Post Class Blog- No McDonalds or Wendy's

First, I would like to remind everyone that we are not to bring any food to the presentation this coming Monday.  No Wendy’s, McDonalds, Subway, or anything like that. 

On a more serious note, I would like to touch on multiple things were my interests lie, I feel that they all have a relation to one another which seems to be a trend with disaster responses.  The most interesting part about the Haitian Earthquake, is that the Haitian people had tremendous determination to survive from this disaster.  They did whatever they could to keep cell phones charged up by doing one of two things, 1) running vehicles to charge cell phones through the cars battery, 2) just used charged up car batteries to charge cell phones.  However, of course this process has some things it could run into like running out of gasoline to power the cars to keep the cell phones charged which would then start to limit the amount of people getting help. 
In Haiti, they used Crowd Sourcing, using a texting code, 4636 they were able to use this code to locate people with GPS and put it on a map.  However, this process was not fast.  This took a while to get done, it started with needing people to translate Creol the local language spoken in Haiti.  This needed hundreds of people to translate all the incoming messages.  Then the information was categorized once the message came in, then the information was plotted.  This was not some software program that could have done this in about a minute or less, it was all humans that got this process down to about 10 minutes.   A program called CrowdFlower was used and “after the 2010 Haiti earthquake CrowdFlower's technology made it possible to route thousands of text messages to the proper aid workers, to get them translated quickly, and to ensure that the people sending the texts had the best chance of getting what they needed. Once CrowdFlower's technology was implemented, the average time to translate, map, geocode, and categorize a text fell to less than two minutes. Though beneficial, many users who have taken surveys for earnings generated by CrowdFlower have voiced extreme displeasure at the length, complexity, and vagueness of the surveys” (Huffington Post).
It seems that multiple organizations had the ability to be flexible and work together instead of separately to reach everyone they possibly could to administer aid.  The video we watched in class at the beginning was a good look into the conditions for the teams arriving in Haiti and what they had to do to set up shop to start the aid process.  But, most of the people helping out with the aid process were in the United States in their living rooms.  If someone in their living room has the time and power to help I believe these NGO’s or even governments have the ability to do the same thing by using these mapping technologies and texting technologies to reach people. 
There was a Reporting Wheel that we found in class last night that I found to be awesome.  You spin the wheel for the type of help you need or for your condition, then it gives you a number to text.  Check out the link below:

http://instedd.org/technologies/reporting-wheel/

I feel like this Reporting Wheel is good but you would have to distribute this wheel before any disaster so I am not sure how effective it is. 

Post 19 Sept 2011 Class Blog Post

If you ask yourself did we learn anything with 9/11 after what happened with Hurricane Katrina?  We can also ask ourselves many other questions about the learning lessons from a natural disaster. 

There were a lot of great technologies invented around the time of 9/11, especially after 9/11 because of the terrible events of that terrible day and how there was a lot of chaos.  There were many questions raised about our responses to 9/11 that spawned a rise of new technologies to be used to search for people and help in the aftermath.  Technologies like a voice internet protocol that allowed people to talk on phones through the internet.  The biggest thing about this technology is that if one node would fail, the whole system would still be fully operational. 

Another cool technology that was invented was a robot that could traverse terrain like that of 9/11 debris at ‘Ground Zero’ and the Pentagon to give the survivors water and food until rescuers could pull them from the rubble.  Another great technology that I like the most probably because I have a huge interest in aviation is the helicopter and planes that could fly over debris looking for survivors.  These small helicopters can be used with video cameras that can survey the scene from above and send wireless video back to the team in the field for a better direction of where survivors and victims are located. 

Night-vision sensor systems that are using heat imagery that can see where individuals are amongst debris.  The individuals would appear to be a black shape amongst the debris or land being a gray scale.  These cameras and sensor systems are highly effective and are not just used in disaster relief. 

I believe these types of technologies should be used in disaster relief and those companies and organizations that respond to disasters either natural or human-made shall be using these inventions to help locate survivors. 

I don’t believe that there is a price tag to saving a life; human beings are driven to save all those that can be saved.  They will go to extraordinary ends to save a life, whether it is a family member, friend, or total stranger that is in need of help or rescuing. 

My idea is that within these organizations there should be a department that creates and develops new technologies for better and effective search and rescue if you will in finding survivors and victims of a disaster of any kind.  The following link talks more about the technologies used and developed. 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9131498/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/how-high-tech-coming-rescue/

12 September 2011- Post 9/11 10 years later

Ten years later, we remember the events of 9/11 all over the country.  In SRA 397A, at Penn State, we were looking at the response to those events and how certain parts of our emergency response system failed or didn’t work as they were intended to in a crisis situation.  Many of us gave presentations about crisis response relating to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, PA.  My article is the one I believe that opened my eyes the most because it talked about the coordination between all types of agencies in response to extreme events, focusing on the response to the World Trade Center Attacks. 

First responders (police and fire rescue) to the attacks in NYC were going into something they have never been trained to respond to with the Twin Towers.  Once inside the towers, fire rescuers were going into what I like to call a “dark” situation where there is no communicating with their leaders on the growing situation.  Communications throughout the city went down for multiple reasons.  First, Verizon had many lines in the bottom of the North Tower and when it collapsed it destroyed all of the communication within those wires.  People all around the city were using their phone lines to try to make calls, but this ended up overloading the telephone system.  Switching to cell phones caused a 1000% spike in activity over all mobile networks causing the networks to crash.  This limited all communications within the city.  This disabled communication between the fire rescue crews in the towers making it impossible for headquarters to tell the men in the towers the situation of the instability of the buildings. 

The security people in the towers who told the people who worked in the towers to go back to their offices after the first tower fell did the opposite of trying to save lives.  This was counter intuitive to the process of trying to save as many lives as possible.  I really wondered why security would send people back to their desks after one building collapsed after it was hit by a commercial airliner just as the building they are in was hit by another airliner. 

The auto-adaptation needs to happen in all emergency responses no matter what the level of catastrophe.  This allows for a better and more effective response to emergencies allowing responders to change their efforts as the situation changes at the scene.  The most important part to auto-adaptation is the Information Search and Information Exchange.  These two parts to the auto-adaptation are the most important because this needs to happen over and over again during the response and recovery to get updates.  This allows the rescue and response crews to change their efforts in a respect to conditions.  I believe that city, state, and federal agencies should ensure that for the future emergencies there should be communication systems that can back up any crash of the communication networks (mobile, phone lines, internet).  I feel that if the communication systems did not crash more people could have been saved on 9/11. 

The video above talks about how Fairfax County, VA updated its emergency communication systems after September 11, 2001.  It is a very interesting video how it talked about the different changes that were made for the county.  It helps them communication between different agencies across different jurisdictions.  It allows fire, police, and helicopters and more agents to communicate effectively to help keep people safer or help reduce the risk of any more harm.

After 29 August: Humanitarian System

First, I have to say that I believe we do not have a humanitarian system. We have a system of different agendas that hurt the humanitarian efforts or goals for certain disasters.

When we were discussing the four types of humanitarianism groups I found that already classifying the different types is the first problem in humanitarian efforts. These different groups have different agendas and ideas of how to carry out humanitarian efforts. The dunantist groups are the most “pure” humanitarian group with an independent agenda from any government. The other three types, Wilsonian, Solidarist, and Commercial are just beyond what a humanitarian effort should focus on or try to get accomplished.

Wilsonian groups are blinded in my opinion by a government backing them and telling them to spread democracy. This hinders the aid groups from helping the people who are in ne
ed of either medical assistance or those who need assistance with finding a temporary place to live, a place to eat, and most importantly drink water and be safe.

The groups who have agendas that include spreading ideologies along with actual humanitarian aid actually have a clouded vision of what is a humanitarian effort. Groups who have more than a humanitarian agenda hurt the process of responding with aiding to a disaster whether it is man-made or natural. For example, Professor Tapia said that one shoe company took a few truck loads of sneakers that did not sell just to get them out of their inventory. However, this company called it a humanitarian effort, but in reality it just added to the troubles of that country who just experienced a disaster. That country now has to deal with all the other problems that arise from the natural or man-made disaster and the new truck loads of unwanted sneakers that does not help the aid process.

Some of the strengths of the humanitarian system is that there are so many organizations that set up shop in the country or region that needs aid and begins to administer help. However, this does cause communication problems between all the organizations involved in the efforts to help the people who need it.

In my opinion, I believe that the best organization that responds to disasters with effectiveness is the US Military. Our military is one of the best responders to any disaster because it is so well organized and the resources that are available make it very easy to respond to all types of disasters. For example, our United States Navy has the resources to reach any area of the world to give aid whether it be a man-made or natural disaster. The US Navy can treat people aboard the USNS Mercy or USNS Comfort (large medical ships, floating hospitals), like we did during the January 2010 Haiti earthquake by sending the USNS Comfort.

When not backing up a military operation treating the wounded soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines it has planned humanitarian missions. The United States Navy made sure that humanitarianism should be a core component. They have over 1,000 beds and 12 operating rooms that has the ability to treat pretty much anything you can think of. The USNS falls under the Geneva Convention for health care. If attacked it is considered a war crime. The Commanding Officer CAPT James Rice says that The United State Navy works “hand in hand and arm in arm”with humanitarian groups like Operation Smile, Project Hope, and International Reflief. 

The video below is very interesting and if you have sometime do watch it and just notice the great things that the US Navy does for people home and abroad. 

About Me

My name is Evan Jarusewski. I am a senior at Penn State University: University Park majoring in Security and Risk Analysis with a concentration in Intelligence Analysis and Modeling.  I just completed my internship at the International Center for the Study of Terrorism (ICST) here in State College, PA.  I worked on a 3 year, $3 million project, called Comptetitive Adaptaion of Terrorist Networks (CATNet) for the ONR (Office of Naval Research). 
I am on Active Duty in the United States Navy in an Officers Program called the Bachelors Degree Completion Program (BDCP). After graduating from Penn State University, I will go to Officer Candidate School (OCS) to be commissioned in the Navy as an Ensign. Following my graduation and commissioning from OCS, I will go to Flight School in Pensacola, FL.

I am originally from Newville, PA a small town around Carlisle, PA but now I live in Castle Rock, CO. I graduated from Big Spring High School in 2008 and then started attending the greatest University in the country, Penn State!

I enjoy skiing and hiking 14ers (14,000 foot plus mountain peaks) in Colorado, not sure which is my favorite.   I have conquered a few of Colorado's highest peak, Grays Peak (14,270 feet) being the highest!

My career goal is to serve 20 years in the United States Navy as a Naval Aviator.  I also want to attend The United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program (SFTI program), which used to be known as United States Navy Fighter Weapons School, known to everyone as TOP GUN!  Then I want to become a US Navy Blue Angel. 

I signed up for SRA 397A: Crisis Informatics because I thought it looked very interesting.  The advertising for the class was great, grabbed my attention very quick!  When a natural disaster or man made disaster happens, I am usually glued to the news channels on TV.  I am always interested in what happened and how effective and timely the response was.  I like to talk about technology and how responders could use technology to increase their effectiveness.  The course has definitely lived up to my expectations in the types of conversations generated just on the first day.  It will be a change from the typical college course where you listen to the professor talk to themselves and the students just fall asleep on the desk.  This class seems to be the way the SRA program needs to lean towards instead of boring lecture classes that nobody seems to get anything out of at the end of the year. 

I am looking forward to talking about 9/11 around the 10 year anniversary.  That event in our county's history is the reason I am studying what I am studying at Penn State University!