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:
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.
The reporting wheel was excellent. A simple technology to address a simple need. Quite ingenious actually. It's a great example of not over thinking the solution to a problem and definitely not trying to overload the problem with technology.
ReplyDeleteI think Haiti, overall, is serving as a example of the best and worst of the relief efforts. The first, is that ICTs did help mitigate the lack communication infrastructure. However, getting more news out of Haiti meant that the relief community was shown as being completely ill prepared for dealing the level of devastation that the country suffered.
ICTs have proven incredibly effective on a micro/immediate level, I am interested in seeing what they offer for long term relief efforts though. - Kathlee
It was nothing short of amazing. People in living rooms, sleeping on floors, helping their fellow man or woman out of the goodness of their heart. It was humanity at its finest and beings a whole new meaning to humanitarian aid. They literally sat there and translated text messages and it was their responsibility to see who they could help and who they would not be able to help. That is a pressure I am not sure I would be able to handle. It speaks volumes to the character of these people to be able to help in a stressful situation with the help of SMS messaging. But also not only be able to help, but to streamline an almost completely human oriented process to 10 minutes, it's unheard of.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you that NGO's or governments should take a leaf out of their book and have the ability to become more flexible. This was a system built from scratch. Imagine what a NGO or government org could do with the amount of resources and info they have if they could just streamline their process and work together. I suppose I do understand why they don't do it, to protect their own interest by not sharing too much info but I do not like it. There is a time and a place for posturing and it is not when lives are on the line. There needs to be some sort of mandate to get the government and NGO's to get their stuff together and perform better. As we saw when the govt. org's worked together information was distributed much faster, redundancy was cut down and the info was much more clear and concise for all to understand as long as the proper measures were taken. I sincerely hope we see more of this in the future although I am beginning to highly doubt it.
Evan, as you know I have been in Pittsburgh all weekend and do I have a story to tell you from tonight. Anyways that can wait for another time. Right now we are here to discuss the earthquake in Haiti. However, on a brighter note, I thought the eating of McDonalds or Wendys post was pretty funny. On a more serious note, you cover many important topics in your blog that I would like to touch on in this critique that would be very interesting to know about. Some of the include the power and capabilities of people using cell phones for communication during a crisis, the importance of translators, and the importance of cooperation for the first time among different agencies.
ReplyDeleteFirst I would like to discuss the importance cell phones had for the first time in a huge disaster situation. They failed before because the networks would go down after receiving so many calls and texts at one time. This was not the case in Haiti, and cell phones were used there to find people using GPS, tell them where to go to find help through texts and Twitter, and finally send them aid if possible. Another important factor Evan brought up was that when the Tweets and text messages came in, the people helping at the call centers had to translate the Creole into English in order to help. This was essential because it was the first time people were doing all the work during a crisis, instead of letting computers do everything. Lastly I wished to discuss how key it was that all of the government agencies and other relief efforts were working cooperatively for once. This was significant because they were able to combine all of their resources for once and work together for the better good of Haiti and its people.
Evan, I thought this blog was very well put together and you hi most of the topics that we covered in class right on the head. Nice work this week and remember to prepare your questions for next class for the guest speaker. Nice work buddy keep it up!