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.