Standing-up a virtual 911 system in Haiti: Ushahidi

Patrick Meier, the leader of Ushahidi’s Haiti crisis mapping project, has posted a detailed explanation of his team’s crisis mapping capability.

The functionality of the Ushahidi platform is pretty breath-taking.  In effect, Ushahidi stood up a “911″ emergency response system in a country that has never really had one.  This alone is a staggering feat.  But when you consider that this was accomplished in the wake of a horrific earthquake and was orchestrated from thousands of miles away, it is all the more impressive.

This type of innovation–borne in the harshest circumstances–could eventually change the way mature 911 systems do business on an everyday basis.

China: Rescuing Haitians and attacking pirates

Over the past couple of years, there has been an increasing awareness of China’s growing economic might.  Less noticed has been China’s new global reach. Although most analyses suggest that the Chinese military will not challenge the world’s most advanced militaries for decades, the Chinese are increasingly ambitious in this arena and are beginning to carve out a leadership role for themselves.  Two recent events are part of this broader “expeditionary trend.”

Immediately after the earthquake in Haiti, Chinese search and rescue teams were literally among the first to arrive.  China has some serious experience with earthquake rescue and recovery operations.  We knew that.  What we didn’t know was that they were both willing  and capable of sending it across the world at a moment’s notice.

More recently, the Chinese navy has joined anti-piracy operations in the vicinity of the Horn of Africa.  This too is significant for a number of reasons.  First, it demonstrates that the Chinese will no longer depend exclusively on other powers to maintain order and security in international spaces far from their territory.  Second, it underscores the Chinese navy’s intent to become a true “blue-water navy” capable of projecting power across the high seas.

On balance, these are good things.  It was a given that the Chinese would develop this type of expeditionary capability sooner or later.  What wasn’t so clear was how they would use it.  So far, so good.

It’s working: Social media and disaster response in Haiti

A few days ago I posted on the incredible work being done by Patrick Meier and his team to leverage social media to direct the humanitarian response to the Haitian earthquake.  A few days in, evidence is accumulating that this approach is working.

Take, for example, this one particular case.  A worker at “God’s Littlest Angel Orphanage” was able to send out a distress call for water via Twitter.  This call was picked up by Patrick’s team and embedded into the crisis map.  Less than a day later, an individual associated with an NGO called World Water Relief saw the request on the crisis map website and, as of last report, is currently working to direct water supplies and solar powered filtration units to the orphanage.

It is not at all clear that this type of coordination would be taking place in the absence of this interactive crisis mapping work.  The key points to recognize in this particular case are, first, that the organization in need of help apparently did not know who could provide the help and, second,  the organization with the water didn’t know who needed it most.  By establishing an interactive clearinghouse for the sharing of this information, the Haiti crisis map performed a valuable service.  Clearly, social media-fueled crisis response tools are a powerful supplement to the more traditional coordinating mechanisms of disaster response.

UPDATE:  Ushahidi’s twitter feed is now indicating that US Government agencies and units involved in the disaster response effort in Haiti, including FEMA and even the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, are also actively using the data collected by Patrick and his team.

Social media and disaster response in Haiti

Although the precise scale of the disaster in Haiti remains unclear, the human toll appears immense.  The already-feeble Haitian Government was utterly destroyed by the ferocity of the earthquake leaving ordinary Haitians to rely primarily on international responders.  Unfortunately, these responders are struggling with both logistical and informational challenges that are, quite literally, costing lives.

In a very preliminary sense, however, social media is starting to address the informational needs of rescuers.  Patrick Meier, a fellow PhD student at the Fletcher School, is aggregating and synthesizing information from both traditional and new media (to include Twitter, text messages, etc.).  The crisis map he and his team have created through the auspices of the Ushahidi organization  is evidently already being used by rescuers and others in Haiti to direct the response.  An interview with Patrick is available here.