Broadband-enabled technologies play a vital role in times of crisis and natural disasters. As the worldwide effort to help Haiti rebuild continues, we again see broadband jumping to the front of the line in terms of “needs.”
Those fortunate enough to be outside of the disaster area are relying on the Internet to keep connected with breaking news, on-the-ground pictures and videos, and the latest efforts towards relief. Further, social media tools like Facebook and Twitter continue to play a critical role, not only in disaster awareness and fundraising, but also by reuniting families and spreading the word when people are identified as safe.
Those who are even more technology savvy, like programmers and developers, are being called to action use their skills to do even more to help Haiti. Across the globe, people in several major cities have gathered and continue to organize unconferences called CrisisCamps. I attended several of these innovative “barcamp” style conferences last year, and even interviewed one of the co-founders, but at that time the focus was on planning. Now due to critical need, attendees are dedicated to help with things like crisis mapping, data management, and RSS feed aggregation. Organizers can go to http://crisiscommons.org to learn more about how to best participate.
Just a sample of the projects that CrisisCamps are working on:
- Language & Translation – Mainstream online translation tools don’t support the Creole language. This project is dedicated to using technology to assist in translating priority content resources between Creole and English (and other languages) in support of relief assistance and CrisisCamp projects.
- Haitian Voices - The Haitian community has requested that CrisisCommons create a capacity for survivors to tell their story of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake. They would like to post information for survivor stories, saying thank you to the world. A construct where there would be a “wall” feature where people can go and post survivor stories.
- Mapping NGO’s in Action – NGOs are the “boots on the ground” in Haiti. Hundreds of NGOs have ongoing operations in Haiti. But who’s who and where are they? This project is gathering information to create an overview database of relief assistance that is deployed to Haiti. The project will create a directory of organizations, people on the ground, where they are, what they are doing, and what they need. The team will create a Drupal database relating people to programs.
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January 27th, 2010 at 4:27 pm
[...] To read more about how the high-speed Internet is helping in Haiti, read the recent blog, “Broadband a Critical Component to Relief Efforts in Haiti” on our sister website, [...]