Disaster Tech: What is working and what is coming

Mikel Maron

Jesse Robbins

Disaster Tech

We want to teach you how to make cool to technology save lives. (Hopefully you to actually go do it!) (Hopefully you to actually go do it!) (Hopefully you to actually go do it!)

Pattern: Disaster Tech Innovation

Disaster

Ad-Hoc Adaptation

Championship

Iterative Improvement

Hurricane Katrina

1800+ Dead

Millions displaced

$81+ Billion in Damage

turning this

into this

Ad-Hoc Adaptation: Many Using Gmaps Many Using Gmaps http://twitter.com/nateritter

ARC: “Take the I-90 bridge...” Jesse: “The bridge is destroyed” ARC: “but Google says...” ARC: “but Google says...” ARC: “but Google says...”

Problem : Google Maps isn’t Realtime http://twitter.com/nateritter Post Katrina 2007 2007

Champion: OpenStreetMap (OSM) OpenStreetMap (OSM)

Iteration: UN considering OSM UN considering OSM

UNJLC Interagency Humanitarian Common Service

Building UNSDI-t from the top down

But now considering OSM for lightweight, open bottom up collaborative mapping

Disaster

Ad-Hoc Adaptation

Championship

San Diego Wildfires

900,000+ Evacuees

500,000 Acres Burned

1500+ Homes Destroyed

Ad-Hoc Adaptation: Nate Ritter’s Twitters Nate Ritter’s Twitters http://twitter.com/nateritter http://twitter.com/nateritter

Ad-hoc Adaptation: American Red Cross American Red Cross http://twitter.com/redcross

Champion: InSTEDD - SMS GeoChat InSTEDD - SMS GeoChat

Iteration: InSTEDD InSTEDD

Working with traditional Disaster Agencies to build new tools.

Distributing work as Open Source

Boxing Day Tsunami

225,000 Dead

Boxing Day Tsunami

225,000 Deaths

Preventable with existing technologies

Ad-Hoc Adaptation: JRC Tsunami Model

USGS GeoRSS earthquake feed

EU Commission lightweight tsunami propagation model

GeoRSS polygons republished

Ad-Hoc Adaptation: JRC Tsunami Model

Champion: GDACS: Global Disaster Alert & Coordination System System System http://www.gdacs.org

Iteration: Pending. Pending.

Will these technologies save lives?

We won’t know until they do... or don’t.

saving lives means losing lives losing lives losing lives

anti-pattern

Anti-Pattern

Disaster

Ad-Hoc Adaptation

Championship

Ad-hoc Adaptation: Tenacious Search Tenacious Search

Distributed of Aerial Imagery for Search & Rescue

Images put into Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing tool.

Possible hits sent to experts for review.

Source: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-08/ff_jimgray_lost

Champion: none. none.

Public now believes that this is easily repeatable.

Iteration: Steve Fossett Search Steve Fossett Search

Inadequate training for volunteers.

Many false positives.

People called SAR teams directly which hindered search.

Anti-Pattern

“ In hindsight, I wish it hadn’t been there, because it didn’t produce a darn thing that was productive except for being a giant black hole for energy, time and resources. There may come a day when this technology is capable of doing what it says it can deliver, but boy, that’s not now.”

- Maj. Cynthia Ryan

http://www.humanitarian.info/2007/11/08/the-perils-of-the-distributed-approach/

New Champions: InternetSAR InternetSAR

New Champions: InternetSAR InternetSAR “ ABSOLUTELY UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES are InternetSAR.org participants to report objects found in imagery we provide directly to search authorities. [...] The reason for this policy is that our systems are set up to manage and filter reports for search teams and those who bypass our reporting system can actually impede the efforts of search teams.”