10. Our ProblemHumanitarian Aid Disaster Relief operatives
CANNOT:
1. Locate other first responders and victims in a
region
2. Know conditions of the afflicted area before
arriving on scene
3. Have access to data and a map that updates
(in real time) who is doing what
AS A RESULT…
18. We would like to thank:
Commander Greg Sawtell
Our professors
Our interviewees
Dr. Laureen Donovan
Christine Goodwin
Editor's Notes
Emma--sit in the crowd and read over in the background instead of standing in front of everyone?
The civilian populace, as well as state, local, federal and international levels of government lack one common information sharing environment. As a result--there is a delay in disaster response--which then increases the loss of life
PAUSE
Our final problem statement took us weeks to determine. After streamlining our challenge statement, we concluded that essentially:
Humanitarian Aid-Disaster Relief operatives CANNOT:
Locate other first responders & victims in a region
Locate where and what critical supplies are in a region
Have access to data/a map that updates (in real time) who is doing what
As a result:
Information, time, and resources are wasted
And more importantly, human lives are lost.
We are Vital, a disaster relief application
Introduce selves here
“And we are Vital”
Jackie
The process for our team was messy and overwhelming at times
Emma
When we first started the project and read over our problem statement: we were Naive, a little confused, but we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into….
Emma
Honestly it was difficult at first--how does a team of nursing, writing, public policy, engineering, and biology majors work together to develop an app, when we did not even understand the problem?
We all have our different ways of thinking & different ways of problem solving
Emma: I was focusing on the medical aspects of Disaster Relief (interviewing Doctors, Nurses)
Jackie & Will: trying to put the problem in context
Adam and Cesar: started designing the app in Week 3
Jackie
We scrambled to get 10 interviews every week (emailing, calling, going to a professors Office hours), and it was difficult to find time to meet as a team, (we are all different majors and on opposite ends of campus)
In the beginning we were not getting much out of our interviews, none of us knew what to ask or had experience in Disaster relief work
We created a detailed questionarrie and started to focus on: “gaining empathy” and get a “day in the life” perspective during the interviews - get the details (understand all the little tasks)
30 hours on Google Hangout- when we wanted to give up or we felt stuck, our mentor would things through with us
Jackie
We interviewed firefighters, doctors, nurses, NGO workers, government officials, first responders, directors, victims, and other professionals.
Each interview brought a new perspective & new/MORE problems
Jackie
By about week 4 we were all over the place…….complete chaos- Caused chaos, each interview pulled/pushed us in different directions
All of our individual interviews influenced us - so we had a lot of disagreements: CREATIVE FRICTION
It got to the point where we would all meet as a team and not even know where to begin. - none of us knew how to solve this -
At one meeting it finally hit us….. that we were trying to solve every problem our interviewees threw at us.
Emma
Our mentor told us to read the surveys and look for similarities in the interviews: we began to notice patterns in our interviews….
We compiled all of our interview notes and created a word cloud. Certain words are bigger than others, these represent the most commonly used words. - We feel like this is a global problem, location of the words is random….
The words that really stick out here are: communicate and need
Communicate: it’s a problem that every group and every human faces; This is something that our interviewees cited as a problem over and over again.
Need: what do the victims need? What do first responders need? Is the data accurate? Where are our resources? What are the locations of victims?
Emma
Our challenge, brought to us by National Defense University’s Center for Technology and National Security Policy and Commander Greg Sawtell
You can refer to the full challenge statement on your handout.
Eventually we had to start saying “no”--to solving all the problems. We re-wrote the problem statement almost every weeks and finally settled on this
Our FINAL problem statement: This is what we focused on
Jackie
Commander Sawtell, Our Sponsor
Mentioned the concept of Waze on the second day of class when we learned about all the different problems that were going to be given out
Waze is a crowdsourcing, mobile app that is used for traffic and navigation. Essentially, you can report things like: an accident on the side of the road, and it will warn the other users that the accident is approaching.
Jackie
Navy pilot--biggest interview, week 4: JACKIE
He talked about flying around New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina
Uber: 1st to get the call got it, BUT should be people who are closest, that is the most efficient method he was SO EXCITED about this project and inspired US to work to make this happen
Emma: Founder of Ushahidi:
Worked at USA ID for 20 years -
Founded Ushahidi - crowdsources data and analyzes it
The week after this we changed the problem statement to include TRACKING SUPPLIES
EMMA: Member from Team Rubicon: Cesar’s talked to him:
We made a mistake by focusing on just logistics and supplies. We need to open It back up. We had good original idea; we should open it up to include as much data possible. The more you can provide the better. Super niche applications are a bad thing, not everyone will find it useful.
After this we cut out resources
Our final interview was Pablo Mayrgundter - EMMA
EMMA: this interview was a Confidence booster : After this interview, our Nursing major told me she was going to learn how to code so we could make this app
Emma
Big decisions that took awhile for to decide on: Who should this app target? Directors? Victims? First Responders? Or all of them??
Emma
We decided the app will on a national level, however we believe it can be scaled down and implemented on the state and local level as well.
EMMA
After weeks of research, disagreements, and pivots, we designed an app that would alleviate some of the major issues with disaster response.
Our app targets both the victim and the first responder--in which data is collected through crowdsourcing
This data is available for both the victim and the first responder to see. The victim, as well as the first responder, will be able to report the status of various infrastructure as well as the conditions of other victims.
This app also allows first responders to have a more clear picture of the status of the location in which they are being sent.
Our app gives victims a voice, allowing information on conditions and required resources to be known before a first responder gets to a disaster scene.
Jackie--add screenshot of uber and waze
Our app mixes various components of Uber and Waze, which we think offers the best possible solution.
Uber is an app where the user can download and get a ride virtually anywhere you wish. If the user wants to, they can sign up to be a driver, and receive money to drive people around.
Waze is a crowdsourcing, mobile app that is used for traffic and navigation. Essentially, you can report things like: an accident on the side of the road, and it will warn the other users that the accident is approaching.
Vital has a double interface--one for the victim, and one for the first responder--which mirrors Uber’s driver/rider concept.
Our app also contains a map with icons of damaged buildings/other infrastructure--which was inspired by Waze.
We also incorporated crowdsourcing to allow all users to report information, as well as credibility scores assigned to each report--features that Waze are famous for
Live speak what is going on in the app
Cesar and Adam both designed this app
Make it clear that there is a program
Clarify the red, green, yellow
Mention Patrick: He told us to look into crowdsourcing and SMS texting
EMMA
Are we ready to develop? Almost. We want to streamline our app further, and add things such as news and social media links.
Contact cell companies
Contact computer programmers
Reach out to Pablo Mayrgundter--founder of Google Crisis Response Team
Emma
Thank you to the professors: for believing in us
Greg: thanks for always being there for a quick phone call
Christine: where do I even begin?
