Digital Information Collection System

1. “Together, We Can Save a Life”

2. Contents
01About American Red Cross
02Context
03Project Description
04Case of success
Photos courtesy of American Red Cross

3. 01ABOUT
AMERICAN RED CROSS

4. The American Red Cross is a Humanitarian Organization managed by
volunteers and guided by Statutes established by the United States
Congress and the Fundamental Principles of the International Red
Cross Movement.
The American Red Cross is not a government agency and its principal
objective is helping the victims of natural and non-natural disasters,
emergency prevention, and preparing individuals for emergency
response.

5. 02CONTEXT

6. The most crucial part of emergency response is being prepared when a disaster
happens.
Recognizing this the American Red Cross started creating a census in Latin America of
many rural communities in order to understand the nature of the population living in
these communities and their awareness towards an emergency.

7. In addition the American Red Cross and its
volunteers trained communities on how to
respond to an emergency in order to
minimize human casualties.
Volunteers visited each household, asking
questions such as the number of adults,
children and elderly living in each home.
Volunteers also asked each head of the
house how well he/she was prepared in the
eventuality of a disaster.

8. As you would imagine this was a very labor intensive process that potentially had errors
and/or omissions because the data was manually collected.
The census was very thorough and
included as much as 122 general and open
ended questions. This information was
tallied on paper format and was then
transcribed into an excel sheet.
The excel sheet helped unify the
information gathered and provided the
American Red Cross with a medium to
process the manually collected data in
order to define an individual emergency
response strategy for each community.

9. 03Project Description

10. First meeting…
Almost two years ago we had our first meeting with
the American Red Cross in Panama and started
working with them hand in hand to automate the data
collection process for emergency response.
With their help we created a Mobile Application
combined with a Web Console capable of processing
and analyzing data.

11. Improvement
The Mobile Application collects the data
using a combination of closed and multiple-
choice questions. This feature minimizes
human error and allows the data to be easily
manipulated and statistical conclusions to
be made.
When the census was done manually the average time it took to answer all the questions
was 25 minutes, with the automation of the process the time has been reduced to 8
minutes.

14. Innovation
Another important feature of the application is a geo-
localization module that permits the volunteer using
the Mobile Application to trace his or hers movements
and functions as a GPS to pin point the exact location
of each community and household

15. Creativity
Another feature of the Mobile Application is
an a emergency beacon or panic bottom in
case the volunteer has a personal
emergency while working on the census.
This Panic Bottom feature can also take and send pictures to Central Command to ease
the retrieval of the volunteer.

16. Resourcefulness
Additionally the Mobile Application has a
private chat that can only be used by
volunteers while they are working on the
census.

17. The Web Console’s primary objective is the organization, processing, analysis and
monitoring of data and key performance indicators (KPI’s). The information collected by
the Mobile Application is uploaded in real time into the Web Console’s database.

18. Before the automation of the process tabulating the results on an excel sheet took on
average three weeks. Now the information is available on real time making the process
more efficient and less time consuming.

21. 04Case of success

22. Photos courtesy of American Red Cross

23. Real Impact..
The impact this application has had, is the reduction in time and human error in the
data gathering process of the American Red Cross in rural communities in Latin
America. The American Red Cross can now evaluate the same day how well a
certain community understood the training they received for emergency response
and risk reduction. The combination of these factors has had a positive effect on
Latin American rural communities as they are now more informed and prepared to
handle a disaster minimizing thus human casualties.
Unfortunately, there has been a considerable rise in natural and non-natural
disasters over the past 10 years. The Red Cross has been on site to help
communities get through these hard times. This new technology comes in a time
where quick response by volunteers and communities is needed. Vas Latin is proud
to help the Red Cross achieve this by giving them a tool to make their job a bit more
precise, efficient, and safe.

24. Thank you!