Send Help: Disaster Response From The Cloud

Relief agencies, companies and volunteers came together and built a global network of systems and people to coordinate emergency aid operations for the Haiti earthquake victims.

This piecing together of a jigsaw of different organizations and technologies with one common goal serves as a testament to what is possible using cloud computing and may serve as a template for disaster relief operations in the future.

SMS and Radio

Whilst SMS is low tech in comparison to mobile services like 3G and Wi-Fi, its simplicity is its success. Repairing or erecting temporary cell towers is a far more efficient way to reach people than fixing wire-line infrastructure. As SMS is a basic feature supported by all handsets, it is widespread and popular in Haiti.

A short-code weather service (4636) was commandeered and setup on the Digicel and Comcel networks to serve as a gateway for anyone who could access a mobile phone. Josh Nesbit co-founder of FrontlineSMS:Medic humbly describes his involvement as a “co-coordinator” who put together the SMS team by getting lots of different volunteers and organizations talking together. The work was done by people like Jean-Marc Castera, a Haitian network engineer for Digicel, and Nicolás di Tada from InSTEDD who went station to station and made sure the message got out and was clear. The service was publicized via local radio stations and word of mouth.

The earthquake hit on Jan. 12, and the first emergency messages from Haitians were being received four days later on Jan. 16.

Translation and Classification

Messages received were forwarded onto a crowdsourced team powered by CrowdFlower and SamaSource who would translate the messages into English and then classify them. Other information such as addresses, mobile number and map coordinates were derived from the cell locations.

Once classified, messages and the accompanying information was forwarded on to a number of different agencies like the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United States Coast Guard.

Messages relating to lost or found people would be forwarded to people finder services. Mobile phone numbers were added to a distribution list to receive information bulletins via the Thomson Reuters Foundation AlertNet and InSTEDD.

The Big Picture

An open source piece of software called Ushahidi was re-purposed by volunteers wanting to assist from afar. They created a Web portal to visualize and collate this information for relief agencies and the public.

Ushahidi, which means ‘testimony’ in Swahili, was originally developed to map reports of post-election violence in Kenya. Its ability to graphically display maps and “hotspots” was ideally suited for visualizing areas where relief was most needed.

The Future?

The earthquake disaster in Haiti happened less than a month ago and the emergency support service built has already served over 26,000 messages and played a vital role in coordinating the relief effort. You can imagine what an impact this service has to the people who need it most when you consider one such message:

“We need water, food and medications. We are about 950 people. Thank you Abner”

The world may just have had its first glimpse of a truly global disaster management system. We should marvel at the scale of problem it tackled and how quickly it was developed. The use of cloud services like the crowdsourcing platforms and their APIs demonstrates how quickly cloud services can be used to integrate traditional agencies like the Red Cross.

Given the frequency of natural disasters and the uncertainty around climate change the world has an opportunity to rollout a global 911 service that could benefit us all.

(from readwriteweb. Image credit: visualpanic. Mission 4636 diagram kindly supplied by Josh Nesbit)

Kiva is a great idea: lending money to entrepreneurs in developing countries

Kiva.org allows individuals to make loans starting at $25 to low-income entrepreneurs in the developing world, also known as microcredit. By doing so, you can provide affordable working capital for the poor (money to buy a sewing machine, livestock, etc.), empowering them to earn their way out of poverty.

Kiva is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.

The people you see on Kiva’s site are real individuals. When you browse entrepreneurs’ profiles on Kiva, choose someone to lend to, and then make a loan, you are helping a real person make great strides towards economic independence and improve life for themselves, their family, and their community. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates and track repayments. Then, when you get your loan money back, you can relend to someone else.

Kiva partners with existing microfinance institutions. In doing so, we gain access to entrepreneurs from communities world-wide. Our partners are experts in choosing qualified entrepreneurs. That said, they are usually short on funds. Through Kiva, our partners upload their entrepreneur profiles directly to the site so you can lend to them. When you do, not only do you get a unique experience connecting to a specific entrepreneur on the other side of the planet, but our microfinance partners can do more of what they do, more efficiently.

Kiva provides a data-rich, transparent lending platform. We are constantly working to make the system more transparent to show how money flows throughout the entire cycle, and what effect it has on the people and institutions lending it, borrowing it, and managing it along the way. To do this, we are using the power of the internet to facilitate one-to-one connections that were previously prohibitively expensive. Kiva creates an interpersonal connection at low costs due to the instant, inexpensive nature of internet delivery.

Google’s Africa Strategy: Search And Trade Via SMS

Not only does Google want to organize all the world’s information, it also wants to make all that information available to everyone in the world. For the majority of the world’s population, that means making it available on a cell phone, and not a fancy iPhone or Android with a Web browser either. I’m talking about $10 cell phones with not much more than voice and SMS capabilities. If Google can reach people, especially in developing nations, with SMS, it can reach everyone with a cell phone.

In Africa, it is launching a suite of SMS services today, including SMS search, Q&A-style tips, and an SMS-based marketplace. The first country to get these services is Uganda.

The search service works like Google SMS in North America. You text a search term, and it responds via SMS with the result. Searches can be narrowed by using specific keywords such as “local time,” “weather,” “news,” “maps,” “translation,” or “currency conversion.” For more complicated searches, the related SMS tips service offers answers in an automated Q&A format.

But the most interesting application is Google Trader, which allows people to post items for sale and jobs via SMS. Other people can search for them by texting the service with the word “BUY” preceding the search term. Google Trader connects the buyer and seller together (each listing contains the seller’s cell phone number).

(from techcrunch)