The two-page brief produced by the ICT4Peace Foundation and released in April 2010, Haiti and beyond: Getting it right in Crisis Information Management, generated the following insightful and engaging responses. 

 

#1

Information management in Haiti has been somewhat fragmented form my point of view.  Certainly the efforts of Crissimappers and the OSM efforts were extremely valuable and continue to be as efforts are

being made as we speak to strengthen the data compiled from satelite imagry with on the ground locating of IDP camps and health care facilities and schools.

 

However from an engineering point of view, my area of expertiese, lasting solutions to this monumental humanitarian catostropyh will only be solved with the design and implementation and building of infrastructure to provide safe shelter, water, sanitation, and transportation corridors along with rebuilding of an economic recovery base of agriculure and industry to provide work opportunityies to the victims of this natural disaster.

 

I have been mostly unsucessful in attempts to contact relief agencies regarding funding design efforts to rebuild infrastructure.  Much basic data is available thanks to the contribution of Lidar scanning

and the making available this data by World Bank.  However, much work is required to transform this basic mapping effort into plans that can be used to rebuild the infrastructure.  The basic mapping must be supplemented with ground information of existing infrasturcture and damages to it that might be repaired or replaced .

 

The humanitarian crisis is not over in Haiti, Health issues will become quite complex in the next few weeks as rains continue to bring out the importance of placement of IDP camps in locations that will not be flooded out , silted up, failing of rudimentary water supply and failing of sanitation facilities.

 

I have done much work compiling the basic mapping efforts of World Bank Lidar immmagry into usable engineering friendly maps that will provide a basis for design of infrastructure.

 

If some one can direct me to relief agencies that will provide support for sound design of infrastructure repair and rebuilding it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Again, from my perspective, a weakness still exists in infromation management,  Rebuilding must become coordinated and properly designed to avert further complicatons of health issues.

 

Respectfully,

James Malone, P.E.

 

 

#2 

Dear Daniel and Sanjana, 

 

First, let me thank you for supporting ICT initiatives and for writing about the Haiti relief efforts. We would like to offer the opportunity to provide you and ICT4Peace community additional information and perspectives regarding the global network of volunteers who have and continue to create CrisisCamp events in countries around the world to support the relief efforts in Haiti and Chile. We represent an international network of volunteers in UK, Canada, New Zealand, Columbia and Argentina with many others countries now beginning new efforts. Taking the month of April, the majority of the CrisisCamp events are happening outside of the US. In fact you can join them in Paris on April 24 or in London on May 15. I would like to stress to you that there is no one country who has greater participation than another, we are truly a global community.

 

To provide greater context, CrisisCamp partnered with organizations such as OpenStreetMap and Ushahidi to provide additional surge capacity for their priority projects. We were in and will continue to be a supporting role to these organizations. We see this as an important role for CrisisCamp volunteers to be able to share their expertise across many communities. 

 

In the meantime, I would like to offer  that we can provide an opportunity for you to meet the community. I would be happy to arrange a conference call with hopes that this may provide additional context for your writings and an opportunity to engage the world's best volunteers. 

 

In June, the Commons and the World Bank will host in collaboration with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars the first International Crisis Congress on June 7th. This event will bring together every country who created a CrisisCamp. More details will be provide on our Google group which you can join here (http://groups.google.com/group/crisiscommons).  We encourage you to join our Google Group and participate in this important event as well as local camps happening near you.

 

Thank you very much for calling out the need to support ICT initiatives. We would be delighted to share our perspectives as well as provide additional context about CrisisCamp and the new development of CrisisCommons communities across the world. 

 

I am available to you for more information and to schedule a follow-up conference call at your convenience. 

 

With Kindest Regards,

 

Heather Blanchard

Co Founder

CrisisCommons 

twitter: @CrisisCommons 

web: www.crisiscommons.org

mobile: +1.703.593.3823 / skype: poplifegirl

email: heather@crisiscommons.org

twitter: @poplifegirl

 

 

#3 

Hello Daniel,

 

I read, with interest, your article on the Haiti ICT response.  Is it too late to request a revision, specificially to the sentence that reads:

 

"Commonly called crowdsourcing, this was a key feature of Ushahidi as well, which used an army of volunteers based in the US to sift through thousands of SMS’s from the ground in order to prioritise and categorise incoming information from the ground."

 

to reflect the work done in the London and Canadian CrisisCamps as well.

 

Thank you,

 

Sara Farmer

 

 

#4

Thanks! Although I'm burnt out up on giving feedback to improve the accuracy of the story (something i feel safe confessing to you 2...); your narrative below in the technology section is roughly 60..70% accurate (higher than the average, congrats!) so it's worth the effort to write this up.

 

Let me start off by saying that outside these deltas I suggest, you have put together a great writeup and I liked the emphasis on the OCHA+5 plus the realization that it is still a small % of people reached in the big picture. I agree with the sense that Haiti was interesting denoting a trendline of potential for ICT;  not yet a proof point of massive impact and efficiency amplification.

 

Some data points 

 

• EIS had been deployed since Dec 2009 and ready to use for the next crisis by TRF; you can check the blogs and indonesia pilot deployment pages online
• InSTEDD tech provided the SMS connectivity of 4636 - to EIS, and EIS then fed all the messages to Ushahidi, also all 'in the first hours'
• Crowdsourcing of translation of messages and geocoding was done a bit in Ushahidi and a bit in EIS until we integrated with Samasource who provided with Crowdflower as a tech provider remote and then in-haiti crowdsourcing folks (for translation, geocoding, categories)
• EIS was sending 60.000 messages per day to survivors with topics re: opening of clinics; prevention of diseases breaking out in camps; security tips for floods and fires in camps; women's rights; HIV treatment availabilities; rape reporting; advertising hotlines (eg child abduction) etc
• in going forward; i'd add a prominent role of telco companies in doing disaster relief coordination (beyond just business continuity). Instedd was the POC for all the 4636 stuff with them and it was a massive (stresful, 24x7) undertaking; their systems were shaky as hell (but waaay better than expectations considering the circumnstances) and we were re-piping the house as water was flowing through the pipes with them all the time. They also deserve a lot more credit in having had a network that was reasonably functional early enough for 4636 to work at all - their NOC folks did heroic efforts (I may have issues with telcos but the 2 large haiti ones get a '6' to '8' in my mind)

 

Corrrections

• the coordination of setup of 4636 was through email , massive skype chats and emails
• Separate opinions of others versus what you present as facts

 

"...remain largely passive recipients of information, having to deal with, amidst significant trauma, competing information on aid delivery and services"

 

I would say EIS actually helped coordinate this significantly (within their influence envelope) you had 6+ agencies (UN ,ministries, large and small NGOs etc) coordinating which messages to give out and from one source (notice the screenshots below the first part of the phrase was 'xyz says...' )

 

• InSTEDD’s Emergency Information Service

EIS is a service by Thomson Reuters Foundation that runs on open source technology built by InSTEDD with TRF's design guidance. 

 

Issues

You say - "It is unclear how the ICTs first deployed in the country will be sustained over the long term, and in particular international crowd-sourced platforms relying on volunteers."

 

You can ask instead of portraying that the unclarity reflects a lack of action. If you want I can tell you about the infrastructure handoff to local developers; capacity building; integration; nice things and challenges of giving this system to local govt and provate institutions to run

 

________________________________________

Eduardo Jezierski, InSTEDD, VP of Engineering

skype: eduardojezierski

twitter: @edjez

mobile: +1 425 269 8378

 

#5

Daniel,

 

Excellent evaluation.  In your study, did you evaluate the effectiveness of the disaster response with regards to communicating with the affected public on where to find medical attention, food, water and shelter? I would be very interested in this area of evaluation. 

 

Thanks

Christine Thompson

Humanity Road, Inc

Mobile 434.774.4515

Twitter @Redcrossmom

http://Haiti.HumanityRoad.org

 

#6

Excerpt from email sent to Daniel Stauffacher by Eric Rasmussen, CEO, InSTEDD on 5 May 2010.

 

Dear Daniel,

 

As you may know, InSTEDD was one of the first teams on the ground after the Haiti earthquake. Nico di Tada and I arrived that first Friday, the 15th, and established a foundation for information flow that has since received more than 90,000 SMS text messages from the Haitian population, and broadcast more than 600,000 SMS messages to our 23,000 (free) SMS subscribers in Port au Prince. We developed the backbone on which Ushahidi, Crowdflower, Open Street Maps, Samasource, the Haitian Red Cross and a dozen other agencies conducted business. We were the core substrate on which everything else in SMS happened those first few weeks but, because we're quite technical and rather quiet, very few people know. 

 

Warm regards,

Eric

 

Download InSTEDD's information brochure on its Haiti response, forwarded by Eric, here.