Mikel MaronJesse Robbins

Disaster Tech

Learn how to turn your emerging technology into

lifesaving technology.

Pattern: Disaster Tech Innovation

1.Disaster

2.Ad-Hoc Adaptation

3.Championship

4.Iterative Improvement

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Hurricane Katrina

‣ 1800+ Dead

‣ Millions displaced

‣ $81+ Billion in Damage

Ad-Hoc Adaptation:

Many Using Gmaps

http://twitter.com/nateritter

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

Problem: Google Maps isn’t Realtime

http://twitter.com/nateritter

Post Katrina

2007

2007

Champion:

OpenStreetMap (OSM)

Iteration:

UN considering OSM•UNJLC Interagency Humanitarian

Common Service

•Building UNSDI-t from the top down

•But now considering OSM for lightweight, open bottom up

Pattern: Disaster Tech Innovation

1.Disaster

2.Ad-Hoc Adaptation

3.Championship

4.Iterative Improvement

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San Diego Wildfires

‣ 900,000+ Evacuees

‣ 500,000 Acres Burned

‣ 1500+ Homes Destroyed

Ad-Hoc Adaptation:

Nate Ritter’s Twitters

http://twitter.com/nateritterhttp://twitter.com/nateritter

Ad-hoc Adaptation:

American Red Cross

http://twitter.com/redcross

Champion:

InSTEDD - SMS GeoChat

Iteration:

InSTEDD

Working with traditional Disaster Agencies to build new tools.

Distributing work as Open Source

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Boxing Day Tsunami

225,000 Dead

Boxing Day Tsunami

225,000 Deaths

Preventable with existing technologies

Ad-Hoc Adaptation:

JRC Tsunami Model

1.USGS GeoRSS earthquake feed

2.EU Commission lightweight tsunami propagation model

3.GeoRSS polygons republished

Ad-Hoc Adaptation:

JRC Tsunami Model

Champion:

GDACS: Global Disaster Alert & Coordination System

http://www.gdacs.org

Iteration:

Pending.

Will these technologies save lives?We won’t know until they do... or don’t.

saving lives means

losing lives

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anti-pattern

Anti-Pattern

1.Disaster

2.Ad-Hoc Adaptation

3.Championship

4.Iterative Improvement

Ad-hoc Adaptation:

Tenacious SearchDistributed analysis of imagery for Search & RescueImages 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.

Public now believes that this is easily repeatable.

Iteration:

Steve Fossett SearchInadequate 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

New Champions: 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.”

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Pattern: Disaster Tech Innovation

1.Disaster

2.Ad-Hoc Adaptation

3.Championship

4.Iterative Improvement

Be Champions

you don’t choose the moment...the moment chooses you.

You only choose how prepared you are when it does...

-Chief Mike Burtch

Mikel Maron - mikel@mapufacture.comJesse Robbins - jesse@oreilly.com