respond, reuse, recycle

http://wiki.crisiscommons.org/ @crisiscamp [email protected]

Respond, Reuse, Recycle

Technology response to Humanitarian Crises

- learning how to crowdsource efficiently


Crisis Commons

“Local volunteering for global crisis management and disaster relief”

Global grassroots network

of technology professionals, domain experts, translators and first responders

collaborating

to improve technology and practice

for humanitarian crisis management and disaster relief


Humanitarian TechnologyInformation gathering, coordination and sharing to assist in

humanitarian crises

Goals: • Get crisis responders and communities the information

and help that they need before, during and after a crisis

Outputs: • Maps. Mash-ups. Alerts. Information links (including

translators and sneakerware). Expertise. More people found, fed, sheltered, connected, empowered etc.


Humanitarian Technology Communities

Crowd Informers

• CrisisCommons

• Ushahidi / SwiftRiver

• Sahana

• OpenStreetMap

• Louisiana Bucket Brigade

• The Extraordinaries

• CrisisMappers.net

NGO/Local Coordinators

• UNOCHA - reliefweb

• CDAC

• Diaspora

Tool Developers

• RHOK

• Aid Information Challenge

• ICT4Peace

• Ushahidi

• OpenStreetMap

• Sahana

• CrisisCommons

• InSTEDD


Humanitarian Technology CommunitiesSustain: OSM, Sahana, Ushahidi

– Communities built around specific software– Tool & information coordination during crises– Continuous tool development

Surge: CrisisCommons– Information support for specific crises, e.g. Haiti– Build new tools for specific crises, e.g. Oil Reporter– CrisisCamps – Continuous (people, process, tool) development for future crises

Innovate: Hackathons– RHOK = competition to create the ‘best’ crisis response software– AIC = creating audit trail for UK/UN/World Bank aid funding– 1 or 2-day events


Community RootsBarcamp.org• ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn

in an open environment.• intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from

participants who are the main actors of the event

Hackathon• “collaborative computer programming… many people come together

to hack on what they want to, how they want to - with little to no restrictions on direction or goal of the programming”

Crowdsourcing and citizen journalism• Lots of people (communities) helping individually with a larger task

Agile open-source, open-data development• fast, accessible, efficient community coding


How it all started...2004 onwards: OpenStreetMap and other tools being used in US, UK...

Late 2004: Sahana developed in Sri Lanka after Indian Ocean Tsunami. Then used in Pakistan, Philippines, Indonesia...

2008: Ushahidi developed in Kenya to map citizen journalist reports of violence after Kenyan elections. Then used in South Africa, DR Congo, Gaza, India, Pakistan…

June 2009: CrisisCommons founded in Washington DC after a tweetup by a group of technologists and communications professionals who wanted to use their skills to help prepare for and react to crisis situations – both at home and around the world

2009: CDAC formed after a discussion in a bar...


How Haiti Changed Everything

Late 2009• First CrisisCamp spawns RHOK and Aid Information Challenge• RHOK0 produces People Finder• First Aid Information Challenge - overseas aid data starts to be

available• UN, CDAC, CrisisCommons etc all plan to develop information

strategies and crisis response communities during 2010

Jan 2010• Haiti earthquake. Everyone ‘just does it’• Massive and coordinated crowdsourced response - lives saved

through tweets, texts and up-to-date maps• Massive not-very-coordinated on-the-ground response

July 2010 - Reflection and consolidation. Collecting lessons learnt and working out where to go from here.


What makes a suitable Crisis?

• Issues– Too little information: Haiti maps– Too much information: Tweak the Tweet

• Infrastructure– Local infrastructure is overwhelmed: People Finder– Some information channels exist: SMS, USBs to Haiti

• Stages– Mitigation: landslide predictor– Preparedness: OSM worldwide– Response: Ushahidi– Recovery: Haiti Amps Network– Sustainability: CDAC, Karl and Carel’s project


CrisisCommons.org


Haiti Earthquake

• Earthquake January 12th 2010 • Response within hours: CrisisCamps around the world • OpenStreetMap, Ushahidi, Sahana, CrisisCommons, NGOs, Haitian

diaspora, Haitians working together


What does a CrisisCamp do?

Connects peoples’ skills & time to improve crisis information tools and responses

This supports:• Crisis affected communities• Organisations in the field (international NGOs, local organisations)• Crisis communities (Ushahidi, OpenStreetMap, Sahana etc)• Organisations in the space (mapping, telecomms etc)

A CrisisCamp links people who want to help with places that they can


Haiti CrisisCamps


CrisisCamp London


Handling “too little information”: Maps


Handling “too little information”Telecommunications team

• Kept comms going to/from/in Haiti

Ushahidi

• Connected people in need with emergency responders, via the US team

• Biggest moment: lots. Guiding responders to people who would otherwise have died.

We Have, We Need

• "Craigslist" of self-identified needs and requests by non-profits assisting in Haiti relief operations

• Built in days

• Biggest moment: getting generator fuel to a hospital 20 minutes after they tweeted for help

Haiti Hospital Capacity Finder

• Listed free beds in field hospitals


Handling “too much information”

People Finder

• Provided a single place to look: who’s missing, who’s looking, how many

• Input from databases, SMS, tweets, info handed to NGOs

Information for Radio Broadcasts

• Searching for and organising news about Haiti

Tweak the Tweet

• Adding tweet codes to reduce the information overload

• Feed into Ushahidi and Sahana


Moving from “them and us”

Empowering anyone with a phone to report and request information

• Haiti project 4636 - SMS to volunteer to Ushahidi link

Breaking the language barrier

• Language projects and Haitian Diaspora

• Connecting translators to locals, coordinators, responders

Reconnecting local information infrastructure

• Information for Radio Broadcast

• Karl and Carel’s Project

Connecting low-bandwidth users to global information sources

• Low-bandwidth ReliefWeb projects

• Low-bandwidth Ushahidi

• Low-bandwidth CDAC


Other Crisis Responses since JanuaryChile Earthquake

• CrisisCommons Chile team responded

• CrisisCommons Argentina and Columbia helped

China Earthquake

• Chinese Diaspora responded with camps and translation

US Oil Spill

• Louisiana Bucket Brigade used Ushahidi instance

• US team developed Oil Reporter app

Icelandic Ash Cloud

• UK team started news and twitter watches

Response watches that didn’t turn into crise responses

• Earthquakes, floods, tsunamis


Preparing for Future Crises

Expert support to crisis coordinators

• CDAC website reviews and prototypes

• UNOCHA Reliefweb reviews and low-bandwidth prototypes

Preparing information for crisis-prone areas

• Populating CrisisWiki with information useful for crisis responders

• Populating OpenStreetMap

Cross-Community development support

• SahanaPy software development

• Ushahidi software development

• London expertise provision: User Experience and low-bandwidth software


CrisisCommons Lessons Learnt• Have your infrastructure ready. In the beginning was organised chaos: 30

camps, 8 countries, 5 languages, 2000 campers, 10000 translators, one project list and one country in serious trouble.

• Do what you can with the resources you have. Camps picked projects from the list - which emptied quickly. Not all of these projects were completed. Or started.

• Check if it’s been done before. PeopleFinder replaced 8 main databases. People redid map sections because the updated areas weren’t tagged (now fixed).

• Coordinate. Real-time coordination is important but neglected. It’s difficult across timezones and languages: we needed a dedicated operations centre but didn’t know what it was.

• Load up on leaders. Our bottleneck was project managers. The virtual camp was difficult to maintain without a dedicated leader.

• Timezones confuse almost everyone. A simple “what time is it in” spreadsheet saves a lot of pain and missed-by-an-hour meetings.


CrisisCommons Lessons LearntNot all projects made it. Common causes were:• No end user buy-in. You can build it, but they won’t come if you

don’t involve them. Especially true for local communities.• No team, or no team buy-in. Leadership matters, and projects need

both people and management.• Short-term team. It’s difficult to sustain long-term development.

When the adrenalin wears off, people drift away.• Implementation too slow. Be agile: build something, build it fast, get

it used, get feedback, repeat.

Many projects did make it• Partnership is key: sponsors, users, developers, communities• Good business analysis and systems engineering are key• Ownership and leadership are key• In a crisis, speed matters more than beauty


RHOK


Using those Lessons Learnt: RHOK

RHOK reused CrisisCommons experience in coordinating and running world wide projects, camps and experts

Projects

• Prepared in advance: did up-front business analysis on real-life NGO and local problems

• Reused CrisisCommons project experts, e.g. UAVs and Haiti Amps Network

• Reused Haiti connections to provide subject matter experts

Infrastructure

• Reused CrisisCamp organisers for RHOKs in Sydney, Washington etc

• Reused CrisisCommons structure for RHOK wikisite: built in 1 day

• Ran continuous operations centre – watching RHOK information feeds– Linking RHOK0 to RHOK1 teams (PeopleFinder), country to country (Turquilt,

People Finder, wikis) and team to team– Used a timezone spreadsheet!


RHOK to CrisisCamp

• Tools for Haiti

– PeopleFinder tool was built in RHOK0

• Help with aerial imaging problems

– not enough high-res data for OpenStreetMaps

– OilSpill data explosion

– Turquilt project: UAV video mosaicing solution

• Help with CrisisCamp Projects

– Nairobi effort and expertise on Haiti Amps Network

– CrisisWiki interface improvements… and many others

• Tool innovation

– Landslide prediction software


What still needs to be done?

Tools

• Big gaps in NGO coordination and situation awareness

Preparation

• Handle UK crisis information vulnerabilities

• OpenStreetMaps for crisis-prone areas

• CrisisWiki entries for everywhere

Organisation

• How to efficiently build and maintain the tools needed in future crises

• Without stifling innovation and the OpenSource spirit

• How to keep this local but global


What Next for the Communities?

OpenStreetMap, Ushahidi, Sahana etc

• Well established technology communities

• Already global

• Already building strong links e.g. to GrassrootsMapping and UAVs

GrassrootsMapping, Louisiana Bucket Brigade

• Good models, but no UK equivalent - can we build one?

CrisisCommons CrisisCongress 15th July 2010

• Idea: CrisisCommons as ‘surge’ coordinator

• Idea: CrisisCamps to prepare people for local crises

• Idea: continue VirtualCrisisCamp “3 hour tasks”

• Idea: RHOK as ideas generator for CrisisCommons

• Choice: continue or stop London CrisisCamps


Volunteer Skills Needed

•Programming•Telecommunications•Mapping•User Experience•Communications & PR•Translation

•Local knowledge•Relief work experience•IT project management•Facilitation and admin•Enthusiasm•Making tea!


How to get involvedGive some free hours

• http://www.crisiswiki.org/

• http://www.theextraordinaries.org/

• http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/

• http://wiki.crisiscommons.org/

• AIC, RHOK, CrisisCamp events

Help develop tools

• Ushahidi: http://www.ushahidi.com/join

• Sahana: http://wiki.sahanafoundation.org/doku.php

• OpenStreetMap: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Develop

• CrisisCommons: http://wiki.crisiscommons.org/

• Others: http://wiki.crisiscommons.org/wiki/Other_Crisis_Relief_Communities

Get help and tools• http://cdac-haiti.org/en/ - information response community

• http://wiki.crisiscommons.org/wiki/Crisis_response_tools


The EndPoints to take away• It’s not “us and them” anymore, it’s “us and us”• You can help - or hinder - from anywhere. Your choice:• Getting the right information to the right people at the right time saves

lives• Overwhelming people with information doesn’t• Sometimes your tech skills can help people you’ll never meet,

immediately and in ways you couldn’t imagine• Sometimes it takes longer, but it’s no less valuable

Thank you for listening• Any questions?

respond, reuse, recycle

Documents