Local emergency management has a need to know what is happening as fast as possible during incidents. With the increase in mobile "sensors" of information out in the communities we need to increase our ability to receive this information as fast and efficiently as possible for both end users. Most of this has already been developed, but the advancement of mobile applications has provided a great need for redevelopment.
In every community following the disaster people see information that responders can use to reduce the time, cost and the complexity of the response. Having the variety of transmission services (twitter, FB, webpage, voice & of course MOBILE application) for survivors to input critical information never before collected in an efficient way. This will not only serve the public safety and first responders but the community and support their resiliency from disasters.
Having a mobile app on your device prior to an event. Using it as a preparedness tool. Once an event happens, they would be able to use the app as a rapid damage reporting tool to feed the surrounding community but also the first responders.
It would be important for the app to live on the phone and be able to collect information with out the use of connectivity. Then once connectivity is restored, remind the user to push it out.
Three things would be awesome...
1. Provide a place for them to include who they would like to contact in case of an emergency (they enter the people and form of contact, such as mom through text, dad through email)
2. Not relating to emergencies but being able to report pot holes, non functioning street lights, graffiti, inappropriate use of gov't resources.
3. Identify their local emergency management agencies and preparedness information.
there is an app called Oil Reporter that was developed for the gulf oil spill from GeoCommons and CrisisCommons. The code is on GitHub and is available to use as a starting point. We are also using the Ushahidi platform as the framework to aggregate and visualize this information. For an example you can check out (eq.org.nz) Or you can ask me.
There is an ongoing project with local emergency management agencies. I am a regional emergency manager and am working with very limited budget to develop this capability to the whole state of Washington as a way to demonstrate the ability to use these great tools.
Comments
HI Pascal and team, if you
HI Pascal and team, if you are working on this for RHok December 2011, please let me know
Heather L
Hello Heather!! We are
Hello Heather!!
We are working on it. Did some house cleaning and continuing to work on the connection to the ushahidi instance. I am on Skype.
Cheers.
pascal
Add new comment