On October 17th, the College of IST welcomed Mr. Edward Happ to speak with the college's brand new SRA 397A Crisis Informatics class. Mr. Happ is currently the Global CIO of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). He is also the Chairman of NetHope, a collaborative humanitarian organization focused on information technologies and communications, and a past CIO of Save the Children. In 2007, Mr. Happ was listed in eWeek's CIO Insight and Baseline magazine as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in IT and one of the Top 100 CIOs.
Mr. Happ started his discussion out covering many facts that we know about disasters and crises through all the years of research. Mainly, no matter how much people prepare and plan for serious situations, it is guaranteed that there will be a sense of chaos as people lose their bearings. We need to learn how to utilize time so that we can move from a stage of chaos and disorientation to actual response. We cannot afford to waste mistakes. People can learn the right things to do by observing what didn't work and acting upon it. It is a major fact that survivors of an immediate disaster are the first responders and have the capability to help, organize, and command situations until authorities arrive. This temporary skill set can be strongly utilized and is a topic soon to be found in the continuing development of humanitarian assistance.
Technology is now a major factor to aid organizations, but the overload of data from places like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare can quickly become problematic. When any major event strikes, people tend to grab their cell phones or other electronic devices to either look up information on what just happened or to talk about what happened in the open-source domain. Organizations like Ushahidi and NetHope both used incoming data to sort through communications threads, but actions are hard to make when there is an information overload. Mr. Happ commented that social media has become a "poke in the eye" to the humanitarian sector, since humanitarian organizations really need to learn how to cross the street into a future of integrating technology and the concept of social knowledge. Cell phones are available everywhere, and anybody can become an information sensor. Combined, multitudes of reliable sensors can provide aid organizations a direct, accurate look into a disaster to develop credible progression strategies for reconstruction and development.
Some concluding thoughts from Mr. Happ spoke about the potential solutions that exist all around us concerning the problems and miscommunications that exist in current aid systems. Everything in the humanitarian community has to be done better, faster, more efficiently, and cheaper than previous methods. He suggested that students around the world should be experimenting with the tech around them. He stressed that we should not be afraid of failure, because growing a tolerance to failure will help us grow and move to the right solutions with new procedures, innovations, and new answers to today's humanitarian crises. Someone somewhere within organizations like the Red Cross, Save the Children, and NetHope has the answers and solutions that the world needs today. It will become the responsibility of these big NGOs to search out and find these solutions. Innovation can come from anywhere and according to Mr. Happ, "80% of solutions will get the job done to a reasonable point." Harvesting these technological solutions and discoveries will become a key to the future of humanitarian organizations over the next decade.
Collaboration is no longer an option in the humanitarian aid community. Aid organizations need to work together in this age of information, and failing to do so is far from being in their best interests. I'd like to thank Mr. Edward Happ for joining us. It was a pleasure to hear him speak and for anyone that would like more information on him, some links can be found below.
Please join the IST's Crisis Informatics final speaker session with Dr. Patrick Meier, the Director of Crisis Mapping at Ushahidi and co-founder of the International Network of Crisis Mappers. He will be joining us via webchat in IST Room 208 at 7PM on October 24th. We hope to see you there!
Like you and Edward Happ pointed out, the survivors of the disaster or incident are the first responders to the event. This being true and will always remain true, the survivors who are usually regular citizens with no training, need to be educated at least a little bit in order to properly react to the situation. People need to learn about past disasters in order to learn about them and learn what people did wrong and what people did right. However, the problem is that people have a sense that oh it won’t happen to me, I am invincible. The harsh reality of the matter is that it could very easily happen to you, it just a matter of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. So, people need to study and become educated on all the things that can happen.
ReplyDeleteThe statement that was made that the open source technologies such as twitter, cell phones and facebook are like a “poke in the eye” to the humanitarians is very true. They really need to adapt to the new times and learn how to utilize the new technologies in a appropriate and efficient way in order to get the job done quickly and save as many lives as possible. I mean wouldn’t it make sense that we would do anything in our power to saves as many lives as we possibly can? We need to make steps forward and keep up with the times if we ever want to improve. The “old school” way is not always the best way to get things done.
It was interesting how Mr. Happ viewed the issues associated with social media. As you mentioned, he explained the rise of social media as a “poke in the eye” for humanitarian organizations. He followed that up by saying that a small “poke in the eye.” Metaphorically speaking I would agree. Humanitarian organizations need to figure out how to incorporate social media into their “workflow.” Based off its ability to allow massive quantities of people all over the world to communicate, many believe that social media help can improve disaster response. The key word is “can.” The trick is finding out how. As you mentioned, Mr. Happ talked about the importance of accepting solutions that are good enough. I agree, particularly when referring to non-profit organization’s who provide little funding to their IT sector. However, accepting solutions as “good enough” seems like it could be pretty challenging. Afterall, the consequences of accepting something as good enough and then finding out that it actually isn’t, could be severe. In order to minimize such risk, it is important to be able to clearly determine the effects that every possible solution could have. It also probably be a good idea to construct solutions based off of evidence gathered from previous solutions that have been considered to be a success. Finally, I agree that failure should not be something to fear. However, that is a whole lot easer said than done. IT departments with small budgets really need to make what little funding they have count. I am sure that organizations pay close attention to competitions like Imagine Cup, in order to get an idea for what sorts of emerging technologies may be worth incorporating into their business processes.
ReplyDeleteFirst off the on site survivors of a disaster or incident are invaluable. They are the first on the scene and have a greater understanding of the area affected than we can ever hope to have unless we live there ourselves. I think that we do need to train them a little on what to do right after an incident occurs. I also think we need to better incorporate their inherent knowledge of the area better. This can also narrow the gap between the chaos of the immediate event and the set up of humanitarian organizations and make the transition more smooth.
ReplyDeleteI think we need to let social media keep poking humanitarian organizations in the eye until it scratches the cornea because clearly though they see it now they are not seeing it as intently as they need to. They have to find a way to incorporate social media and other forms of technology immediately. It should be priority number 1. As for the 80% solutions I would take them right now they would be good enough and help well over 100 %
Your last point I completely agree with. Collaboration is not an option it is a necessity. It should have been a necessity long before now but now it is imperative.
Hey Tony,
ReplyDeleteIt is undoubtedly a part of human nature than in a time of crisis we feel a sense of chaos as you suggested in your blog. Regardless, I agree with you and Mr. Happ when you both say that training people in disaster prone areas how to respond to disasters would be of high benefit. Not only because less chaos would ensue but also because survivors are indeed the first responders in a crisis. Having the true first responders to disaster and crisis situations be trained, in some way, on what do to and how to do it will allow for better recovery and relief efforts from outside organizations when they arrive.
I definitely agree when you say that data overload from Facebook, Twitter, and similar social media sites are problematic in a crisis situation. Not only the data overload causes a problem, but the veracity of the data itself also causes a potential problem. While some people post things on social media sites saying they truthfully need help, others post similar things but have bad intentions. So a major problem develops right there… do we trust the postings on social media sites, or don’t we?
All in all, I loved your post. I thought that it was very informative and covered Mr. Happ’s presentation thoroughly. Great job Tony!
The idea of the survivor's of the disaster of the first responders is one that I had not really considered prior to listening to Mr. Happ. While these survivors offer a certain skill set, I am not sure they are prepared to act as the first responders to a disaster. Most of these survivors are still trying to get over the immediate aftermath of the disaster, not to work to begin recovery efforts. While some within the community would be prepared to handle this responsibility, I believe that a majority of people would not be. Most survivors would not be actively looking to organize and command a situation, instead they would be searching for loved one trapped by the disaster.
ReplyDeleteOne of the other things you talked about is the overload of information that is available information to responders through organizations like Ushahidi and NetHope. That would be true if organizations actively used this information, but instead they rely on the traditional methods and ignore outside of information. Instead of having too much information, these organizations do not have enough information since they only utilize the information that they have personally gathered.
The idea of a person as an information sensor
will only continue to grow as people become more connected. Cell Phones today have more computing power than the entirety of the Space Program in 1969. At the current rate of technological growth, our cell phones are only going to become more powerful. The user will only grow as an information sensor as they can take a picture of a disaster, tweet that picture and then mark that location on a crisis map. All of that is possible with the technology today. Imagine what cell phones will look like in 10- 15 years. At that point, a person with a cell phone will perhaps be the strongest information sensor available.