Author: Evert Bopp, founder of Disaster Tech Lab The explosive growth in the use of digital technology and the concept of ubiquitous, ‘always on’ connectivity has not only changed the look of society, but it also is having a huge impact on the area of disaster response. Firstly, increased connectivity and the growth in digital tools have created a new breed of disaster responder – one who responds from a desk in their office, at home or even on the couch. Remote ‘digital responders’ work mostly in the area of GIS/mapping, data gathering and visualisation. All these activities can be done from anywhere in the world and only require a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone and an internet connection. For example, in response to Superstorm Sandy in the US at the end of last year, a global volunteer organisation called CrisisCommons organised CrisisCamps in multiple locations across the globe simultaneously. These events were attended by techies, academics, people from the disaster-response communities and more. Using internet access and software tools, people at these camps worked on a multitude of projects – one of which was locating open hospitals and medical clinics across the affected areas. Another was gathering all details as to where where schools had relocated. All this information was collated, curated and entered into a database that would display the information in an online, interactive map. The mapping software, Crowdmap, was open source and developed by an organisation called Ushahidi. Once online, the data could be used by individual disaster responders and organisation on the ground. Other related activities are so-called ‘hackathons’ such as Hack4Good, Geeks Without Bounds and others. During these events, technologists and coders get together in an informal manner and try to develop software solutions for use in general or specific disasters, all in a very short timeframe. These types of informal collaboration structures allow people to volunteer a day, an evening or even just a couple of hours to assist disaster-response work in a meaningful way. [login type="readmore"] SOCIAL MEDIA [caption id="attachment_5208" align="alignright" width="600"] Moore, Oklahoma after the 2013 hurricane[/caption] Another digital development that has hugely impacted on disaster response is social media, both as a tool as well as a source of relevant data. Everyone working in disaster response knows that data is king. Having access to up-to-date, verified data allows you the respond to the right location, in the right amount of time and in the required capacity. Social media is rapidly becoming a major tool for accessing this data. With the huge number of people using Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social media channels, it has almost become the norm for people to share on-the-ground information about disasters through social media. Since the advent of hashtags (keywords preceded with the ‘#’ symbol), it has become very easy to track social media content by topic. Using these hashtags, combined with the geo-location information tagged to social media messages, it becomes possible to gain a very thorough insight in the scale, size and type of a disaster without actually having to dispatch responders to locations. Following the earthquake in Japan on 11 March 2011, the number of tweets sent from the Tokyo area reached 1,200 per minute shortly after the quake. By the end of the day, more than 246,075 Twitter posts using the term ‘earthquake’ had been posted.

Software tools such as GeoFeedia allow you to search social media by keyword, hashtag, location or a combination of these. In the response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, volunteer groups such as Humanity Road monitored and filtered social media for relevant data – not only to build an eagle-eye view of the disaster, but also the find and respond to individual requests for assistance.

[caption id="attachment_5207" align="alignright" width="720"] Haiti Command Centre after the earthquake[/caption] On one occasion, a tweet sent out by a person in Port au Prince who had a broken leg was picked up by a Humanity Road volunteer in the US. They relayed it to the US Coast Guard, which had a vessel offshore in Haiti. The Coast Guard responded by dispatching a helicopter and the casualty was located and evacuated to the ship for further treatment, all within a very short timeframe. If used correctly, social media puts a huge amount of relevant data at the fingertips of the incident commander, allowing him or her to react much quicker and in a more precise way. For great insights in this area, it is advised to read or view some of Prof Kate Starbird’s work. She teaches at Stanford University and has done extensive studies in this area. Most of her research is available online for free. PUBLIC INFORMATION TOOL Another way in which social media is utilised is as a public information tool. Public information officers (PIOs) can use Twitter and Facebook to quickly disseminate incident relevant information to people in affected areas. Again using hashtags, the PIO can disseminate the information to a large or small targeted audience. The use of social media in this way has seen such huge growth that it has become standard practice with disaster-response organisations, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Community Emergency Response Teams and National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster in the USA. It is now filtering into the rest of the world. Patrice Cloutier in Canada has written articles on this that are worth reading. Finally, we are also seeing digital technology being used on the ground in disaster-affected areas. In the past, a two-way handheld radio and a notebook were standard tools but nowadays, almost every responder carries a smartphone. In addition, there has been a huge growth in the use of laptops and tablets in the last five years. Realising the potential of these devices, there has been a raft of software applications and mobile apps developed for use in a variety of disaster situations. Incident reporting, mapping and surveying are some of the areas for which a wide range of digital tools are available. A lot of these tools are being developed by non-profit organisations or by groups of coders on an ad-hoc basis.

All these devices require some sort of connectivity to function and that is where organisations such as Disaster Tech Lab come into play. We are one of the few organisations globally that specialise in providing so-called ‘hastily formed networks’ in disaster areas. These network serve not only as means of communications for responding organisations, but also provide much-needed communications tools to community groups and local residents.

[caption id="attachment_5204" align="alignright" width="960"] Superstorm Sandy Command Centre, 2012[/caption] Our core network is build around a WiFi mesh using Aruba Networks routers. These routers auto-detect each other and create a self-healing mesh network. If one or more nodes develop a fault or go offline, the network will reconfigure itself automatically. This kind of redundancy is essential in the type of environment where we operate. For backhaul connectivity to the internet, we use VSAT terminals, but recent deployments in the US have led to an increase of 4G/long-term evolution as means of backhaul, where available. The reason why WiFi is used as a core technology is a simple one – WiFi has the largest number of client devices currently being used globally. Almost every single smartphone, laptop and tablet has WiFi and hence can use these networks. WiFi also is an unlicensed spectrum, avoiding any spectrum licensing issues when deploying abroad. An indication of the need for such connectivity was proven during our deployment following Superstorm Sandy at the end of 20102, when we not only provided connectivity to local residents and disaster-response organisations, but also to such organisations as the Red Cross, FEMA, the New York Police Department and the New York Fire Department. None of these had the capacity to provide this themselves, but urgently needed connectivity to an IP-based network. Having IP-based network connectivity meant that voice, data and video (and in some cases radio) could be routed over the same network. At the moment, we are deployed in the greater Oklahoma City area, where we are assisting in the relief effort there following multiple tornado hits. While the damage caused was relatively contained, the areas which had been hit were completely devastated, with all infrastructure destroyed. This time, we again provided internet access and built WiFi networks for other responding organisations. [caption id="attachment_5206" align="alignright" width="640"] Evert Bopp speaking at a FEMA meeting in the White House[/caption] We have just finished building a ten-seater ‘internet café’ in a church, which has been used as a large disaster-response co-ordination centre. This location had processed over 20 large trucks of supplies, as well as over 5,000 volunteers. A lack of internet access not only hampered their work, but was also severely missed by the thousands of volunteers as well as local residents. One of the big issues again was that registration with FEMA to receive support was only possible through the FEMA website, something rather difficult for family which did not even have a house to which they could return. Our facilities allow people to register for support services, but also allows them to contact friends and family using social media channels, email or Skype. In conclusion, it has become obvious that the role of digital technology will only increase – especially with technology giants such as Google, Cisco and Microsoft working on developing tools for use in disaster response environments or providing technology support services during major disasters. For more information about Disaster Tech Lab, its projects and deployments, see www.disastertechlab.org.