Technologies for Disaster Management

Editor's Notes

• #5: Disaster Assistance and Assessment Dashboard (DAAD) from Appallicious visualizes nearby environmental hazards, and allows local government to identify community resources to aid in recovery. For a product demo, email info@appallicious.com.
• #6: Disaster Assistance and Assessment Dashboard (DAAD) from Appallicious visualizes nearby environmental hazards, and allows local government to identify community resources to aid in recovery. For a product demo, email info@appallicious.com.
• #8: Location-Based Social Media Geofeedia is a new location-based social media monitoring, analysis and engagement platform where government agencies and businesses can quickly retrieve social media happening at locations important to them. Geofeedia’s patented technologies allow you to search and monitor areas as large as a city or as small as a single building using Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Picasa, and Flickr.StatusGeofeedia is launching an advanced analytics dashboard that enables a variety of advanced analytical options.  In addition, Geofeedia's API is operational and can support integrations into larger, more established platforms. Geofeedia has received high praise for the real-time, contextual data it provided during Hurricane Sandy, Boston Marathon bombings, Aseana Airlines crash at SFO, and dozens of other public safety response and law enforcement efforts. 
• #11: [Open Source] Geographic Work Queuing and Tasking System GeoQ is an open source geographic tasking system that allows teams to collect geographic data across a large area, but manage the work in smaller geographic regions. Large areas can be quickly broken up into small 1km squares and assigned to a team. System transparency informs all groups about workflow to avoid duplication of effort.   Additional Information The GeoQ software was developed at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) as a joint effort between NGA and The MITRE Corporation. The government has "unlimited rights" and is releasing this software into the public domain to increase the impact of government investments by providing developers with the opportunity to take things in new directions. You can copy, modify, combine with other software, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.
• #13: Disaster Relief Mapping Crisis Cleanup's open source platform has the ability to coordinate tens of thousands of volunteers from hundreds of organizations to thousands of sites after a disaster in a non-hierarchical collaborative environment. Project StatusThe open source and free platform has been deployed to 5 disasters affecting 6 states affecting 7,288 families.  It helped over 100 organizations coordinate over 30,000 volunteers. Here is an intro videoand a training video. You can also demo it here.  
• #14: Gamers to the Rescue The Internet Response League (IRL) enables and encourages video gamers to support response efforts by helping organize and make actionable the overwhelming amounts of data generated by disasters. IRL taps into the massive pool of individuals playing video games to help out. Status IRL is developing a browser-based plugin that enables individuals to help tag pictures during disasters. Ultimately, this concept will be fully integrated with cooperating game-platforms.
• #15: Lantern Live is a mobile app that allows users to report the operational status of local gas stations, find fuel, and look up power outage maps from local utilities, while also accessing useful tips and guidelines. Lantern Live is available for Android at Google Play:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gov.doe.lanternlive
• #25: Twilio is open sourcing a Rapid Response Kit for developers to stand up communications solutions during an emergency response, featuring SMS-powered volunteer signup and survivor surveys, flexible push and pull conference calling, and phone tree configuration. Users can start with $500 free credit by visiting Twilio.org to clone or download the Rapid Response Kit.
• #26: Connect Your World  FrontlineSMS is a free desktop software created to lower barriers to positive social change using mobile technology. By leveraging basic tools already available to most organizations, including those in ‘last-mile’ settings — computers and low-cost modems — FrontlineSMS enables instantaneous two-way communication to any mobile handset. It’s easy to implement, simple to operate, and best of all, the software is free; you only pay for the messages you send. Additional Information A web-based premium version is also available for $10/month.  The system requires little set up and is easy for end-users to use.  
• #28: Nationwide Broadband Data Network for Public Safety FirstNet is the first nationwide, high-speed broadband data network dedicated to public safety. FirstNet will be a force multiplier, increasing collaboration to help emergency responders save more lives, solve more crimes and keep our communities safer.  Using a nationwide spectrum license, FirstNet will provide a single platform for daily public safety communications. FirstNet will be built to public-safety grade standards using Long-Term Evolution (LTE) wireless technology, the most advanced available today. FirstNet will deliver greater coverage, capacity, connectivity, cybersecurity and resiliency than the current multiplicity of diverse public safety wireless systems. Police, firefighters and emergency medical service personnel will still rely on their land mobile radio (LMR) networks for mission-critical voice with FirstNet providing high-speed data, supplemental commercial grade voice and eventually mission-critical LTE voice. FirstNet also will support the integration of LMR networks, even after LTE voice is provided. Additional Information Instead of having to rely on Verizon, AT&T or Sprint to support data sharing, FirstNet provides its own dedicated opt-in broadband data network for public safety. The network will operate with a great focus on being resilient. FirstNet, however, operates on different frequencies than the main wireless carriers and future mobile devices will need to have radios that support those frequencies. 
• #29: Local Distributed Network for Disaster Relief LDLN (pronounced "Landline") In the wake of a natural disaster, the physical infrastructure of any affected region is compromised, leading to a severe crippling of the information and communications infrastructure. This leads to an inability to efficiently gather feedback from local communities in need, and ultimately to a poor distribution of resources and a lack of data needed to foster resilience going forward.Additional Information In short, the goal is to empower communities that would otherwise be “in the dark” to express their needs. Low-cost, low-powered computers act as information hubs to empower people moving back and forth to act as communication lines, supplementing the compromised physical infrastructure.Raspberry Pi devices on the ground allow automated syncing from offline mobile apps that can be used to collect information from survivors by an NGO field rep. Once information is recorded to the hub, daisy-chained Pi hubs sync to the Internet and can integrate with any third-party data source such as Twitter,SalvaVida, or Bangon API, to name a few examples around Typhoon Haiyan. LDLN, pronounced "Landline", is initially developed from NextDayBetter's Typhoon Haiyan Relief Hackathon in November 2013. As winners of the hackathon, we are now working to further develop our product with Geeks Without Bounds, as well as the open source development community.
• #30: We’ve spent a great deal of time making sure that the power system in the BRCK can handle everything from reverse voltage and surge protection. If the power goes out, it will work for 8-hours in full power mode, and much longer if in a lower power state. The smart-power design means that you can charge the BRCK from a solar panel, car battery, your computer or the wall and not worry about burning it out.
• #32: Open Humanitarian Initiative Revolutionizing Information Sharing The Open Humanitarian Initiative (OHI) strives to revolutionize how information is shared in humanitarian response by engaging nongovernmental organizations, academic institutions, private sector technology companies, donors and governments in a shared vision that advocates for open data. OHI launched in early 2013 and has three main components: 1) The Initiative, 2) The Alliance, and 3) The Fund. Additional InformationOHI focuses on enabling better information flow in times of crisis. It has been widely shown that in a crisis, getting timely access to information is a matter of life and death. Despite efforts to improve, the flow of information among aid agencies and with the people they help has consistently been overlooked. Affected communities have also been left without proper access to information and ability to influence the response. Throughout this ambitious five-year initiative, humanitarian responders and affected communities will immediate benefit by, being provided much-needed information to: enhance situational awareness, analysis, and decision-making; reduce response time and make response more effective; provide better outcomes and reduce costs through reduced duplications of effort
• #33: Historical and Real-time Workforce & Population Information for Disasters OnTheMap for Emergency Management is a free public data tool from the U.S. Census Bureau that provides an intuitive web-based interface for accessing U.S. population and workforce statistics, in real time, for areas being affected by natural disasters. The tool allows users to easily retrieve reports containing detailed workforce, population, and housing characteristics for hurricanes, floods, wildfires, winter storms, and federal disaster declaration areas.  OnTheMap includes historical as well as real-time information and allows you to answer your own research questionswithout the help of a technical specialist. The tool has a lot uses for disaster management planning and response operations. More options for visualizing, sharing and exporting information will be coming in Version 4 around June 2014.  You can already export your custom findings easily to your GIS software via a KML file.   Additional Information To provide users this information for rapidly changing hazard event areas, OnTheMap for Emergency Management automatically incorporates real time data updates from the National Weather Service’s (NWS) National Hurricane Center, Department of Interior (DOI), Department of Agriculture (DOA), and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
• #34: ShakeMap and ShakeCast are post-earthquake information tools for rapid situational awareness, using data from seismic monitoringsystems to help emergency managers gauge an earthquake’s impact and plan response activities. These tools can be found at earthquake.usgs.gov.
• #35: The three elements include repository, analytics, and standards.
• #37: Getting Medicine to Patients in Times of Emergency Rx Open is a powerful online tool that maps the location of open pharmacies during disasters using Google Maps, and also shows which pharmacies are closed and those whose status is unknown. This tool not only helps citizens locate open pharmacies following a major emergency, it also provides this critical information to government officials who need to quickly understand an emergency's impact on public health in a disaster area. Additional InformationRx Response, the creators of Rx Open, have activated for several disasters in the past few years, including Hurricane Sandy. The powerful map is quite accurate as it automatically identifies pharmacy status by checking whether or not the phar macy is filling prescriptions.  
• #39: Getting Medicine to Patients in Times of Emergency Rx Open is a powerful online tool that maps the location of open pharmacies during disasters using Google Maps, and also shows which pharmacies are closed and those whose status is unknown. This tool not only helps citizens locate open pharmacies following a major emergency, it also provides this critical information to government officials who need to quickly understand an emergency's impact on public health in a disaster area. Additional InformationRx Response, the creators of Rx Open, have activated for several disasters in the past few years, including Hurricane Sandy. The powerful map is quite accurate as it automatically identifies pharmacy status by checking whether or not the phar macy is filling prescriptions.  
• #40: Getting Medicine to Patients in Times of Emergency Rx Open is a powerful online tool that maps the location of open pharmacies during disasters using Google Maps, and also shows which pharmacies are closed and those whose status is unknown. This tool not only helps citizens locate open pharmacies following a major emergency, it also provides this critical information to government officials who need to quickly understand an emergency's impact on public health in a disaster area. Additional InformationRx Response, the creators of Rx Open, have activated for several disasters in the past few years, including Hurricane Sandy. The powerful map is quite accurate as it automatically identifies pharmacy status by checking whether or not the phar macy is filling prescriptions.  
• #46: Information well managed by technology helps improve your “SA” and “state of knowledge” to make better decision and take action.
• #47: Technology itself will not solve your problems. The technology needs to fit into an integrated and well-thought out conceptual system. Where are technologies best leveraged? This was focused on new and emerging technologies. MIX of commercial, open source, and government data and applications useful to your operations.
• #49: Real-time Public Health Modeling & Decision Support  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has partnered with a research team at Georgia Institute of Technology to produce a modeling tool to help health personnel with the challenge of mass dispensing of medical supplies in an emergency. The software, known as RealOpt©, has decision support capabilities for modeling and optimizing the public health infrastructure for hazardous emergency response. Use Case Your city has 48 hours to vaccinate every man, woman and child to prevent a dangerous pandemic. Where do you put the clinics, how many health care workers will you need and how do you get 2 million people to a finite number of emergency clinics?  Additional Information The real-time capability of RealOpt© means that users can enter different parameters into the system and obtain results very quickly. This rapid computational time of RealOpt© facilitates analysis of "what-if" scenarios, thus it serves as an invaluable tool for planning and reconfigurations.
• #50: Sahana Software Open Source Disaster Technology The Sahana Software Foundation develops free and open source software and provide services that help solve concrete problems and bring efficiencies to disaster response coordination between governments, aid organizations, civil society and the survivors themselves.  Additional Information Sahana Eden is a flexible humanitarian platform with a rich feature set which can be rapidly customized to adapt to existing processes and integrate with  existing systems to provide effective solutions for critical humanitarian needs management either prior to or during a crisis.  Sahana Vesuvius is focused on the disaster preparedness and response needs of the medical community, contributing to family reunification and assisting with hospital triage, as well as client and staff registration capabilities for temporary sheltering and other emergency operations.
• #51: Volunteer Management App for Emergency Responders  Deploy Pro, developed by East Texas CERT Operations Manager Mike Ross, allows users to submit GPS locations, photos, voice recordings, and notes to incident command and contains first aid and general reference information for CERT volunteers. The app uses a GPS-based interactive map to display the positions of team members using color-coded pins. In addition, the program contains a triage victim counter and CERT reference guide for use in the field. Additional Information Deploy Pro is aimed at CERT organizations, but any group or individual can download the app. One of the key upcoming features he’s developing is a team building function so each CERT or group can set itself up as an organization within the app.
• #52: Emergency Logistics Software  DOCK24, Inc. has an emergency logistics software (eGASP) that helps municipalities identify goods and services needed to set-up and run emergency shelters. This award-winning software allows emergency shelter staff to requisition, purchase, receive, track, and recover goods and services consumed during the emergency.  Additional Information This tool provides a list of inventory of goods and services needed for the set-up of a shelter at a click of a button. The reports generated provides vendor specific inventory so logistic staff can quickly and efficiently start to source goods and services within minutes of the emergency instead of hours.  The program also allows logistics staff to generate purchase orders that maintain financial control over the spending which occurs in an emergency.  Features include:Built-in step by step instructions Customizable modules and search criteria Creation of event logs to track logistics activities and decisions Requisition lists linked to suppliers; Creation of reports for requisitions, purchase orders; receipts, issues and returns Templates for temporary loans, letters to suppliers identifying authorized providers, Supplier Agreement and adhoc requisitions.
• #53: Whole Community Damage Assessments  Crisis Track helps you conduct damage assessments and process grant applications for faster, more efficient, and collaborative disaster management. The software helps federal, state and local governments take advantage of current GIS and data integration technology to optimize and visualize government information real time. The software is easy to use and accessible from mobile tablet and web-based platforms. Additional Information Crisis Track locates structures using GPS and GIS, captures photos of the damage, and calculates damage costs from your tax assessment records and recorded field observations. Force labor and equipment hours are tracked as well through a time-saving records management tool. Using Crisis Track, an assessment team can conduct a complete preliminary damage assessment in just a few minutes.
• #54: Assessments, Reporting and Work Order Management in Disasters SGE 2.0 is an open source and free web based platform with a mobile phone application that helps people survey streets and houses, either as part of a disaster preparedness programme or to map damage and coordinate relief efforts after a disaster. The system is adaptable to new technologies and is compatible with existing tools as well.  Status When an earthquake hit the town of Lorca in Spain, an urban planner and a software developer got together to develop a better system to map vulnerabilities, damage and the necessary response. “SGE 2.0″ was tested a second time during floods in the same region and the developer continue to work closely with Spanish municipalities, increasing the likelihood that the system will actually be used.
• #55: The City of San Francisco and IDEO are launching the City72 Toolkit, an open-source platform leveraging human-centered design, to enable cities to customize and build their own local preparedness tools. Johnson County, Kansas is already using the toolkit to launch JoCo72. Download the toolkit athttp://toolkit.sf72.org.
• #57: The Weather Company is building a localized alerting platform and API to enable state, local, and private authorities to manage and distribute alerts via The Weather Channel and existing local distribution points to two-thirds of the U.S. adult population. For more information contact globalalerts@weather.com.
• #58: Improving Social Media for Emergency Communications StormPins connects communities and their citizens through social media to pinpoint the location of severe weather, traffic, and crime. StormPins correlates location with information and makes real-time data useful to individual users as well as cities, police, utilities, and first responders. Status StormPins is still building its community, but they’ve gotten some attention during non-emergency situations. Local 12 in Cincinnati promoted StormPins on air this summer and received hundreds of pictures documenting sunny skies as well as threatening weather.
• #60: Objective should be to capitalize on digital opportunities as an extension of your existing managerial or physical opportunities. Jobs should be clearly defined as much as possible and they should be worked into your workflows. Good opportunities include: Well defined job description Inclusion into work flows Finite actions that need to be completed Meaningful