SXSW 2010: CrisisCamp, Haiti, and Saving Lives with Technology

By Alex Field, March 19, 2010

When a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, the call went out across the globe for relief to save lives in the impoverished Caribbean nation. For a group of technology pioneers in the U.S., that meant one thing: software.

Hastily assembled teams of disaster relief and response experts, programmers and project managers came together in locations across the U.S. for CrisisCamps to provide a new kind of aid to the rescue effort in the still-reeling nation. Instead of donating blood or collecting money, the volunteers attacked the critical information holes that were hindering the relief effort in Haiti – a nation with only 10% internet adoption before the quake. And eight short weeks later, their work – from translators and maps to missing person locators – has saved lives and changed the way we think about disaster relief.

Some highlights of the CrisisCamp effort include:

Tradui
www.traduiapp.com
wiki.crisiscommons.org/wiki/Tradui
The first weekend after the earthquake, the team launched a Creole/English translation app for iPhone and Android. Suddenly, rescue workers had a solution to the language barrier in the palm of their hands. Tradui, Creole for “translate,” continues to be used on the ground in Haiti as teams work to rebuild.

Haiti Open Street Map
haiti.openstreetmap.nl
For rescue workers navigating the rubble in Port-au-Prince, the scale of the devastation was obvious, but the details were not. Using high-resolution satellite images of the Haitian capital taken after the earthquake, the team built an online street map of the city and enlisted more than 1,000 volunteers to scan it and mark collapsed buildings, blocked roads, tent cities and hospitals. Harnessing the power of the crowd, the Open Street Map soon catalogued every detail of the damage. The result became the de facto map for UNICEF and the United Nations, as well as standard equipment on rescue teams’ GPS units.

Eight weeks later, the effects of these new tools on the relief efforts in Haiti are tangible. For the small group of experts who pioneered this new system of aid, Haiti is just the beginning. Andy Carvin (twitter.com/acarvin) of NPR, a vocal contributor to the CrisisCamp efforts, put the early success in perspective.

“This is only eight weeks old,” he said. “All these lessons learned? We’re only just now seeing [them].”

But this much is clear: with skill, an understanding of the situation on the ground and a willing crowd of contributors, a networked few can make real impact – even from thousands of miles away.

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