Sahana in Haiti: More rigour, less marketing needed

The Sahana Free and Open Source Disaster Management System in Haiti by Chamindra de Silva and Mark Prustalis appears in ICTD Case Study 2: ICT for Disaster Risk Reduction published UN-APCICT/ESCAP. Though more than half of the essay is a generic description of Sahana, Section 6 onwards deals with the deployment of Sahana in Haiti …

InSTEDD’s response in Haiti

I may have been one of the first to blog about InSTEDD when it launched in early 2008. While other crisis information management providers in the aftermath of Haiti's devastating earthquake in January this year widely promoted their work and efforts on the web, InSTEDD's work, though captured in the Haiti earthquake wiki I created …

ICT and Protection: Can Information and Communication Technology Enhance Humanitarian Action?

Representing the ICT4Peace Foundation, I will be part of a panel organised by the Humanitarian Law and Policy Forum at Harvard University looking at how, if at all, ICTs have strengthened humanitarian aid. The guiding questions of this web based seminar echo concerns, challenges and opportunities I have repeatedly raised on this blog for years. Some …

Haiti and Beyond: Getting it Right in Crisis Information Management

The ICT4Peace Foundation released a new briefing today, co-authored by me, critically looking at the response to the devastating Haitian earthquake in early January. We chart in brief the significant progress made in the use of ICTs in humanitarian aid, and also how much more needs to be done in order to sustain and systematise …

Social Media in Haiti provides critical information on Haiti’s need

OCHA's ReliefWeb has (a very rough) transcript of my recent podcast with IRIN on the use of technology in Haiti's January 2010 earthquake relief effort. Read it here. Read about the podcast and listen to the original version here. A pertinent excerpt from the interview: TUNBRIDGE: Did you see what is going on high-tech world here …

Haiti and the perennial challenge of information lock-in

Erik Hersman from Ushahidi makes the following pertinent observation, amongst others, in a recent blog post on the Ushahidi Situation Room for Haiti. “Decision-makers on the ground still do not have access to accurate, real-time data. That may be because of firewalls, lack of bandwidth, people are unaware these resources exist, the command structure of …

IRIN podcast on use of technology in January 2010 Haiti earthquake aid effort

UN OCHA's IRIN news service has a podcast up that features some of my observations on the use of technology / ICTs in Haiti's January 2010 earthquake aid efforts. As I was speaking, I kept thinking how much had changed from the response to Cyclone Nargis just two years ago (albeit dealing with a very …

Vital information on Haiti earthquake aid

On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti. Its shocking aftermath, the scale of which is only now coming to light, once again demonstrates the need for timely, accurate information to strengthen aid, response and recovery after a disaster. The ICT4Peace Foundation has created a page on its ICT4Peace Inventory wiki that links …

List of web resources for Haiti earthquake information and help

Update: 14 January 2010 Please see Vital information on Haiti earthquake aid for a far more comprehensive list of curated information resources. ### There's a lot of information out there on the Haitian earthquake and these are just some of the sources I have found most reliable and useful. Some of these sites are updated …