First Monday publishes an article entitled Open Source Disaster Recovery: Case Studies of Networked Collaboration, a review of some of the initiatives that I referenced in my paper An Ill Wind? The Role of Accessible ICT following Hurricane Katrina. That paper has already discussed how these “non-traditional” voluntary efforts might fit into the broader picture of disaster response, but the First Monday article is the first time I’ve seen any discussion of how effective they might have been. Continue reading
Category Archives: Databases
Sudan takeaways
So there is some interesting stuff happening in Sudan (in terms of information management, that is) and right here’s where I’m telling you about it:
- Sudan Interagency Mapping (http://www.unsudanig.org/sim/) is a group of actors using GIS, including UN and government agencies. The aim is simple – better spatial information, focusing on improving existing data – for example, making sure that town plans are available for the critical humanitarian hubs. This type of partnership has been tried in other places as well, and I think it’s a model for developing a strong GIS community.
- World Vision ships a lot of relief materials, and has about five different tracking / reporting systems, covering particularly food distribution under contract from WFP. In order to deal most effectively with this, they created a Data Center which brings all the commodity tracking together, with data entry staff taking some of the reporting load off programme staff. It also means that they can work with the data much more effectively and look at issues of compatibility between different databases.
- CARE are using GIS in their security reporting – without using any GIS software. Taking a basemap from the HIC Darfur (http://www.humanitarianinfo.org/darfur/) and using the notation feature in Adobe Acrobat Professional, they create a Weekly Update Map of security issues that any staff member can view. Most NGOs can’t afford the software or staff for GIS, but this idea gets around that problem – any staff member can be shown how to use Adobe for this in about 30 minutes.
None of these three initiatives are going to save Darfur, but if you add up a lot of little innovations, you start to see real changes.
Posted in Databases, GIS, NGO, Sudan, United Nations
Memories of Sudan
No, I haven’t left Sudan. But the humanitarian community working here does suffer terribly from memory loss. A new project here – the Sudan Open Archive Project – aims to address that, by recording and sharing every last piece of documentation they can find from Operation Lifeline Sudan (the UN-NGO consortium set up to provide cross-border relief to southern Sudan from 1989 onwards).
This project addresses a lot of the questions facing the sector. Dan Large, the project leader, has identified a problem that continues to make relief work more difficult – our seeming inability to learn (whether from our successes or our failures).
The Pakistan army: information resources in the earthquake response
Every single person I spoke to in Pakistan said the same thing: that the Pakistani military had done an amazing job on the earthquake relief. So it’s good to see some acknowledgement of their capacity, and also an interesting analysis of the problems they face, in a BBC article. The earthquake zone is the most sensitive area in South Asia, on the disputed border with India, placing the army in a difficult situation:
Posted in Databases