humanitarian.info

Stuff I should have blogged at the time:

• What if? – New York emergency housing competition results: Last September, New York City launched “What if? “, an open competition to find innovative designs for high-density emergency provisional housing for 38,000 households in the aftermath of a hurricane and flood disaster in afictional, one square mile neighbourhood of the city called Prospect Shore. Ten winning entries would get US$10k to develop their ideas further. The competition issued some useful materials about NYC’s vulnerability to hurricanes, and created a really rich scenario for designers to get stuck into. All submissions are now online, and it’s a headfunk of gorgeous design and ingenuity. The ten winning entries were announced in January, and can be viewed here . My own favourite is the gloriously mental S.C.A.F.F.O.L.D. , designed by Jay Lim.
• Intravenous Facebook : Takes all Types is a US charity which has developed a Facebook app for supporting blood donation drives. The idea is to give Facebook your blood type and zip/postcode, and Takes all Types will email you when a local blood bank needs you. What tweaks humanitarian.info’s curiousity is their claim that the app will be “a powerful way to save lives in a blood emergency”. I think that’s overcooking its potential to improve on existing systems in a meaningful way, particularly given the enduringly complicated motives of blood donors. Thanks to sociologist Richard Titmuss, it’s conventional wisdom that paying money to blood donors decreases both the quality and quantity of blood in a bank. This isn’t set in stone though. For example, blood donation schemes in parts of the Former Soviet Union have never been run on a voluntary basis, and renumeration remains necessary to sustain bloodbanks; there is also some research suggesting that non-direct rewards for donors, such as tax credits, may encourage more blood donation. I wonder if the indirect rewards gained through online networking sites can provide sufficiently compelling motives for people to do more than simply sign-up; it seems to lack a “ladder of engagement”, and asks too much of people too early.
• Church and solid state : 400,000 mosques in Malaysia are to get high speed broadband, delivered over the power lines. This “Smart Mosque” project is being delivered by Velchip Sdn Bhd, will cost US$14 billion and aims to provide affordable Internet access to 60 million people. Breathtakingly large aggregate numbers, for sure, and I leave it to better minds to look at the possible effects this may have. Out of interest, in England Anglican churches outnumber broadband exchanges by a factor of 2.88 (16,157/5,600): perhaps the Church of England should be cutting a deal with British Telecom.