How To Be Part Of Disaster Response Without Being Sucked In

Digital Humanitarian Disaster Response

Let's frame the issue: Willow worked on Disaster/humanitarian response with Aspiration starting in January. Response is paternalistic - we think we know what people want, but we don't. Solidarity not charity

Slow disaster (humanitarian crisis) vs. sudden onset (natural disaster)

People are usually fine - life expectancies are shorter Co-extensive: doesn't disrupt the existing system when a new one intercedes

FEMA: bring big trucks, not aware of communities' needs, vulnerability, humanity

Versus Occupy Sandy

• Mike: Also important for reconstruction phase. Food & water is fine, but what about afterward?

• How to be surge capacity, how to make use of surge capacity, A sudden surge of attention, needs, and offers
  • Surge in offers is matched appropriately with the surge in needs
  • Risk of being paternalistic

• Margot: If you want to get involved, what are the resources available right now?

• • Humanitarian Open Street Map Tasker - aerial imagery
  • Microtaskers - a project of Standby Task Force
    • does data parsing
    • breaking out large projects into various levels of expertise/knowledge
    • Willow has some qualms about it because it's more top down (works with UN OSHA)

• Be aware of needs and required skill sets/levels
  • Example: Inspection

• Devon: will do an afternoon session on Occupy Sandy -> NYC Prepare

• Architecture for Humanity: Open response - a site for people to go

• Participatory Aid Marketplace - would be clearinghouse, log in and take a quiz or complete a profile and be matched up

• Recovers.org - help people capture offers of aid, orgs can follow up when they are ready

• Resilience Co-Lab

• Generic matching platforms
  • short attention span, hasn't been done well yet
  • disaster hackathons

• Mike: What you're really doing is building capacity for the next disaster (money or relationships), e.g. Red Cross
  • Mismatch between what orgs need (long-term) versus what fulfills people's needs/instincts

• Damien: Occupy Sandy happened because Occupy had just preceeded it.
  • Successful because self-organized
  • Curious about digital vs. scouting/recon on the ground - translating the analog need-gathering into a digital platform

• A couple of approaches:
  • Asynchronicity - can still be used when power goes out and phone has a charge
  • Data is going to be messy - have to be ok with that, deal with a margin of error
  • Not going to invest in tracking accuracy - lossiness in data, assume a 10% loss
  • A lot of disaster response: is keeping flows going - outflow of food/resources

• Josh: A lot of digital reponse is ad-hoc
  • Reinvent wheel/start from scratch, nobody uses it

• Sahana - O/S project - good start, needs work (usability help)

• Response hackathons/crisis camps

• Another approaching:
  • Larping (Live action role playing)
  • Science Fiction study into action - themes about surviving change - first three days after disaster event vs. first few weeks vs. 150 years later
• Taking the Superman out of disaster response - replace it with

• Fracking causes earthquake that breaks the bridges in NYC - people are stuck on islands, end up gathering in the park, people are getting different sets of information
  • Acted out 3 scenarios:
    1. Gathered resources - put them in Easter eggs and hid them around the park - gamified it
    2. Recipes -
    3. Random eggs - you get mugged or you find a bicycle

• Group processing - found a big cache of apples - staged a fight with different proposed uses for apples, surprise ambush

Hackathon outcomes:

1. Corporate co-opting of hackathon volunteers' ideas
2. On-boarding/education
3. Open source

• App downloading limitations - can everyone connect to Apple App Store during a disaster

• Know how to use low-tech solutions - walkie-talkies

• Skill-share profiles

• Helping orgs know what they can and should ask for
• Figure out the actual need, know how to articulate them to other people

• Ushahidi - software forms a way to collect info, just by installation - workflows

• One of the big needs is on-the-ground knowledge
• Who goes in there & who reports out

• Book: A Paradise Built in Hell
  • about mutual aid and disaster response & how people's local response is somewhat linked to their amount of distrust of gov't

• How do you actually collect the needs on the ground and broadcast them to people can help - communication of needs on the ground

• Use the channels that people already use

Amazon wishlists

• Just send cash - accept loss

• Coming up with a template - regardless of what communication format, capture needs through a questionnaire
  • Then, a way to loop it back to people who can supply
  • Transparency report - based on front-line communities assessment
  • Codes of conduct for collaborative responses

• Paper vs. digital?
  • Mesh networks are working pretty well
  • Local info doesn't need to be digitized - flyers, post-its are fine
  • Only need digitizing for shipping/logistics purposes

• Conference call
  • bit.ly/digirespcall

• URL for disaster response LARP:
  • http://scifiaction.club

• There are preparedness card games, but not response card game yet!