Conversation | reboot9
Post-Disaster Collaboration 2008
the search continues for reliable tools to help fellow humans after disaster strikes
Last year (2007), I had interesting conversations with many people at Reboot about appropriate technology for community radio stations in Africa. Now we're putting many of those ideas into practice in a lab running in Porto Novo, the capital of Benin.
Each year, 250 million people are somehow affected by natural disasters. NGO's are great at getting messages to funding nations - less effective in communicating with people on the ground they are trying to help. They assume the local media infrastructure is like Europe and wonder why the message isn't getting out. The terrible events in Burma and China this year are just the latest examples of how we're not really prepared for the scale of things to come.
My research shows many organisations are now working on how to help with early warning systems before disaster strikes, but for the period 0-2 years afterwards there are plenty of ideas but few good plans.
Disasters are striking more often. 2/3rds water related.
There are organisations who are putting in temporary wifi in disaster zones and playing with Wimax. I am looking at collaboration tools, which when combined with traditional FM radio and mobile phones, can help coordinate health and welfare information. Why? Because rumours kill.
I've formed "broadcasters without broadcasters" to help start the discussion. I'd love to have a conversation with anyone in Reboot 2008 who can help a group of us make better use of collaboration tools. Part of the reason there is so little coordination is that collaboration using convention tools either doesn't work, or takes too much time.
Mixing traditional and new tools to improve public access to information
