Mashups in Action: Crisis Planning and Response
This might sound like the opening narrative of a bad disaster movie but it is true: It snowed again today. A genuine blizzard. And this just 2 days after a record-setting snowfall that shut down the region. Schools in the area are closed for a week or more. Some local governments are recommending residents stay at home, which isn't a bad idea considering many gas stations have run out of regular gas, and some grocery stores and restaurants have run out of meat. They say we might get hit again this weekend.
Unfortunately, it's not a bad movie. It's true. And for anyone living in the Mid-Atlantic, you and know I both know I can't do it justice. Sure, 3+ feet in 4 days isn't that much for Buffalo, or Minneapolis, or Chicago (where they NEVER cancel school for snow, apparently). But in a region where the ANNUAL snowfall averages 20 inches, 36+ in a few days is a SNOWPOCALYPSE. It has truly been challenging.
But in my more honest moments I know that this forced respite from my lousy daily commute is nothing next to genuine disasters. Consider Haiti. The series of earthquakes that hit this beleaguered country on January 12 killed hundreds of thousands, and left hundreds of thousands more without the simple benefit of a roof or a regular source of food. The experts say recovery will take a decade. I doubt most of us will ever truly understand the depth of this disaster.
By most accounts the basic step of getting critical search-and-rescue teams, medical supplies and food into Haiti has been difficult, at best. Could such a need have been planned for? Many experts doubt it. But could we help the aid associations and government agencies in their response to the crisis? Absolutely. And the role model for us all should be people like Dan Hudson.
Dan volunteers locally in the Washington DC area. And in addition to his traditional volunteer work, he went another extra mile and used his mashup skills to create a 'Crisis Communication Dashboard' of feeds from places like Twitter, Flickr, CNN, Yahoo and the US Geological Survey (USGS). It paints a good picture of the situation on the ground. And I think his work is immensely powerful, with the result being much more than the sum of its parts. Any organization attempting to address situational awareness needs could learn from Dan's approach and his results.And then there some crisises we can and should plan for. Here’s another powerful example. At the request of one inspired government executive, we created an 'H1N1 Flu Preparedness Mashup'. The combination of dynamic on weekly flu statistics (from the CDC) with state-by-state employee staffing levels is a truly unique tool for managers to assess the impact on offices and the specific services they provide. If agency has people in a 'red' state (i.e. with 'wide-spread activity'), you could reasonably expect a noticeable impact on productivity. And I think you can imagine the same type of application in areas like supply chain management, product pricing, and product inventory planning, too.
I don’t want to sound preachy, but I think we all could do more for situations like these, both in preparedness and response. I’ll leave the specifics up to you. But I’ll use my bully pulpit to make one strong suggestion: donate. The American Red Cross is accepting donations for Haiti Relief in a number of different ways, whether it's time, money, or goods. And for those of you that know how important time can be in a crisis, you can simply text “HAITI” to 90999 from any mobile phone to donate $10 to ARC relief efforts. My family donated. And we wish we could do more, we truly do.
