Patrick Meier visited the American Red Cross headquarters in Washington D.C. and got a tour of the brand new Digital Operations Center which AmCross is using to monitor social media during emergencies.
As many of you know, I’m quite critical when it comes to how to the impressive information gathering possibilities of crisis mapping tools turn into actionable information for responders. On LinkedIn someone shared a video with me today where Ushahidi’s Patrick Meier addresses some of these concerns.
A new “serious game” is trying to show what it’s like to be a journalist, an aid-worker or a survivor in a natural disaster. And it’s not doing a bad job!
How useful are Twitter, Facebook and other social media channels for disaster response organizations? I’m looking at the question from three different angles.
“So … how is Haiti these days?” – this is probably the question I have been asked most since I’ve come back. The problem is: the question is misleading because it assumes that it’s possible to make significant changes in a couple of months.
One of the biggest mistakes that international organizations make is not taking enough time to explain to journalists why thing are complicated and take a long time. But taking that time and investing into communications pays off.
One of the biggest obstacles to building transitional shelters in Haiti is the amount of debris that is lying everywhere. Do me favour and look down your street. Now imagine that up to 60 per cent of all the houses just collapsed (the percentage of destroyed houses depends a lot on which part of town you are in in Port-au-Prince). Can you imagine how much rubble this would be? From a shelter perspective the problem is that before you build[...]
I’m currently meeting loads of really interesting people. One of them is the author of the blog “Good Intentions are Not Enough“, subtitle “an honest conversation about the impact of aid.” I think it’s great and I think we need more blogs like this. Not only to make agencies accountable but also to educate individual donors about why certain things are just really, really bad ideas and why some well-meant initiatives can actually cause harm. Check it out: http://goodintents.org/blog
