On October 15, 2014, the cell phone alarms of my colleagues in Washington DC sounded in unison to announce that a tornado would cross the city. The alert message was distributed through Apple and Google servers to the different phones and in a few minutes the rain began. This information was possible thanks to the connection of Google and Apple with the data service provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States.
Having accurate and up-to-date information, and being able to link it with real-time information, is crucial to minimizing human catastrophes. Technology and Ukraine Mobile Number List open data can help to better understand the territory and prevent disasters, and also to react more quickly when they are unpredictable. Data and open technology are important and there are already some interesting examples that could be useful for many regions in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Code for Resilience is a non-profit organization that works with computer scientists in the area of natural disaster management to strengthen the response capacity in communities through the creation of citizen solutions and applications. The organization works to identify software and hardware tools that help communities identify, reduce and respond to natural disasters. During the year 2013-2014, Code for Resilience organized three activities to meet its objectives: from October 2013 to January 2014 it focused on defining what problems were affecting the communities.
Between February and March 2014, hackathons were held to find solutions to the challenges raised in the previous phase; and from April to June 2014 it launched an application contest in which all hackathon participants participated. The winners of the contest participated in July 2014 at the “ Understanding Risk Conference in London, England ” Geoplatform.gov GeoPlatform is an open data platform that provides access to verified and contrasted geospatial data, services and applications for use by the public and government agencies and their counterparts so they can meet their objectives.
Briefly, the platform is described as: a single point of access to public and verified data and services; data from public agencies to improve decision making; applications and services that can be used and reused by different federal agencies and organizations; a shared infrastructure to store data and applications; an access point so that data from the government, universities, private and public sectors can be visualized and provide information to solve problems at the national and regional level.
Open Relief is a project to improve communication tools that help lift the fog. This allows the necessary support to be sent at the appropriate time. OpenRelief uses an open source approach that allows everyone to access the technology. They work to complement other projects around the world and to support the development of open drone technologies for humanitarian purposes. Ushahidi is an organization born in Kenya that was developed after 2008 to map incidents in the country following an election that led to an escalation of violence.
During the worst episodes, the website had more than users who sent their testimonies and who helped organize the pacification efforts. After the incidents, the organization created an open source platform that is today used by many organizations in the world. In some cases, the platform has been used to facilitate communication in natural disasters, such as the Haiti earthquake (2010), the Chile earthquake (2010) and the snow storms in the United States (2010).
Google Public Alerts Google Public Alerts is a Google platform to disseminate information about emergencies such as hurricane evacuation news, or everyday alerts such as storms. Its objective is to show users relevant official information about climate and public safety through Google and Google Now (on Android phones). They currently publish information from public agencies in the US, Australia, Canada, Colombia, Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Mexico.