Over the last two years we have had endless discussions about how crowd sourced information is going to change the way we do crisis information management. Some people go as far to say as the regular humanitarian information management is dead and that the time of crowd has come. But one thing that we have…
We are currently experiencing one of the worst famine in the last half a century. Over 10 million of people are in dire need of support and thousands of children are dying. Yet the organizations responding to this crisis are not able to respond because of lack of funding. Only 50% of the required funding has been…
It was fourteen years ago that a group of humanitarian NGOs and the Red Cross/Red Crescent movement came together and created the Sphere Project which defined minimum standards for disaster response. The cornerstone of the Sphere Handbook was the Humanitarian Charter which describes the core principles that govern humanitarian action. On top of this there are minimum…
I recently had the great opportunity to visit Japan for the second time since the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck on March 11th this year. My first visit was roughly 2 weeks after the disaster and at that time I spent most of my time in Tokyo coordinating ICT support to the NetHope members active in…
When a large scale disaster strikes the world watches. Twitter gets flooded with reports, pictures and prayers. CNN, BBC, Sky News and Al Jazzera all break their regular programs to show us terrifying images of what is happening. Thankfully only 2-3 large scale disasters strike every year. Depending on the magnitude and location of the…
In my trip to Pakistan earlier this year, I learned first hand about the power of preparedness at the community level. I visited a small “displaced” village on the banks of the Indus River. I asked them if there had been any early warning system in place for the floods. What they told me was…
When in Japan earlier this month I had the pleasure of meeting with Dr. Unni Krishnan who is a Humanitarian Coordinator for Plan International, one of NetHope’s member organizations. Dr. Krishnan who is an experienced disaster expert who has been to most of the major disasters in the past years told me a very interesting story of information…
Six weeks ago the devastating force of mother nature reminded us again how things can change in a matter of a few minutes. For the first time we were able to watch live images of the destructive power of tsunamis as they struck the coast of Japan following a massive 9.0 earthquake. I have spent…
NetHope, Microsoft, Dell, HP and InterConnection Partner to Deliver Laptops to Rescue Workers in Japan Guest post By Gisli Olafsson, NetHope Emergency Response Director Communication is the lifeblood of rescue operations in Japan. Without the ability to share information and collaborate in real-time, rescue workers struggle to coordinate the delivery of food, water, medicine and…
In my blog post yesterday I discussed how I felt we were working at two different zoom levels when it came to social media information management. After a good discussion on twitter with @Kim26Stephens and @jgarvin we identified one potential reason why we keep working at these two zoom levels A point @jgarvin made was that we…