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IT and Katrina
Yesterday I posted a piece at ZDNet’s Government IT blog on turning hopeless victims into smart mobs. This was a reflection of some interesting ideas that David Stephenson has been posting about how IT can help in homeland security and disaster preparedness. He’s not the only one obviously.
Doc Searls, at the IT Garage, is asking “how does IT help with Katrina recovery?” and offering a place where IT folks can post stories about their experiences with Katrina. He’s also pointing to the Slidell Hurricane Damage Blog.
The Slidell blog is maintained by Brian Oberkirch who lists his contact information prominently on the front page. Slidell is near the Northeast corner of Lake Pontchatrain, about five miles West of the Mississippi border and 20 miles Northeast of New Orleans. The blog contains photos, announcements, updates from county officials. This blog is a perfect example of what smart mobs can do to help in a disaster.
There are also katrina tags at Flickr, del.icio.us, and Technorati.
Posted by windley on August 31, 2005 9:14 AM
Comment from Andrew Koper at August 31, 2005 3:31 PM
As I stood in the office with my co-workers and watched the World Trade Centers collapse, the ensuing chaos, and the ensuing rescue effort on TV on 9/11, one of the things I thought about - as a Web developer and technologist - was how people could use IT to handle the crises better. I was designing systems in my head.
It was a massive information problem, in a way. Who was dead, who was in the hospital with massive injuries, who was minorly injured and trapped in a subway tunnel, and who called in sick and was in fact at their brother's that day? Tacking a picture of a missing loved one to a telephone pole is using 1800's technology - quite inefficient.