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IT and Natural Disasters
rikomatic writes "The Asian tsunami in December has dramatically shown how much SMS, email and the web are now indispensible parts of disaster recovery. The folks at the Digital Divide Network have organized a virtual conference on 'How New Media and the Internet are Reshaping Tsunami Relief Efforts' on Wednesday, Jan 12 at 10am, EST. Among the featured speakers will be Dina Mehta, co-founder of the Southeast Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Blog. In the hours following the tsunami, she and a group of South Asian bloggers created the volunteer-driven web portal for tsunami relief news and resources. Beyond using IT to coordinate post-disaster relief efforts, early warning is another critical need. Hopefully the UN's World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe, Japan later this month will address the IT infrastructure needed to make sure that people get advance warning before the next natural disaster strikes."
I'm sure this isn't the only Geospatial vendor but ESRI pretty much makes their software, technical support and data free to agencies supporting disasters. For the Indian Ocean disaster, check out this link.
Ham Radio.
Google for your country's equivalent to the ARRL.
Hams were the only functional communication for many people after the Loma Prieta quake hit California. Hams ran the only functioning communications network on 9/11. And yes, hams were there for the tsunami victims too.
If you need a technology that'll enable coordination of disaster relief -- or even just help out by offloading a few million "Yes, Mom, I'm OK, and I'll talk to you when I can" messages from overloaded communications channels, chances are you're going to be using ham radio.
Better yet -- become a ham yourself. In most countries, it's cheap and easy. And if you're reading this, you're already geeky enough that it'll be a hell of a lot of fun no matter where you live.
Another poster on this thread was talking about SMS. When you have no cellular towers, you're not going to get even 20 seconds a day of uptime.
And that's when you'll be helped by a ham.
My dad was into ham radios (jamaica) for a while and during hurricanes, and power outages he was still talking to people around the world. It's simple, and redundant (runs on a car battery) and most important it's proven. I'm sorry but the internet should never be relied upon for communications during a disaster it's just not reliable. It is also dependent on too many things. Electricity, phone lines, networks.
The internet views a block as an outage and routes around it.
While working in Tokyo when the 'LGQ' (7.8) hit in the South, the only way people could get messages out was by the 'net - this was in the mid-90's.