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How an Android Phone and Facebook Helped Route Haiti Rescuers
One intrepid Android fan is extolling the virtues of the open smartphone platform that helped him to route SOS messages in the recent Haiti disaster. "Well, when you are in such a situation, you don't really think about going to Facebook, but it happens that I have a Facebook widget on my Android home screen that regularly displays status updates from my friends. All of a sudden, an SOS message appeared on my home screen as a status update of a friend on my network. Not all smartphones allow you to customize your home screen, let alone letting you put widgets on it. So, I texted Steven about it. As Steven had already been working with the US State Department on Internet development activities in Haiti, he quickly called a senior staff member at the State Department and asked how to get help to the people requesting it from Haiti. State Department personnel requested a short description and a physical street address or GPS coordinates. Via email and text messaging, I was able to relay this information from Port-au-Prince to Steven in Oregon, who relayed it to the State Department in Washington DC, and it was quickly forwarded to the US military at the Port-au-Prince airport and dispatched to the search-and-rescue (SAR) teams being assembled. So the data went from my Android phone to Oregon to Washington DC and then back to the US military command center at the Port-au-Prince airport. I was at first a little skeptical about their reaction: there was so much destruction; they probably already had their hands full. Unexpectedly, they replied back saying: 'We found them, and they are alive! Keep it coming.'"
First time,Facebook was proved useful...Hope more can get help like that.What a disaster really...
Technology is so fucking cool. I really love it when people do amazing things like this and prove how useful it all is.
This is the now obligatory web 2.0 platform saves the day story. The last one was twitter I believe.
I have a terrible karma for being so right wing but when you have before proof that making available communications to people can save lives, then, it goes to show that communications is a fundamental human right and that there needs to be communications for everyone, everywhere, on the planet earth.
This is my sig.
This is an amazing story, and everyone involved deserves all honor and appreciation for their life-saving efforts.
Nonetheless, it raises the question: how can we leverage technology to achieve this kind of effect without requiring a friend-of-a-friend with a direct line to the US State Department?
There were no doubt many other people trapped by the quake who didn't have such fortuitous Facebook connections, and many of them probably weren't found in time. Is there a way to deploy some kind of SMS-based 911 infrastructure in situations like this, even on foreign cellular networks? Could we even deploy our own mobile cellular base stations for this purpose, if the local cell network is too badly damaged? Other ideas?
Telescreens are featured in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. They are television and security camera-like devices used by the ruling Party in Oceania to keep its subjects under constant surveillance, thus eliminating the chance of secret conspiracies against Oceania. All members of the Inner Party and Outer Party and a few proletarian settings have telescreens.
O'Brien claims that he, as a member of the Inner Party, can turn off the telescreen (although etiquette dictates only for half an hour at a time). It is possible that this was false and the screen still functioned as a surveillance device, as, after Winston and Julia are taken into the Ministry of Love, their conversation with the telescreen "off" is played back to Winston. The screens are monitored by the Thought Police. However, it is never made explicitly clear how many screens are monitored at once, or what the precise criteria (if any) for monitoring a given screen are (although we do see that during an exercise program that Winston takes part in every morning, the instructor can see him, meaning telescreens are possibly a variant of video phones). The telescreens are incredibly sensitive, and can pick up a heartbeat. As Winston describes, "...even a back can be revealing..."[1]
Telescreens, in addition to being surveillance devices, are also the equivalent of televisions (hence the name), regularly broadcasting false news reports about Oceania's military victories, economic production figures, spirited renditions of the national anthem to heighten patriotism, and Two Minutes Hate, which is a two-minute film of Emmanuel Goldstein's wishes for freedom of speech and press, which the citizens have been trained to disagree with, thus allowing them an opportunity to direct their subconscious hatred of Big Brother to Goldstein, whom they think is the real enemy. Much of the telescreen programs are given in Newspeak.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescreen
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Internet. Project Title: Adopt an Haitian Internet technician or facility
Because if they used any other protocol that doesn't involve sending huge amounts of redudant text and shiny graphics over a commercial telephone network it would never make the news.
Personally I'd find it much more amazing if some radio hobbyists managed to repair a transmitter from bits of scrap salvaged from the rubble and sent out a packet using that but we'd never hear about it because FB and Twitter were not involved
I read articles like this and shrug...so in a huge disaster you have to have cell service AND an Internet connection with access to an international server to coordinate and if you are somehow magically able to obtain such connectivity your prize is use twitter and facebook... WTF is wrong with this picture?
How hard would it be to to have very low bandwidth (text only) low frequency but high range radios in cell phones that would allow them to message each other directly over several miles bypassing the cell infustructure? Now that would be incredibly useful but it will never see the light of day for obvious reasons.
--"Via email and text messaging, I was able to relay this information from Port-au-Prince to Steven in Oregon, who relayed it to the State Department in Washington DC, and it was quickly forwarded to the US military at the Port-au-Prince airport and dispatched to the search-and-rescue (SAR) teams being assembled. "
Great, but just about any smartphone can do this, even most of the closed smartphone platforms, nothing special. Is it just me that thinks Android fans are becoming as preachy as the apple fanboys?
FanBoids.
There's a lot of great disaster relief open-source stuff going on in Haiti. Check out Sahana for Haiti. Or the work done on the open street maps project for Port-au-Prince. The map was filled in with routing, street, building state, health facility etc. by some good developers who extracted satellite & other data in a few days; to the point where the marines could use it move trucks around the rubble. Like the 2008 Year of Edits for OSM but for one city in days.
http://www.terranet.se/
Why are towers a necessity? Oh they might not be. Imagine a world of wide-band fractal antenna peer to peer devices and access points powered by a negotiated free market where you decide $/bit you pay and what provider latency and bandwidth you need.
On a disaster related idea read "Rainbows End" by Vernor Vinge. When the shit hits the fan the military saturates the area with network access points dropped from the air to overwhelm enemy networks and provide infrastructure for their operations. Just rain solar, battery powered, peer to peer mesh AP's on a disaster.
What's the Android spin, that he happened to notice the message because of the app running on his home screen?
Great, but just about any smartphone can do this, even most of the closed smartphone platforms, nothing special.
The part you quoted, yes, but not the part that kicked the whole thing off: he noticed someone's Facebook status update on his home screen widget. If he had to open an app to get Facebook updates, he wouldn't have seen it, because he had better things to do than browse Facebook.
I don't know about all the other smartphone platforms, but I'm pretty sure this is something the iPhone can't do. It doesn't have widgets; its home screen only shows app icons. You can get push notifications for certain events, but friends' status updates aren't among them, and you likely wouldn't want to get a message for every status update anyway.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
This is out and outright fucking amazing.
Consider, writing, on a piece of paper 'SOS' - despatching it to a messenger boy (possibly under rubble next to you), who takes it to the nearest train station that then relays it over morse code down the telegraph line, to be received in Cuba, relayed to Florida, then via numerous telegraph operators to Washington to get lost in tens (1x) of messages...
Brand allegiances and political ideology aside - you gotta sometimes take you thumb out of your bum in awe of this.
Yes, BUT. RW would also say, "Communications with competition, so mercifully, you can afford it. Also, Communications optional, so if you choose to spend that money on something else (such as food), you will be allowed to, instead of being forced at gunpoint to chip in for communications for everyone everywhere at the expense of whatever else you happen to personally value."
I agree that communications for everyone (or at least for me) everywhere is really cool, so the LW position happens to serve me in this particular instance, since I'm a computer dude. But as you generalize x for everyone everywhere, we all start disagreeing about the relative coolnesses of x. It just might be possible there's someone who doesn't want it, and I really do hope I never have to pay for y for everyone everywhere, since I never saw the point in y. When the unexpected z (earthquake) happens and I suddenly want y, you can all laugh at me. But don't tell me big brother truly has anticipated all the zs and is ready with the perfect answers for all the ys we'll need. Nobody in history has ever gotten close to doing that right.
nm
Tradikte - the first Haitian Creole translator for Nokia S60 devices was released today...check it out
http://www.kiranwaka.com/haititrans/
If the guy in Haiti had access to update his Fbook status, and was able to send and receive sms - why didn't he just contact the State Department directly?
This story isn't about technology, it's about personal access.
Guy in Haiti didn't have it - so he sends the equivalent of a smoke signal, and is lucky enough that someone notices it and does have access.
This all sounds really contrived, and I'm not impressed.
It's all about getting accurate intel. It doesn't matter where it comes from!
...and not just because of this story. But let's face it: Very little information (except early reports of the quake itself) was disseminated from Haiti via ham radio. 80% of the cellphone network of the second largest provider in Haiti was re-established within a week of the quake. Don't believe me? Google "ham radio haiti". As a long-time amateur radio operator who has been proclaiming the demise of ham radio for some years now, the proof is irrefutable: Ham radio has been relegated to the technology basement.
Yes, I know the hams will be coming out of the woodwork, defending their hobby. Or are they defending the large sums of money they've sunk into equipment that serves very little purpose in the way of emergency communications in today's world?
I was directly involved with the relief efforts, coordinating with USAID, US State Department, UN Logistics Cluster, Office of the Special Envoy, and others. The tool we did all use was an open source project called Ushahidi (haiti.ushahidi.org). Official agencies and average people with cell phones alike were able to submit situation reports, relief requests, and donations via SMS to their crisis-mapping/crowdsourcing tool. Each report was geo-tagged and mapped. The US Marines stationed in the USS Bataan anchored off Port-au-Prince told us they literally saw reports pop up from people who were still trapped in rubble but had working cell phones, and they were able to find and save them because of Ushahidi.
The folks at the Ushahidi project went one better than that, though, because they got a hold of the guy who runs Haiti's cell phone company, Digicel, and he worked with them to push out official alerts (like where to get medical care, food, water, etc) to all Digicel's subscribers in the affected area.
I've never seen anything like it. Watching reports from people trapped in rubble pop up on the map and replies from first responders quickly follow up sent shivers up my spine. It's the first time I've ever witnessed open source software saving lives in real time.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
At the risk of burning some Karma, and whoring our own FOSS disaster project... ;)
If anyone is interested in being involved in a FOSS project for disasters, the Sahana Software Foundation is very interested in getting more developers involved in writing software to be used in disaster and emergency management. Sahana was created in Sri Lanka in early 2005 following the tsunami in late 2004. Since then Sahana has been deployed to a number of events in various countries (China, Peru, Philippines, Pakistan, India etc).
Coming back to Haiti, we have deployed our new Python version of Sahana, and it has been very well received, including by the likes of SOUTHCOM and the World Food Programme. In addition, we have been pushing a lot of standards for emergency interoperability, and due to some of our early work implementing the Emergency Data eXchange Language (EDXL) - Hospital AVailability Extension (HAVE), we have a lot of interest in not only FOSS, but also open standards.
We are looking for assistance in further developing Sahana, and these are some of the key skills we are looking for to help with our existing deployment in Haiti (note you don't need them all to be able to work on Sahana):
# Python - all the core coding is undertaken in Python
# web2py - this is the application framework that we use in Python for SahanaPy
# OpenLayers - this is the client javascript library we use for mapping in the browser
# jQuery - additional view tweaks are done using this JavaScript library
# XSLT/XPath - a lot of import/export functionality is created using XSLT templates written using XPath
For more info on our Haiti response, and if you want to help out, check out this wiki page: http://trac.sahanapy.org/wiki/Haiti
Alternatively, jump into #sahana on freenode. If you want to contact me directly, email me - gt at kestrel dot co dot nz
If you read this far, thanks for the attention :)
Cheers Gavin
Board Member, Sahana Software Foundation
if they have access to facebook why not just call the police?
It's perfectly understandable that you would ask such a question. To find the answer you would have to do something incredibly difficult and unusual, such as RTFA.
But I'll help you out. Here's the relevant part of TFA:
In a disaster, the phone system can be overwhelmed. The bandwidth and resources the phone system needs to make a voice call are huge compared with the bandwidth and resources needed for a simple SMS text message. A 160-character text message, plus its envelope, should be under 2 kilobits for the whole message. A GSM voice connection uses at least 6.5 kilobits per second, every second.
Also, there are a limited number of conversations possible at one time for each cell tower. In terms of how many people can use a tower at a time, SMS messages are a huge win: an SMS message doesn't tie up a chunk of the tower for seconds.
At my job, we had a Red Cross disaster training session, and the person from the Red Cross told us to expect that cell phone voice service is very likely to not be available in a disaster, but text messages are likely to still work. That was the first time I actually got interested in text messages.
I think, very seriously, that emergency services (police, fire department, etc.) should be set up to receive text messages, precisely to handle the mass-disaster scenario.
Also, in the USA, mobile phones are now required to send GPS location data when the user calls an emergency number (911). I'd like to see a similar feature for texts: when you text to 911, the phone attaches GPS location data to the text message.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
"Also, there are a limited number of conversations [privateline.com] possible at one time for each cell tower. In terms of how many people can use a tower at a time, SMS messages are a huge win: an SMS message doesn't tie up a chunk of the tower for seconds."
So in other words SMS is to the cellular network what Morse code is to hams.
Edit: 5.6 Billion people have a cell phone.
We don't need to come out of the woodwork to acknowledge that in this given situation the twins of cheap transceivers and relatively cheap base antennas with back-haul the same, worked out. However if circumstances had been different (and they could) would you be proclaiming the demise of cellular? They both have their strong and weak points and neither was meant to supplant the other except for those betting on a particular horse.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
I never heard of Ushahidi before. But from Phoenix666's description and the website (Ushahidi.com) it seems like it would be much more valuable than facebook if people know about it.
There are couple of things that make Port-Au-Prince (PAP) unique.
Haiti gets regularly hit by hurricanes. They have an abysmal electrical system.
During normal times you are lucky to get 10 hours of electricity a day.
There are 4 cell phone carriers, 30 percent of the population owns cell phones.
If you are cell phone carrier, you always want to have 24 hours of operations.
In order to do that in PAP you had to have a very robust generator - fuel supply system and distribution just to handle the "Haiti" normal daily power outages. So post catastrophe - guess what the cell phones came up pretty quick and many got to call the US to relatives to tell them "They are starving and had no water for days". I'm pretty sure no post-apocalyptic fiction writer saw that one possibly happening.
Additionally with only one undersea cable a lot of telecom-traffic is handled by satellite and is also why TV/ISPs were able to deliver video and messages immediately after the quake.
The water system in PAP was also lousy in normal times so water-trucks, walking 5 miles to a kiosk a large portion of the population was used to that. So when the quake hit and the city lost its mains. The water trucks still worked.
So ironically their horrible utilities and the system in place to cope with that saved many in a quake generated catastrophe.
Ham radio does not pretend to replace the phone company / 911 and never did. So you're a little misinformed there. And among the ham radio guys... all 650,000 in the US less than one half percent are trained and have an interest in
emergency communications Even then I am being generous.. probably closer to a quarter of percent.
Yes the ham radios and antennas can cost from 600-2500 dollars depending on your goals, but the equipment lasts 20 years. So exactly how much money have you spent on computer equipment in 20 years and how much is that biyearly cell phone contract? Ham radio plays a very very small but necessary role in helping route emergency information from point A to point B when all else fails it is the last line of communication.
Even in Katrina, the two groups I am credited with helping assist used cell phones to call out to a distant relative, I just completed their call for help to the closest authority. Even in the twitter example it took several hops to find someone who could help.
Ham radios role in Haiti this time can be counted on one hand. I knew one of the two Haitian Ham radio operators that got on air a couple days after the quake. Almost all in the Haitian Radio club had lost a relative to the quake.
How many Ham radio operators do think a very impoverished country as Haiti has? Exactly what is that Haitian radio operator going to say on day two after the quake that we didnt already know. We were sending the kitchen sink, the bathroom sink our neighbors sink in an effort to help take away some of the misery.
As a life long computer geek and later radio geek I applaud ANY means of communications method that saves lives and minimizes human misery.
Every disaster is different... if a category three hurricane hit PAP there would be no cell phone, nor satellite dishes...
But that undersea cable would still be there and radio always works.
AG4ZG
It looks like openstreetmap widely used by help organizations in Haiti. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyMTKABxaw4
The problem with HAM radio is its general availability.
Not a lot of persons own HAM equipment and have the proper training/license to be able to use it.
The rescuers *could* bring their own along with they own trained personal and use it to coordinate themselves. But the general population won't be able to use it.
Whereas nowadays it seems like every single person, every kid and every grand-ma, has a cellphone.
Even more so in developing/underdeveloped countries where the traditional land-line phone is so old/so bad/missing, so that in fact, cellphones are the only thing that do work and are worth owning.
And everyone is able to send text messages, without any special training.
So as long as you have a few surviving cell towers (even so few that placing voice-calls without overloading the system isn't practical) or can manage to deploy a few emergency ones, the local population will immediately be able to use texting - using equipment they already own and know how to operate.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The principle being that we don't have infinite resources, so you have to be able to justify their allocation. In capitalism, this is done on the free market. Socialism advocates political allocation.
It is up to the reader to do some research and decide which is generally more efficient.
I encourage the reader who takes up that challenge to also research which is specifically more efficient.
In a particular mathematical model, free markets solves an optimization problem. They also seem to work well in practice in many situations.
However, they work less well the more barriers to entry and exit there are in a given market. Having to build a large amount of infrastructure (factories, cell towers) in order to start producing is a barrier to entry. Having to fight a monopolist or cartel is a barrier to entry. Network effects (where present) means the free market will converge towards a monopoly or cartel situation.
Particularly for cell phone communication, there's the infrastructure problem, network effects, plus you need some radio frequency spectrum allocation mechanism. It looks like it's a good case for allocation through public policy.
Of course, feel free to compare the US against Canada and your favourite European countries if you feel empirical today; but you may also want to control for corru^Wlobbying influence (if able).
AG4ZG
Is that you Bob?!