After the successful and ongoing largely-volunteer mapping efforts to respond to the Haiti earthquake, it’s heartening to see that there’s momentum for this approach in response to the massive earthquake that struck Chile. There are Crisis Camps this weekend and stretching into the future for both Haiti and Chile that are viewable at this page of the Crisis Commons website. There also appears to be growing cultural awareness and celebration of the concept, with a planned event at the SXSW technology, music and film gathering in Austin, Texas in a few weeks.
With just one crisis response, the advent of the geek relief response squads of Crisis Commons would have just been a fad. Now that there’s ongoing commitment, and increased tool refinement, this idea of Crisis Camps is becoming a movement that has the potential to influence policy direction and to speed thoughtful responses to crisis situations. Crisis Commons adds transparency, social networking, interactive assessments, global outreach and a rich communication medium to what has long been disparate mapping efforts.
We’ve seen growing interest in opportunities to showcase innovation that have largely been competitive affairs such as robot wars, and other contests. What the world needs are more opportunities for geeks to show their stuff in a collective and innovative fashion, and the Crisis Commons points the way. The Crisis Commons has a bright future in aiding the world, and particularly the developing world where technology capacity is lacking, while also providing a platform for technology development and STEM education.
The Ushahidi blog has a nice summary of the first week of activities responding to the earthquake in Chile. Students at Colombia University’s School of International and Public Affairs have been responsible for setting up the Ushahidi-Chile platform, and they’ve mapped more than 800 incidents in the first week of response.
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