Social Computing Group Blog » crisisResponse

CrisisCommons brings together domain exp…

Tom — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 18:53:13 +0000

CrisisCommons brings together domain experts, developers, and first responders around improving technology and practice for humanitarian crisis management and disaster relief. The page lists new, ongoing, and completed projects. Examples include “Haiti Hospital Cacacity Finder, Situational Awareness and Damage Assessment Information System, Haiti Basemap, The Haiti Timeline, and Tweak the Tweet. See http://crisiscommons.org/

Twitter Hashtag syntax for Haiti crisis….

Tom — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 13:03:48 +0000

Twitter Hashtag syntax for Haiti crisis. This interesting project by Leysia Palen and colleagues involves constructing (and disseminating) a hashtag syntax “to help direct Twitter communications for more efficient data extraction for those communicating about the Haiti earthquake disaster. Use only requires modifications of Tweet messages to make information pieces that refer to #location, #status, #needs, #damage and several other elements of emergency communications more machine readable. This allows for easier automated collation by any number of groups and good samaritans from any number of sources. HELP US SPREAD THE WORD!!!”.

See http://epic.cs.colorado.edu/helping_haiti_tweak_the_twe.html

Remotely triggered car horns as emergenc…

Tom — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:38:07 +0000

Remotely triggered car horns as emergency signals. Starting in September 2010, all new cars sold in Europe will be equipped with a technology called E-Call. It consists of a GPS sensor and a mobile phone component, which is activated only in case of an accident (i.e. when the airbags are triggered) and which can transmit data (e.g. accident time, coordinates and driving direction of the vehicle) to an emergency call center.

“This infrastructure can also be used to warn the population. Once the cars are equipped with a radio receiver, their horns can be triggered in case of disaster. The receiver can be activated only by civil protection agencies. These might send e.g. the following signal to the vehicles: »To all vehicles that are equipped with the receiver and that are currently within the boundaries of the following GPS coordinates: If the engine is off, start sounding the horn!«” See http://tr.im/tRgA and http://tr.im/tRf1