There are many good people contributing to the disaster recovery effort for Hurricane Katrina. At this point there are lists and lists of lists for finding people, pets, housing, supplies, and of course various ways to donate to the relief effort. It’s a wonderful example of a distributed system in action.
Unfortunately the information space related to Katrina is currently very confusing to navigate. Someone in my family registered a missing family member (my uncle) on the International Red Cross’ site, for example, and a day later another family member sent out an email saying the missing person had been found. It turns out the Red Cross’ website is confusing and what was “found” was the request to find a missing person. Luckily for us, my uncle was finally able to call in and let us know he is ok.
As a result of this experience, I am thinking about Open Source Disaster Recovery. It’s an open standard and set of practices to mobilize the response of a distributed world community, taking advantage of localized efforts and yet making it easier for those in need to navigate and retrieve information quickly. While locating people is certainly the first important step, it would also facilitate the distribution of resources, including goods and services needed in specific places.
The folks over at Social Source Software have teamed up with others to publish a specification to aggregate missing persons databases related to Katrina. This is a great example of reacting in an appropriate way using networked technology.
I would like to start asking the question: What kind of responsive infrastructure do we want to have in place the next time something like this happens in the world? Can we envision a disaster recovery system that lets everyone play to their strengths, and does not depend on any single point of failure? A system that provides a conduit for the outpouring of heartfelt energy, resources, and ideas that follow a catastrophic event. A way for individuals to take responsibility in ways that will have a positive impact on the whole, while keeping information safely distributed and easily accessible to those who need it.
