The "Faster Than Disaster" Team Creates a Crowdsourcing Map for Hurricane Isaac

Faster Than Disaster Team Creates a Crowdsourcing Map for Hurricane Isaac

 About Faster Than Disaster Team

The Faster Than Disaster crisis map was put together by Mackenzie Kelly and Jonathan Tanzer in an effort to provide situational awareness and a common operating picture for the first responders and the communities affected by Hurricane Isaac.

 The project is supported by the Texas Governor's Committee on People with Disabilities, State of Texas VOAD,  Team Rubicon, and TEXSAR. Additionally, the Williamson County Office of Emergency Management has provided resources in order to support the project.

The Faster Than Disaster map is provided for Emergency Management Organizations and First Responders to use as a resource Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) has partnered with FasterThanDisaster.org, http://isaac.fasterthandisaster.org to launch a social media-driven website to collect information about the impacts of Hurricane Isaac. Mackenzie Kelly, one of the creators of Faster Than Disaster is a current Committee member of the Texas Governor’s Committee on People with Disabilities.

MEMA, Faster Than Disaster, and the USHAHIDI Standby Task Force hope to build situational awareness within the emergency management community by capturing thousands of citizen reports about what's happening in their communities and make them available to emergency managers. The information submitted will be reviewed and used to augment MEMA's understanding of what's unfolding as Isaac continues to wreak havoc throughout the state.

The site uses open source software called USHAHIDI http://ushahidi.com/developed in the public domain. Citizen reporters may submit reports directly on the web site or may Tweet using the hash tag #isaacmap. Citizen reporters are asked to categorize what they're witnessing into categories such as flooding, trees down, and similar and be sure to include their location as precisely as possible (coordinate, street address, or allowing their smart phone to report location). The addition of photos of the situation is strongly encouraged. Those with smart phones may search for the USHAHIDI mobile app for iPhone and Android in their respective marketplaces.

USHAHIDI software http://ushahidi.com/ was used widely during immediately after the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. Volunteers working through a variety of organizations such as CrisisMappers.net and USHAHIDI.org established servers which captured tremendous quantities of valuable information, however lacking a formal connection to the "official" response community, much of these data went without notice. This will be an early attempt at making that connection and providing a tool whereby citizens may help contribute to the understanding of what's happening during a disaster like Isaac.