Asterix Server for Pakistan Relief? Anyone? Step Up!

It's a big world, out there, and stranger things have happened. If my incredible world-wide network can help out with the request below, please do so... And if you can't, please put the word out on your own blog/wiki... it's important.

Hi Allan,

Thanks for the blog posting and putting a link out to us- most
appreciated! For the past 72 hours we have been trying to establish
Taran Rampersand's ARC (Alert Retrieval Cache) model that was used int
he tsunami crisis for setting up a real-time communications network
into affected areas of Pakistan and Inda. Taran and a couple of
volunteers from MobileActive.org are still trying to locate an
Asterisk server whereby we can set up sms lines for people on the
ground to send text messages to the system which are then posted to a
wiki/blog interface as well as a mailing list to which USAR teams,
NGOs and other stakeholders in relief operations are subscribed to.

Last month, about 50 hours into Katrina we had a skype-powered call
center with in/out lines and sms capabilities. Unfortunately, when we
tried to follow the same skype mock-up 18 hours after the quake in
S.Asia, a member of Skype Journal informed us that skype didn't have
any metro lines in the region and that wouldn't be possible. Therefore
we had to switch over to the tsunami ARC model whereby a local line is
needed either in India or Pakistan - preferably both and is capable of
receiving sms and posting to a mailing list (sms2email).

We have coders (Dan Lane & Taran and a whole group of geeks) all set
to implement in under a couple of hours a working system whereby user
on ground will send an sms to local Indian/Pak number which will
forward message to a mailing list and relayed to a section on our wiki
set up to post in emergency relief format and blog, When someone wants
to contact person on ground, we will be dedicating our katrinahelp
skypeOut line to sending sms back to person on ground.

Basically - the system is all automated and works like this: sms2web - web2sms

We are looking at achieving transparent disaster relief communications
with direct contact to victims and those who can assist them in an
open source manner. We know for a fact that USAR and other rescue
crews are using sorts of heat detection techniques and equipment to
locate trapped people, imagine this: trapped victim sends sms to
pak/indian line, sms forwarded to asterisk server - goes to mailing
list/wiki/blog sections and communicated to USAR team in location,
USAR team can communicate directly to victims and locate them easily
via web2sms ....

the possibilities are endless.

We are desperate to get this communications infrastructure set up -
very simple, we have the know-how and people standing by to come plug
it up... we even have server ready for this.. what we don't have is an
asterisk server and the local line.

Any pointers you can give us is most appreciated.

Thanks,
Bala Pitchandi & Angelo Embuldeniya

--
The QuakeHelp Team
www.quakehelp.blogspot.com

I wrote Angelo and Bala that I'm a writer, not a techie, but would put the word out. You can, too. At worst, you lose a little bandwidth.

Allan

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 01:59pm in Pakistan Earthquake | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (1) | TrackBack (0)

Recovery 2.0 Fiddles While Kashmir Burns: "We Don't Have the Tools" is OUT as an Excuse (Reprise)

Friend Neville Hobson urges us to Help Victims of Pakistan Earthquake. With a death toll climbing north of 20,000, the October 2005 Kashmir Earthquake knocks the entire Atlantic Hurricane season into the corner.

After the earthquake & tsunami last year, the SEA-EAT blog/wiki project -- an entirely grassroots effort --  organized and swung into action within hours. After hearing Dina Mehta describe the effort at Reboot, I wrote about it, saying "We Don't Have the Tools is NOT an Excuse".

Just as they did in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (my post here), many of the same team spontaneously assembled behind the South Asia Quake Help effort within hours of the quake:  ("News and information about resources, aid, donations and volunteer efforts after the South Asia Earthquake of October 8th, 2005.")

And are doing an outstanding job. You can volunteer, by the way.

These three efforts in nine months point, unfortunately, to the sluggishness and bureaucracy already clogging the arteries of Jeff Jarvis' Recovery 2.0 effort, which is aimed at doing what the SEA-EAT team already does far better.  After weeks of talking about it, Jarvis managed to convene a meeting to talk about the project. The results of this meeting?

* We need to work on standards and APIs for the tools and data bases people create to help in disasters. The peoplefinder standard is already underway and some of the folks from Yahoo at the meeting — who had experience on the ground in Houston and also at the Red Cross network operations center — are working on improvements. At a minimum, we need to do a better job harnessing the internet to help people find each other.

* We need to meet face-to-face with government, NGOs, and business to offer help and coordinate. There is a meeting in Washington on Oct. 17 about just that.

In the meantime, the Kashmir was being leveled by an earthquake, and the South Asia Quake Help team organized itself and got to work. No meetings, no discussions of software options, no meetings in Washington.

Jeff Jarvis: You have great influence; the members of your group have great influence. Instead of reinventing the wheel, why not use your influence to push funds and volunteers into the group behind SEA-EAT, Katrina Help, and South Asia Quake Help? The money your group has spent on travel alone -- just on the BART -- could fund any of these efforts.

How about it?

Technorati tags: Recovery 2.0Recovery2.0 pakistan+earthquake

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 10:52am in Citizen Journalism, Current Affairs, Katrina, Online Media, Pakistan Earthquake, Smart Communities, Society, Tsunami | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (5) | TrackBack (2)