Discussion on what-should-iscrams-role-be-in-actual-events

[susanne]

The Haitian crisis has once again confronted our humanity and forces
us to ask, what we can do to help those in need? ISCRAM is a unique
in that we are a scientific community of academics and practitioners
who study ‘information systems for crisis response and management.’
Certainly, there is some way the ISCRAM community can contribute as a
group.

But how and what?

We are looking for your ideas, suggestions and opinions!

[Duane]

The lead authority organization administratively on the Haiti
emergency is USAID. This is part of the US Dept. of State in
Washington. They in turn are being supported by USDOD and USDHS
(including FEMA). At this time it is virtually impossible and
unadvisable to travel to Haiti to provide assistance there because of
the lack of functioning infrastructure. I am new to this group, but
it would appear to me that it is first necessary to assess the
capabilities of ISCRAM members collectively to determine what could be
done. Is an inventory of capabilities available?

[Zeno Franco]

Duane,
 
Thanks for your thoughts and points.  This is a fairly sophisticated group, I think most members are aware of the risks involved in sending anyone in to an active disaster area without being called-up by an agency in charge.  What we are struggling with is really defining what (if any) role we should have as (primarily) information technologists in the immediate aftermath of a major event.  There are a number of products that various teams can offer, etc.  The organization as a whole might also want to consider endorsing specific products for certain types of response and recovery tasks, etc.  I am not sure that we will have any answers or take any action during this event -- in fact I think we probably will not.  But it is an important area for us to wrestle with on a forward going basis, and this crisis seems to bring these questions in very sharp focus.
 
Best,
 
Zeno

 

[Heart_Beacon]

From a fly on the wall's perspective, ISCRAM is a group that actually
gets involved and goes to a scene which separates you from the pack of
responder groups from the start. Your group seems to have a higher
energy level / level of concern than others for what it is worth...

SJM, CEO The Heart Beacon Rainbow Force Tracking

[crisis management]

[1] Providing experts' advice to local response team or authorities,
through the membership channels.
[2] before disaster, raise research fundings for quick response to
disasters.

Xiaoli

--
XiaoLi Lu (Mr.)
******************************************************************************************************************************
Ph.D. researcher at Crisis Research Centre
Institute of Public Administration, Leiden University
P.O. Box 9555, 2300RB Leiden, The Netherlands
T: +31 71 527 3926
F: +31 71 527 3979

Founding Coordinator of Chinese Crisis Management Website

http://hi.baidu.com/pllxl (Chinese)
http://sites.google.com/site/crisismanagementsite/Xiaoli-Lu (English)
Please try our new crisis wiki http://www.crisis119.org/?action-channel-name-wiki
******************************************************************************************************************************

[Connie White]

Hey Xiaoli, i like your ideas, but have a couple of questions:

> [1] Providing experts' advice to local response team or authorities,
> through the membership channels.

what kind of advice? if we had domains of experts for example, this
could be explored, but do you mean for iscramers to be online for
anyone to pose questions to the group? and in what sort of format?

> [2] before disaster, raise research fundings for quick response to
> disasters.

i really like this idea and actually the Natural Hazards Center (or
some group closely affiliated) has grants for 3000ish for anticipation
types of response research efforts -

i too have desired such a grant, but the problem with the grants that
i am aware of is: they want to know when what and how much - and you
can't do that with disasters. but perhaps to mimic in anticipation
of....?

another problem i have encountered with this is: it's hard to find a
single country or group who will fund an international effort. this
really restricts our group, but i'm sure there's something out there
-

Connie

>
> Xiaoli
>
> --
> XiaoLi Lu (Mr.)

> ***************************************************************************­***************************************************

> Ph.D. researcher at Crisis Research Centre
> Institute of Public Administration, Leiden University
> P.O. Box 9555, 2300RB Leiden, The Netherlands
> T: +31 71 527 3926
> F: +31 71 527 3979
>
> Founding Coordinator of Chinese Crisis Management Website
>
> http://hi.baidu.com/pllxl(Chinese)http://sites.google.com/site/crisismanagementsite/Xiaoli-Lu(English)
> Please try our new crisis wikihttp://www.crisis119.org/?action-channel-name-wiki
> ***************************************************************************­***************************************************
>
> On Jan 22, 1:24 pm, Heart_Beacon <ceo_heartbea...@hushmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > From a fly on the wall's perspective, ISCRAM is a group that actually
> > gets involved and goes to a scene which separates you from the pack of
> > responder groups from the start.  Your group seems to have a higher
> > energy level / level of concern than others for what it is worth...
>
> > SJM, CEO The Heart Beacon Rainbow Force Tracking
>
> > On Jan 21, 10:18 pm, susanne <susanne....@gmail.com> wrote:> The Haitian crisis has once again confronted our humanity and forces
> > > us to ask, what we can do to help those in need?  ISCRAM is a unique
> > > in that we are a scientific community of academics and practitioners
> > > who study ‘information systems for crisis response and management.’
> > > Certainly, there is some way the ISCRAM community can contribute as a
> > > group.
>
> > > But how and what?
>

> > > We are looking for your ideas, suggestions and opinions!- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[crisis management]

Hey, Connie
Thanks for your reply.

what kind of advice? if we had domains of experts for example, this
> could be explored, but do you mean for iscramers to be online for
> anyone to pose questions to the group? and in what sort of format?

for the kinds of advice, that depends on what our iscramers could
provide. i don't know if we have members who come from Haiti, maybe
some ISCRAM members from other countries who have been in Haiti for
response, if so, they do know what kinds of expertise advice the on-
site organizations (including governments, NGOs, volunteers) need.
then they could send the knowledge demands to the iscram community.
members who are interested in this demand could form a supporting team
and providing knowledge and expertise to on-site organizations. in
2008 sichuan earthquake in China, some researchers have also done
similar things.

> i too have desired such a grant, but the problem with the grants that
> i am aware of is: they want to know when what and how much - and you
> can't do that with disasters. but perhaps to mimic in anticipation
> of....?
>
> another problem i have encountered with this is: it's hard to find a
> single country or group who will fund an international effort. this
> really restricts our group, but i'm sure there's something out there
> -

Right, NHC does provide such grants and they also set up an example
for other research community in disaster and crisis research area. i
also inspired by their ideas.
i know NHC also funds a little bit for international effort, like the
Indonesian Tsunami research.

> >http://hi.baidu.com/pllxl(Chinese)http://sites.google.com/site/crisis...)