Lax building regulations combined with poverty meant the vulnerability was higher than necessary.
Highlights the value of the EDEN approach.
Hurricane Katrina in the US had 50 different MPRs without any interoperability! PFIF: Person Finder Interchange Format We helped Google fix their implementation of PFIF .
http://hepl.nlm.nih.gov/inw/
MGRS coordinates which is what US Responders wanted
Hospital AVailability Exchange
http://epic.cs.colorado.edu/ Project EPIC Empowering the Public with Information in Crisis Use 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.
What I personally did on the ground in Haiti.
Broken ladder needed to be mended so that we could get back onto the rooftops. NGO offices had collapsed & so staff were forced to work in makeshift offices.
Ran out of Battery on the Radio when the clouds came down….luckily I had the proper equipment so the sliding around didn’t put me at risk. Fortune was on our side as the pole laid as guide had served it’s purpose (GPS doesn’t work well close to magnetic source such as tower!) Re-emerged wet, but happy