A Brave New World of Digital Volunteers

I just posted on the subject of Liability and Volunteers in disaster in an effort to provide a comprehensive resource that would hopefully add clarity to this complex and multi-faceted issue. In my continued exploration of the subject I came across the Commons Lab at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. In a nutshell, the Commons Lab "seeks to advance research and independent policy analysis of emerging technologies, with an emphasis on their social, legal, and ethical implications." They have articles on:

The Power of Hackathons

Successful Government Crowdsourcing Efforts for Earthquake Monitoring

Privacy and Missing Persons after Natural Disasters

Basically, they have lots of interesting things to read that focus on the nexus of emerging technological platforms and their role in creating social change...but the article that caught my attention is this: Responding to Liability: Evaluating and Reducing Tort Liability for Digital Volunteers, apropos given Friday’s posting. 

Responding to Liability: Evaluating and Reducing Tort Liability for Digital Volunteers

Full Disclosure, I didn't know what a Tort was...so for those of you who aren't up on your legal terminology a Tort is:

A civil wrong which unfairly causes someone else to suffer loss or harm resulting in legal liability for the person who commits the tortious act, called a tortfeasor. (Thanks Wikipedia)

The article focuses on Digital Volunteers and the liability issues that come with engaging in this brave new digital world in a post-disaster context. Because of the application of Volunteers in this way is so new, courts are still evaluating the potential exposure individuals and groups face by engaging in these types of activities. In the absence of definitive guidance, the article outlines challenges and opportunities related to Liability and the innovative work being done along the digital frontier.

An aspect of the article that surprised me though is that it focuses on the group rather than the individual and encourages as a mitigation strategy the instituting and formalization of processes and procedures through incorporation. For some reason I see this strategy as running counter to what makes this form of Volunteering so attractive to so many: anonymity and autonomy. While it’s easier to plug in and help an already established structure that has definition than acting on your own, I feel that one of the aspects of virtual engagement that appeals to so many is the freedom to do and act how they see fit given the context. It’s with this belief that I find the focus on the group over the individual surprising.

As more discussion and opportunities to see firsthand how Virtual Volunteers engage in response, as both individuals and groups become available, the ability to forecast how best to indemnify these good Samaritans will become clearer.

Until then, if you are interested in lending a digital hand the hashtag #SMEM (Social Media Emergency Management) or groups like crisis mappers, Ushahidi, or VOSTs (Virtual Operation Support Teams) are good ways to learn more about the opportunities that exist.

One thing is for certain, the way in which Volunteers engage in response and recovery efforts are changing, and while it may be difficult to accurately foresee all the speed bumps along the way towards their seamless integration, the energy and desire to help those in need is always welcomed.

The Road to Recovery

An area where I believe significant benefit can be derived that would aid in the mitigation of the groundhogs day scenario many communities face when responding to and recovering from disasters, is to spend time looking at how other communities faced similar events and then adapt and evolve what they did to suit the idiosyncrasies of their community.

In an effort to see what's being done along those lines, I've made an effort to get my hands on more articles coming from the world of academia, to broaden and challenge my views on what can and should be done to promote resilience at a local level. I can't remember how I stumbled upon this one, but it comes to us from the 'Lincoln Institute of Land Policy' and is titled "The Road to Recovery."

https://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/dl/2259_1598_The_Road_to_Recovery_0713LL.pdf

While any event adversely affecting individuals and families is unfortunate, it's good to know that there are people out there looking at and learning from previous disasters trying to find commonalities and lessons that can be shared. While it's good to know, I have a concern, with no disrespect to the good people at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, who's reading articles of this nature outside of the academic community and socially challenged individuals like me? How are we broadening the circle of knowledge and experience when articles that examine and try to synthesize what's worked and what hasn't, exist in obscure publications that no one outside the academic circles have heard of?

I say this because what this article covers is important; it examines the role of the various levels of government in recovery and rebuilding trying to find commonalities in "disparate environments" to help the recovery of future communities impacted by similar disasters. At a quick 8 pages you can consider this bathroom reading...but it wasn't the length that struck me though, it was what was said about Collaboration:

Supporting Collaboration: Building sustainable capacity and capability for long-term recovery through genuine collaboration and coordination, both horizontally among local groups and vertically among different levels of government. Vertically organized, hierarchical agencies—with clear organizational charts and streamlined channels of communication—are usually not well suited to manage disaster recovery, because the lack of “connecting flow” across vertical hierarchies limits collaboration as well as the flow of new and updated information among organizations. U.S. National agencies involved in recovery, for example, are more adept at administering individual programs than they are at solving complex problems that cut across governmental institutional boundaries. By contrast, horizontally organized agencies can promote interagency coordination and information sharing, allowing individual groups to adapt to new contexts and information while remaining responsible to their parent organization. 

(Pg 18)

And...
The reason I was struck was because it's brutally honest and makes sense given what I've seen during the transition from response to recovery. How this plays out at a local level is that Long Term Recovery Committees (LTRCs) are the horizontally organized representative coalitions of local organizations described above tasked with solving the complex problem of Long Term Community Recovery.

Quick sidebar: Long Term Recovery Committees are coalitions of local organizations and agencies established to administer the long term recovery of a community, allocating dollars to individuals and families who go through the unmet needs / case management process while organizing the voluntary workforce to stretch recovery dollars. For more information on LTRCs go here.

So if LTRCs, these horizontally organized coalitions are the right tool for the job and the research reinforces it, why aren't more communities being educated and walked through the formation of an LTRC before the next event as a part of resilience programming?

When LTRCs are setup after a disaster there is often considerable turbulence due to: the stress of going through response, the amount of money they are responsible for, the politics and influence at play, the newness of the relationships of the constituent members, and the fact that a community is looking to them for guidance and direction on how best to quickly and effectively put the pieces back together.

By proactively addressing this, we would give communities time to deal with the many challenges that come with LTRC formation without the pressure of an ongoing response effort. This luxury would expedite the organization of how monetary donations are handled as well as work to fast track the start of case management and ultimately the work of repair and rebuild.

Don't get me wrong, creating an LTRC is no small feat, but if the upsides are so great and every community impacted by a disaster will need to form one, why isn't more being done?

LTRC Resources
Church World Service leads the way with free LTRC training, and as linked above, National VOAD has a manual that outlines the processes and best practices that come with forming an LTRC. In addition to the material resources available, there are countless communities that have gone through this with just as many individuals to tap for advice and guidance.

Lets start building the foundations required for each aspect of disaster response and recovery now so that when something happens this isn't a surprise, this isn't the first time people are meeting and hearing about LTRCs. This is the low hanging fruit with a potential for significant impact...proactive education is free, resources are available, and yet we see the groundhogs day scenario play out again and again making the road to recovery a long one.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Information in a vacuum isn't very helpful, only when it's communicated and integrated with other data points can it be vetted and put into context. In the digital age information that's hours old may have changed, this is especially true in a post disaster environment where the balance between supply and demand is in constant flux. Given an absence of relevant and timely information, people turn to each other, oftentimes what ends up happening is that outdated information or outright lies end up being circulated adding to the confusion of an already complex situation.

In the immediate aftermath of Sandy 4G LTE networks performed well and allowed individuals continued access to data networks so that the flow of communication and information never really stopped. Given that the Mid-Atlantic region is one the largest and most densely populated markets in the country, this coverage is not surprising. However, access to 4G LTE networks is not ubiquitous and as a result, many of the challenges that come with lacking reliable access to communication and information in the aftermath of a disaster persist.

With 4G access on the rise continuity in information flow can be expected, but until that happens leveraging the fact that there are close to 7 billion active cellphones around the world, is the foundation upon which The Serval Project bases its open-source software; a solution to the communication and information blackout that happens at a local level after disasters.

The Serval Project
"Serval is a revolutionary, free, open-source software under development for mobile telephones, letting them communicate even in the absence of phone towers and other supporting infrastructure" (http://www.servalproject.org/home). Co-Founder Paul Gardner Stephen, part of the Australian-based Serval Project, was compelled to put his programming skills to use after seeing how infrastructure and communication failures in the wake of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake hampered relief efforts. The result is a free software called Serval Mesh, which essentially enables phones to talk to each other directly, or via a Mesh Extender (think signal booster), instead of via a phone tower. What this means is that it can work in the middle of nowhere, or during a disaster when the phone network is knocked out and there is no data network available. By utilizing the built in wifi capabilities our smartphones already have, this software enables continued person-to-person communication without provider access. While the ramifications of what this could mean for service providers is not fully understood, in terms of what it could mean to teams involved in Search and Rescue and early coordination of activities is an exciting prospect. 

For more information on the work and its applications please go to: www.servalproject.org and if you like what you see they are raising money via indidegogo to expand their efforts. 

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/speak-freely
http://www.servalproject.org/home

Please note that I'm not endorsing this product...I just think it's cool and wanted to share how innovation is impacting the world of disaster response.

Fire on the Mountain

Since the 19 wildland firefighters lost their lives fighting the Yarnell Hill blaze in Arizona, the internet has lit up with opinions on where failures may have occurred and how to fix the current state of fire / land management in the US.

Fire is something I know little about: the tactics employed to fight it, the science behind burn rates of certain types of fuel, or the environmental factors that create the tinderboxes that many states seem to be, so I won't pretend to be an expert.

What I do know is that this tragedy has sparked a National debate spurred by President Obama's remarks that "...the Arizona Firefighter deaths shows a need to reassess wildland fire management policy."

I'm a big believer in looking at and learning from past experience, and in January of this year Tasmania experienced a firestorm that may help inform the course of the current conversation around the Fire Management debate. The Guardian created a compelling multi-media story around one families escape from danger and how the blurring of the wildland urban interface is working to put more people at risk.

If a re-examination of fire / land management policies in the US are about to be undertaken, I hope the lessons learned from communities around the world who have gone through this can help shape the conversation.

The "Firestorm" link below will take you to the Guardian piece:

Firestorm - The Guardian UK

The Holmes, taking cover under their doc in Dunally, Tasmania

Man Made Earthquakes

Slipping from the vein of "natural" disasters, the USGS has recently released a study that confirms that Hydraulic Fracturing or "Fracking" wastewater stored in wells can cause traditionally stable faults to slip causing earthquakes.

While the debate of ethics vs economics is waged, the stats that the USGS cites are tough to ignore:

"The number of earthquakes has increased dramatically over the past few years within the central and eastern United States. More than 300 earthquakes above a magnitude 3.0 occurred in the three years from 2010-2012, compared with an average rate of 21 events per year observed from 1967-2000." 

Mother Jones also has an article and a .gif that illustrates the process from well to earthquake:

Drillers inject high-pressure fluids into a hydraulic fracturing well, making slight fissures in the shale that release natural gas. The wastewater that flows back up with the gas is then transported to disposal wells, where it is injected deep into porous rock. Scientists now believe that the pressure and lubrication of that wastewater can cause faults to slip and unleash an earthquake.

Illustration: Leanne Kroll. Animation: Brett Brownell

So what?
While 3.0M quakes rarely, if ever cause damage or injury, the quakes resulting from this method of storing wastewater have been linked to tremors in the 5-6.0M range. From a codes and building perspective, the Midwest is still grappling with how best to offer affordable safe room options in building back smarter that earthquakes and the codes to withstand moderate shaking are not on their radar. As such, the damage from smaller magnitude quakes will continue to impact homeowners because their the exception, not the rule in Tornado Alley. 

House damage in central Oklahoma from the magnitude 5.6 earthquake on Nov. 6, 2011. Research conducted by USGS geophysicist Elizabeth Cochran and her university-based colleagues suggests that this earthquake was induced by injection into deep disposal wells in the Wilzetta North field. Learn more about that research at: http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/early/2013/03/26/G34045.1.abstract. Photo Credit: Brian Sherrod, USGS.

While there are preparations underway to respond to a catastrophic quake similar to the New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811 that caused the Mississippi River to backflow for a period of time, nothing is being done now to protect against smaller, more frequent shaking.

Who's going to Pay for all this?
After a disaster: flood, hurricane, fire, hail or wind storm, the battle between homeowner and insurance company begins. The combination of under-informed homeowner's who don't fully understand their insurance policies and the insurer's who aren't interested in paying out every claim can be a tension-filled dance taking weeks to resolve. Given that coverage for quake damage probably isn't in most of the home and business owner policies, the impacts of these events are going to become a growing concern. Couple this with the fact that there is evidence that these quakes are precipitated by activities undertaken by private companies and the questions like: who should be responsible for paying to cover the damages begin to be asked?

I don't see this being a problem until someone is crushed by a collapsing chimney or there are serious injuries resulting from a man-made quake and then questions about liability and financial compensation will push this to the forefront of the national conversation given how much money the Natural Gas Industry is currently making.

Consensus on Clean up

One of the greatest assets individuals and communities can have before, during, and after a disaster is the knowledge of what happens next, and the confidence to act on that knowledge. Unfortunately, the current state of preparedness in many communities is far from that ideal and as a result, leaves room for ambiguity around key issues that mark turning points in an individual and community's recovery.

A great opportunity to clear up some of this ambiguity while working to set and manage homeowner expectations is to, as a response community, agree and adhere to standards around the work done on behalf of impacted homeowners i.e. mucking/gutting/debris removal/sanitizing/mold treatment/etc. By gaining consensus on this issue, standards can be proactively communicated as a part of preparedness initiatives to help bring both homeowner and responding groups (established or spontaneous) onto the same page when engaging in cleanup activities. Not only that, but by actively pushing cleanup standards, homeowners don't have to wait around for someone to help them, they can quickly and aggressively begin the process with friends, family, or spontaneous volunteers from the community and work to a standard that is applied across the country...in essence, working to create more resilient communities.

Is it done?

Is it Done?
I would bet that if you were to show the above photo to different people with different levels of experience in response, homeowners included, and asked what needed to happen next, you would get a variety of answers. Not to say that they would be wrong, but finding a definitive answer would not be an easy task because until recently no checklist existed, there was no "how to" guide endorsed by a coalition of organizations or FEMA to help define the process. Given that more than a handful of organizations have been doing this type of work for years spanning hundreds of disasters, one would think that an authoritative guidebook would've been written before now, if for no other reason than to give homeowners a chance at a full recovery without such reliance on response organizations. I say this because responding non-profits can't serve everyone, and after a certain point, they begin to pack up taking with them their know how and experience, leaving the remaining work to fewer and oftentimes less experienced resources. What remains is often a mash up of homes taken to various stages of "completeness," and a lot of grey area around how best to move many of them forward.

In recognition that the resources and surge of Volunteer power are not inexhaustible, the National VOAD Housing Committee has created guidelines to formalize an understanding of what completing the steps involved in clean up means. This was done to bring some uniformity to how we talk and act in the field on behalf of impacted homeowners and renters.

Go here for the download

While the creation of the above guidance documentation is a good start, I believe packaging these guidelines with documentation and other relevant resources should be used as a part of community preparedness programming; preparedness is about more than having food and water, it's about having the knowledge and understanding of what happens next. 

The goal is to ensure that all homeowners and responding groups have a clear understanding of expectations around what the different phases of cleanup are to mitigate the guesswork so that consistency can be created in the work done on behalf of impacted homeowners.

In the post, 'Disaster Response in the Digital Age' I talk about the need for the creation of a standardized data set so that information can flow freely between the proprietary software platforms being utilized during response. I believe the creation of this guidance document is an important first step, because without consensus around the definitions of cleanup activities, getting consistency in data collection and tracking, the first step in data set standardization, isn't feasible.

Monsoon Season

The Indian state of Uttarakhand is working through a complex crisis caused by monsoonal rains. The seasonal weather pattern is something that the region has had to adjust to, however this year the rains came two weeks early and dropped an unprecedented amount of precipitation. The flooding and subsequent landslides have caused 6,000 people to be declared missing and now presumed dead and impacted millions, the magnitude of this event is so great that its has been dubbed the 'Himalayan tsunami.'

Photos courtesy of: prafulla.net

The event happened over a month ago and still the struggles of getting relief supplies into the cities and villages at the base of the Himalaya's remains challenging. For more information on the latest relief efforts and updates I recommend:

http://reliefweb.int/disaster/fl-2013-000070-ind
http://www.trust.org/spotlight/India's-deadly-Himalayan-floods/

Given the access issues and the scope of this event, it is unclear to me whether there is a need for voluntary resources at this time. I have begun looking into this and if/when I hear more, I'll post what I find out.

In the same vein in terms of weather related phenomenon, the US also has a Monsoon season that provides much, if not all of the precipitation to the Southwest, usually without the detrimental impact on infrastructure. Here is more information on the Monsoon Rains the Southwest experiences according to FEMA:

Given that the silent disaster impacting food prices and our water supply is the ongoing drought we're facing in the US, any precipitation in the areas on the drought map below would be welcome relief.

It's unfortunate that one has to dig to learn about the challenges communities across the globe face given that many of the factors that create their strife are replicated in our own backyards. One of binds that tie us together as a global community is how we face adversity and hardship caused by the natural course of events on earth. It is my sincere hope that aid reaches those who need it in Uttarakhand and that recovery can be swift and efficient.