Heather Blanchard, Co Founder of CrisisCommons, presentation at the Fleming Europe's 2nd Annual Geospatial Conference (http://www.flemingeurope.com/aviation-and-defence-conferences/europe/2nd-annual-geospatial-intelligence-summit)

1. The use of geospatial technologies in digital mapping:
Bringing together communities who innovate crisis response
Fleming Europe: 2nd Annual Geospatial Conference
June 1, 2011
Budapest, Hungary
Heather Blanchard
Co Founder, CrisisCommons
www.crisiscommons.org
heather@crisiscommons.org
Twitter/Skype: @poplifegirl

2. CrisisCamp Haiti
•
Columbia
Call to action; global footprint
• 62 events, 8 countries, 30 cities
• Low barrier to entry; replicable
• 2,300+ highly skilled volunteers United Kingdom
• Recognized by CROs and VTCs
• Focus on mapping, missing
persons, language and search Canada
• Surge capacity for existing projects
France

3. What We Learned
• Disasters can create opportunities for innovation, rules
relax, people are willing to be open to solutions from
anywhere
• Disasters create the rise of the “crisis crowd”
• Disasters can benefit from existing programs with
training and leadership have the best change in effectively
harness the emerging crisis crowd into their existing
community
• Disaster response requests need to originate from the
local area/field

4. Potential of
Technology Volunteers
• Post-Disaster Basemap: OpenStreetMap
• Remote Building Assessment: GEO-CAN
• Monitoring: Big Idea with the Gulf Coast
Oil Spill
• Crisis Content/Trends: Japan Earthquake

5. Need to focus
on Open Data
• Many emergency management/civil authorities don’t
have access to tools and resources or partnerships
they need to harness additional capability/capacity
• Sometimes if there are resources, its limited to one
person
• Little focus on data preparedness; process
• Focus on data (and its availability) not platforms

6. United Nations
Office for the
Coordination of
Humanitarian
Affairs

8. What We Learned
Official/Affiliated Response Sources Public Sources
Existing Data
Population - Boundaries - Hydrology - Hypsography - Transportation/Roads - Social Capital
Before Crisis Community Indicators Before Crisis
After Crisis Power - Telecommunications - Weather - Alternative Access to Internet - After Crisis
Food - Fuel - Shelter - Transportation - Health Care
Crisis Specific
Self-Directed Public Safety Reporting - Hazard Identification -
Service Disruption Identifier - Public Sentiment - Status Sharing - Resource Management
Need for Data Preparedness

9. Learning from Japan
• Need for a data coordination role
• Need for “pre positioned” open data profiles
• Need for increased GIS practitioners to work
along side of crisis mappers
• Need to turn citizen content into GIS layers
• Need for organizations affiliated with the crisis
to provide data feeds (i.e. private sector,
government response agencies)

10. Observations
• Don’t create a platform expecting people to come
to you, play in an open data space
• Release resources for use (i.e. data, globes,
imagery)
• Technology volunteers want to help, they will
compass towards projects which support people in
need (not institutions)
• Technology volunteers do not support military or
national security objectives

11. Recommendations
to the U.S. Congress
• Resource and connectivity to volunteer
technology communities
• Create mission assignments which release
imagery for public use
• Engagement in experimentation and
demonstration projects
• Investment in data preparedness

12. Questions?

13. Heather Blanchard
Co Founder
CrisisCommons
heather@crisiscommons.org
703.593.3823
twitter/skype: poplifegirl
www.facebook.com/heather.blanchard
www.linkedin.com/in/hblancha
Thanks!