Emergency Software | The Coffeehouse

joshnuss
Joshua Nussbaum

The terrible tragedy in the Gulf Coast got me thinking about how software could aid in an emergency situation.

I've seen some websites offer services for finding missing family members, friends or pets. But its not nearly enough

The government would be wise to create a full blown crisis management database that could track the location of people, food shipments, shelters, charity donations and logistics too.

Thats what software is best at - organization, something many believe the recovery effort lacked early on.

Manip

Sounds like a big black hole for money to me. You can try and write these systems before there is a real need, or you can write them to forfill a need.

Right now, you could use Microsoft Access to create such a database, writing a specific software solution wouldn't really increase its effectiveness, it also seems difficult to imagine the troops in the field gaining access to the information (who are the one that would need it and provide it).

I am far less interested in using software and technology to recover from a disaster and far MORE interested in using it to prevent one or give people more warning.

For example, attaching sensors down the levees to measure stress by calculating how much they have expanded. You could also write models of situations and simulate "What would happen if I..." stuff.

I can't help but consider something a reporter said earlier today when I am replying to this topic - "We think we are invincible because of our technology, but the truth is that when mother nature wants to nock us around there is nothing in our arsenal that can stop her."

joshnuss
Joshua Nussbaum

I agree prevention is important, but u still have to plan for failure..

And no I dont see any money in it. I think its something FEMA or some org. like that should be doing.

Clearly, they can be more organized.

Cybermagellan
Live for nothing, or die for everything

I personally think it is a great idea...of course there are going to be the ones that will say "This is the goverments way of tracking you..." but then my answer would be "Fine have a great day and I hope you find another way to let your family know your OK and get the care/support you need". Also this would be a great way to find out who's been given care...what kind of care they should need and the type of support the goverment will need again, if god forbid (And it probably will) ever happen again.

You talk about studying the impact of these occurances that are completely random...however not preventable. If "nature" is disturbed then who are we to predict what will happen. However we can study the support model of 20-100,000 people. The military does this and can balance support for as many troops that deploy if they know the amount. And that only works with 100% reporting (1 soldier x MRE's a day x 365 days a year = 1 soldier needs 1095 MRE's to survive a year).

I would be interested to see how this turns out. It would have to be larger than most hospital databases. You COULD in theory use checkpoints to see who is registered where and then family members could locate one another more efficiently. I love the idea..

Manip

There is no such thing as being "random", not in nature, not in computing and not in anything that I'm aware of. With this knowledge we can look at probabilities of various natural events occurring, for example the most recent natural disaster was predicted to happen within the next 180~ years...

Now we have concluded that there is a 1 in 180 chance of this event occurring this year, so why don't we throw some things though a model:

If a hurricane event happened in X location, being of Category Y strength what would the damage Z be to location X?

What is the likelihood of this happening; what are the costs in reducing potential damage by 10%? 20%? etc

Cybermagellan
Live for nothing, or die for everything

Manip wrote:
There is no such thing as being "random", not in nature, not in computing and not in anything that I'm aware of. With this knowledge we can look at probabilities of various natural events occurring, for example the most recent natural disaster was predicted to happen within the next 180~ years...

Now we have concluded that there is a 1 in 180 chance of this event occurring this year, so why don't we throw some things though a model:

If a hurricane event happened in X location, being of Category Y strength what would the damage Z be to location X?

What is the likelihood of this happening; what are the costs in reducing potential damage by 10%? 20%? etc

What will we map it with? The three hurricanes that people have on record in an area or ? Plus we would have to factor in everything that could have an impact, coastal shores, temperatures, if a new building goes up does it deflect wind enough to cause a preasure problem, the tidal temperature...plus I think the NOAA (If I have the acronym correct) is already in charge of that. No one thought it would hit LA till it skipped Flordia....it did and look what happened. In Flordia this would be an excellent idea... it's like a Tsunami that would hit California...where do you start to measure? There is no data.