Haiti is home to mesmerizing beaches, tropical flowers, great food, and beauty reflective of the sun’s love affair with the Caribbean. Unfortunately, it is also home to hurricanes, earthquakes, torrential storms, flooding and the many issues that follow disasters, particularly in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
It was extremely hot and dusty as the caravan of humanitarian aid workers from Team Rubicon pulled up to a farmhouse in Matarara, Mozambique – 40 miles west as the crow flies from Beira, but a nearly 8-hour journey overland due to road washouts and poor conditions. Team Rubicon had arrived to as part of the Cyclone Idai response after the storm ripped through Mozambique and caused monumental flooding throughout the country.
As the Fulcrum Community Advocate, I had the pleasure of attending the National VOAD (Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster) Conference in Nashville, TN. It was a life-changing and definitely a life-saving experience for me.
One of the fastest ways to prevent the spread of deadly diseases like Ebola is to catalog instances on a map. This enables emergency planners to monitor the scope of an outbreak and allocate resources to prevent loss of life. Maps also help community members and aid workers locate clean water, medical facilities, latrines, burial sites, and safe travel routes. Being able to share this information quickly between agencies is vital to coordinating an effective response to an outbreak, and apps with mobile medical forms that share data in real time or near-real time can be an invaluable tool. The engineers at Fulcrum have created apps for tracking Ebola and cholera in response to the current outbreaks in several African countries.
I recently came across an essay entitled The Servitude Bubble, by Umair Haque, regarding technology and the booming “Sharing Economy.” The author makes an interesting argument, emphasizing that the tech industry focuses excessively on trivial app development. Moreover, these apps primarily create systems that rely on armies of servants to perform menial tasks. Haque refers to this trend as the “Servitude Bubble,” highlighting its growth in on-demand labor services for the privileged. Additionally, he argues that this phenomenon represents a significant waste of human potential at its worst.
With the ongoing widespread flooding and tornadoes affecting the southern United States, I’m compelled to write this post. It is directed towards the emergency managers and incident commanders in affected towns and counties and is meant to provide you with guidance on how to expedite disaster declaration using simple off-the-shelf technology. One of the chief goals of emergency managers should be to decrease the amount of time it takes for survivors to receive the assistance they require. This was my goal for five years while I worked for FEMA as a Geospatial Coordinator. Fulcrum will continue to offer our services to any emergency manager who needs assistance.
Guest blogger Danny Sheehan is a geographer and data science student with the Built Environment and Health Project at Columbia University.
House of Hope story
My name is Megan Smith and I am an outreach worker with the House of Hope CDC. House Of Hope is a nonprofit that provides a spectrum of housing and supportive services to people experiencing homelessness, with the mission of preventing and ending homelessness in Rhode Island. Toward this end, my role consists of collaborating with community partners to engage individuals not well-served by the current homeless service provision system. We’re specifically focusing on those who are staying on the streets and are experiencing significant mental health and substance use challenges.
Connecting people to safe drinking water in Liberia with Fulcrum
Having recently used Fulcrum to map over 15,000 potential new customers of the water utility in Liberia’s capital Monrovia, the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program is now using the collected data to help connect more people to safe drinking water, and is working on using Fulcrum to improve the customer database of the Liberia Water and Sewerage Corporation (LWSC).
Humanitarian aid and assistance agencies are working all over the world to help developing nations prepare for and respond to disasters. We are proud to share that Fulcrum is actively being used by such organizations for disaster planning.
