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At 6 a.m. on Aug. 29, Hurricane Katrina made landfall near Buras, La. One hour and 15 minutes later, the initial pages of the Hurricane Katrina Help “Wiki” were posted on the Internet. The “Wiki” — a piece of software that facilitates Web-based encyclopedias and databases that allow users to add and modify information — was the idea of a handful of people involved in a similar project after the 2004 tsunami in Asia. It provided news about the storm; information on donations and resources for those affected; discussion areas for questions; and a capability to match victims with families willing to house evacuees, among other components. “To my mind it quickly became the best overall source of information about what was happening,” said W. David Stephenson, who teaches security management and issues in technology and criminal justice at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. “The reason has everything to do with that kind of software, in that anyone was able to create and add any information they thought would be relevant to it.” Stephenson, who writes frequently on his blog about the applications of new technology in the homeland security arena, says the Katrina Wiki is an example of how new communication systems that rely heavily on users can be of immense help in disaster and terrorism scenarios in which government communication is absent or traditional communication means are broken. “People basically just took things over on their own and basically started contributing information,” he said. “It didn’t rely on any one person — any gatekeeper — or hierarchy. . . . So much of this lies in our hands now, and we can route around government, if the government doesn’t provide information.” Other Technologies In addition to the Katrina Wiki — and the communal blog set up by the New Orleans Times-Picayune — Stephenson and others point to other emerging modes of communication as potentially useful for future disasters. One example is cell phone-based technology, which allows individuals to take on-the-spot photographs and communicate through text messaging. Unlike phone conversations — in which the call is terminated if the signal cannot be transmitted immediately — text messages sit on the network until there is room to move, said Eric Bonabeau, an author and researcher on the subject of informational systems. This means, Bonabeau said, that text messages can be received — albeit delayed — in scenarios in which cell phone calling is not available. He said the government should develop a flexible system that could exploit this kind of existing technology when a disaster strikes. “If you can design a self-organized system of that kind, you’d be able to have a much more accurate picture of what’s going on and maybe you could use that network as well to organize evacuations, emergency rescue, stuff like that,” said Bonabeau, chief executive officer of Icosystem Corp. of Cambridge, Mass. An example of that kind of program can be found in the New York-based social networking program dodgeball.com, which sends messages to a user’s cell phone when friends are within 10 blocks. It also allows users to broadcast messages to their friend network. If traditional means of communication are unavailable, the service could help reunite friends in the wake of a catastrophic incident, Stephenson suggested. “It’s something we have thought about but something we haven’t pushed,” said Dennis Crowley, founder of the company that provides the service. “Users figure out what they’re doing and find those creative uses.” Crowley said the company’s logs did not indicate usage after Hurricane Katrina, but said he personally received messages through the system during the recent subway scare in New York. A similar service called Upoc allows cell phone users to broadcast messages to anyone who has joined a group, such as New York Yankees fans. One such group listed on the company’s Web site alerts users to changes in the Department of Homeland Security’s threat level. It has 31 members. These kinds of systems will continue to grow, Stephenson said. “What has been done with Katrina Wiki, which will doubtlessly remain up on the Web, now becomes the baseline for the next disaster,” he said. Zack Phillips can be reached at zphillips-at-cq-dot-com.
About Icosystem Corporation Icosystem Corporation, a strategy consulting firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has emerged as a leader in the development of business applications for network theory and complexity science. Using the tools of complexity science and advanced computational techniques, Icosystem provides a highly flexible and cost-effective technology platform for exploring business problems and discovering or designing strategies that have significant impact. Icosystem's approach uses realistic models of complex business environments and evolutionary and distributed computational techniques to validate new business ventures or improve the performance of existing enterprises. |
