MobileActive.org

Earthquake in Haiti: How You can Help and Learn More

Relief efforts are ongoing after a powerful 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti yesterday. Mobile phones play a huge part in relief efforts today, from supporting donations, citizen media coming from affected areas, to emergency relief coordination. Here are some links and information you might find useful in responding to and learning more about the Haiti earthquakes.  

Mobile Donations

[This section last updated 01/15/2010 12:59 pm]

Text message donations are exploding in the aftermath of the earthquake, similar to what happened in 2004 after the Indonesian Tsunami. $9 million has already been donated by noon on Friday January 15 just to the Red Cross via the 90999 number.

A list of all short codes to text to to donate on your phone bill in the United States:

• Text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross for Haiti efforts. You can donate $10 up to three times, and 100% of the donations will reach the Red Cross Foundation. This effort is run by Mobile Accord.
• Text YELE to 501501 to donate $5 to the Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti Foundation. 501501 is run by Give On the Go, a service provider for the Mobile Giving Foundation. Ashley Nay, who is in Business Development at Give On the Go told MobileActive on the phone that "100% of the donations go to YELE" from these donations.
• Text HAITI to 25383 to donate $5 to International Rescue Committee.
• Text RELIEF to 30644 to get automatically connected to Catholic Relief Services and donate money with your credit card.
• Text CERF to 90999 to donate $5 to The United Nations Foundation.
• Text DISASTER to 90999 to donate $10 to Compassion International. 
• Text HAITI to 85944 to donate $5 to the Rescue Union Mission and MedCorp International.

A list of all the non-US short codes that we know are serving as donation lines.

• Germany: text HAITI to 81190 to donate $5 (out of which $4.83 will go to Aktion Deutschland Hilft).
• Denmark: text Katastrofe to 1231 to donate 150 kr, or call 90 56 56 56. 
• Canada: text HAITI to 45678 to donate $5 to the Salvation Army, again courtesy of the Mobile Giving Foundation.
• Italy: text to 48540 to donate to the Italian Red Cross if you are on the WIND or 3 networks. If you are on Vodacom or TIM, text 48451 to donate EUR 2 (Telecom Italia users can also call this number). (Read More)
• France: 80 222/Croix Rouge française, 80 333/Secours Populaire, et 80 444/Secours Catholique. One euro per SMS. (From a user)
• Mexico: Telcel users can text 8888, donations will go to the Carlos Slim Foundation (Thanks @sorrelkydd)

More organizations that are working in Haiti in relief efforts are listed on  The NYTimes Lede Blog and more on MSNBC's How to Help page.

Ongoing Communications Efforts

[Update, as of 01/15/2010, ~1:30pm]

• A good source for ongoing communication information is the Ushahidi Situation Room. We reported about the Ushahidi map for Haiti (Ushahidi is a mapping platform for crowdsourced crisis information) earlier, and it is being actively updated by the situation room setup at Tufts' Fletcher School. The Ushahidi blog also lists many of the other map-based information collection systems that have been set up.
• This morning, Erik Hersman posted a mobile network update (01/15/2010, 10:03am) on the Situation Room page saying "Digicel is at 50% Voila & Haitel at 75%." USA Today reported yesterday that Jamaica-based Digicel has had problems getting themselves into Haiti, and that "the network is severely congested 'because of the number of people making calls and trying to receive calls.'"
• A story on MSNBC from yesterday details some of TSF's work in Haiti. From the article:

Telecoms Sans Frontieres is hooking up terminals to facilitate communications for U.N. relief workers in Haiti, and will eventually let Haitians make free two-minute phone calls to anywhere in the world. The group's U.S. representative, Paul Margie, said the biggest challenge isn't technology but security. "The security and logistics situation on the ground is pretty bad, so finding secure locations to do these things is hard," he told me.

• The Swedish Wire reports that Ericsson is working on deploying "container-based mini-GSM system" to improve communications.

[Following was the section as it was posted the day after the earthquake, 01/13/2010, ~1:00pm]

• We are hearing that Digicel, one of the main mobile operators, is intermittently working as of right now, and satellite telephone services has allowed many first-responders and witnesses to report via skype on the devastation in Haiti. Digicel has also committed $5 million for relief efforts. [WSJ]
• Telecoms Sans Frontiers is deploying a team for support with emergency telecoms.  You can donate to their efforts at this page. From the article:

Port-au-Prince has been severely affected including critical services such as, electricity, water and phone lines. Communication appears to be almost impossible at this time, with phone lines down. Numerous buildings, including the United Nations building, are reported to have been seriously damaged.

Facing this humanitarian catastrophe, TSF has deployed an emergency team from the American base in Managua to provide a vital support in emergency telecoms. They are carrying satellite mobile and fixed telecommunications tools. Reinforcements will also be sent from TSF’s international Headquarters. In close contact with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid Department (ECHO), they are now flying to Saint-Domingue in order to rejoin Port-au-Prince as soon as possible.

At this stage there is very limited access because of debris and other obstacles on the roads. It seems that no communication can be made with the airport either, which is reported to be closed.

• The Crisis Commons wiki is documenting some of the News, Data, and Communications efforts. In particular, they report about two mobile communication service efforts (they seek confirmation whether these are working yet): 
  • Ushahidi - SMS:+44 7624802524 or email haiti@ushahidi.com
  • InSTEDD GeoChat +447624805700 set up for local providers (SMS Reference)

Information from the Ground  

Twitter Lists   

Twitter lists have become a quick-fire way to organize and aggregate  information related to events and topics. Quite a few twitter lists have  been set up by several news organizations after the Haiti  earthquake. Here is a sample:  

• CNN list
• NYTimes list
• BBC list
• NPR list

The twitter hashtag #haiti and a  search for haiti on twitter yield lots of info.   

US State Department/American Citizens  

Barack Obama in speech to Americans this morning listed  several ways in which the US government is trying to help relief  efforts in Haiti:  

• Americans seeking info on family in Haiti should call  1-800-407-4747  
• Updates from the White House's efforts will be put on  The White House Blog. From the Department of State, updates are coming on the official twitter-verified DipNote.
• DipNote also says: Americans in Haiti can call the Embassy’s Consular Task Force at 509-2229-8942, 509-2229-8089, 509-2229-8322, or 509-2229-8672.   

Live Blogs / Other semi-live coverage  

Many blogs are covering the happenings live, and incorporating photos  and videos coming in from citizen reporters in Haiti:

• Reuters has a page offering live coverage of events. Includes picture reports coming in through twitter, as well as News from other sources.
• CNN iReport, a citizen journalism effort, is aggregating citizen-submitted videos and photos on this page.
• The Lede Blog at the New York Times has ongoing coverage.
• NPR also has ongoing coverage on its Two Way blog.
• The Guardian also has liveblogging efforts.

(More here). Compiling citizen voices in Haiti are on this Global Voices Online page, to be updated as more content comes in.

YouTube

Youtube's search on earthquake Haiti yields many videos, and there are some dedicated channels and playlists on the cause like this one from CitizenTube.

References for Relief efforts

We have also compiled some references for those interested in reading more about previous relief efforts and resources that might help organizations running relief efforts:

• Reuters EIS is Emergency Information Services being developed by the Reuters Thompson Foundation in partnership with INSTEDD and UNICEF.  INSTEDD has staffers deployed in Haiti to determined whether EIS might be useful there.

• The United Nations Foundations and the Vodafone Foundation recently released a report on New Technologies in Emergencies and Conficts

• Cell Broadcast is the technology that was designed for use in emergencies such as this. A report evaluating cell broadcast's usage possibilities in disaster situations in Maldives is available in our mDirectory.

Upgrading development: Can technology alleviate poverty?

Mobilizing Development: The UN Foundation and Vodafone Foundation Technology Partnership

mHealth: New Horizons for Health Through Mobile Technologies

The Mobile Minute: Facebook Targets Feature Phones, Mobile Donations to Japan, and Smartphone Security

Today's Mobile Minute brings you coverage on smartphone security and malware, the struggle for mobile money systems in Africa to reach the level of M-PESA in Kenya, Facebook's move toward feature phones, the success of messaging-specific feature phones, and a guide to mobile donations for Japan.

• After more than 50 Android apps were discovered to be carrying malware in early March, the BBC took a look at mobile security. From the risks involved in keeping a lot of personal data on mobiles to ways in which malware can be used to manipulate phones, the article explores the need for mobile security around smartphone applications.

• In Africa, mobile banking has certainly garnered a lot of publicity and press. But All Africa looks at some of the drawbacks of mobile banking in specific countries where mobile banking systems are active; specifically, the article focuses on the "walled garden" system which makes it expensive to transfer funds between different mobile operators (sometimes with fees from five to 20 percent higher than a transfer between two users on the same mobile operator).

• Facebook recently bought Snaptu, a company that develops applications for feature phones. Snaptu developed Facebook's first feature phone app, and Facebook has now reportedly acquired the company for close to $70 million dollars. The purchase could indicate that Facebook plans to focus on reaching non-smartphone users around the world.

• Cellular-News reports that by 2015, messaging-specific feature phones will grow to encompass 1/3 of all shipped feature phones. Feature phones make up 75% of the handset market, and feature phones that are optimized for messaging services (such as "SMS, MMS, mobile email, and mobile IM") are expected to increase in popularity.

• Want to send a mobile donation to a specific cause for tsunami relief in Japan? Into Mobile has a roundup of shortcodes and the organizations that use them so that you can easily find the best way to donate.

[Mobile Minute Disclaimer: The Mobile Minute is a quick round-up of interesting stories that have come across our RSS and Twitter feeds to keep you informed of the rapid pace of innovation. Read them and enjoy them, but know that we have not deeply investigated these news items. For more in-depth information about the ever-growing field of mobile tech for social change, check out our blog posts, white papers and research, how-tos, and case studies.]

Image courtesy Flickr user QiFei

Extending the Technology-Community-Management Model to Disaster Recovery: Assessing Vulnerability in Rural Asia

Mapping Snow Via Mobile Phone

The radio station WNYC is creating on-air and online stories from two things very familiar to people in the Northeastern United States: mobile phones and snow. A snowstorm over the holidays was the heaviest December snowfall in six decades and dumped up to 20 inches in many parts of New York City. The story quickly became one of snow removal and how the city was not removing the snow as quickly as people had hoped.

Jim Colgan and the WNYC newsroom wanted to get a sense of what was happening on the streets. Problem was, there was no good or easy way to do this. The station couldn’t rely on the city for real-time information, and reporters couldn’t get to many of the areas. The answer was to have the listeners share their own reports and stories, via mobile phone.

Texting to 9-1-1: Examining the Design and Limitations of SMS

Barriers and Gaps Affecting mHealth in Low and Middle Income Countries: Policy White Paper

Lessons from Haiti

A new report from the Knight Foundation analyzes how new technologies were used to aid in the recovery of the earthquake in Haiti. The report -- Media, Information Systems and Communities: Lessons from Haiti -- suggests that the events mark "the beginning of a new culture in disaster relief" in which new and hybrid technologies, including mobile phones, are used to support rescue and relief efforts.

The report mentions a numnber of uses of mobile technology, including:

• Interactive maps and SMS helped search-and-rescue teams find people in need of supplies
• SMS messages broadcast critical information to Haitians
• Hybrid approaches in which mobile technology was used in conjunction with radio

The authors have three main observations:

“If all You Have is a Hammer” - How Useful is Humanitarian Crowdsourcing?

Editor’s Note: In this article, guest contributor Paul Currion looks at the potential for crowdsourcing data during large-scale humanitarian emergencies, as part of our "Deconstructing Mobile" series. Paul is an aid worker who has been working on the use of ICTs in large-scale emergencies for the last 10 years.  He asks whether crowdsourcing adds significant value to responding to humanitarian emergencies, arguing that merely increasing the quantity of information in the wake of a large-scale emergency may be counterproductive. Instead, the humanitarian community needs clearly defined information that can help in making critical decisions in mounting their programmes in order to save lives and restore livelihoods. By taking a close look at the data collected via Ushahidi in the wake of the Haiti earthquake, he concludes that crowdsourced data from affected communities may not be useful for supporting the response to a large-scale disaster.

1. The Rise of Crowdsourcing in Emergencies

Ushahidi, the software platform for mapping incidents submitted by the crowd via SMS, email, Twitter or the web, has generated so many column inches of news coverage that the average person could be mistaken for thinking that it now plays a central role in coordinating crisis responses around the globe. At least this is what some articles say, such as Technology Review's profile of David Kobia, Director of Technology Development for Ushahidi.  For most people, both inside and outside the sector, who lack the expertise to dig any deeper, column inches translate into credibility. If everybody's talking about Ushahidi, it must be doing a great job – right?

Maybe.

Ushahidi is the result of three important trends:

1. Increased availability and utility of spatial data;
2. Rapid growth of communication infrastructure, particularly mobile telephony; and
3. Convergence of networks based on that infrastructure on Internet access.

Given those trends, projects like Ushahidi may be inevitable rather than unexpected, but inevitability doesn't give us any indication of how effective these projects are. Big claims are made about the way in which crowdsourcing is changing the way in which business is done in other sectors, and now attention has turned to the humanitarian sector. John Della Volpe's short article in the Huffington Post is an example of such claims:

"If a handful of social entrepreneurs from Kenya could create an open-source "social mapping" platform that successfully tracks and sheds light on violence in Kenya, earthquake response in Chile and Haiti, and the oil spill in the Gulf -- what else can we use it for?"

The key word in that sentence is “successfully”. There isn’t any evidence that Ushahidi “successfully” carried out these functions in these situations; only that an instance of the Ushahidi platform was set up. This is an extremely low bar to clear to achieve “success”, like claiming that a new business was successful because it had set up a website.  There has lately been an unfounded belief that the transformative effects of the latest technology are positively inevitable and inevitably positive, simply by virtue of this technology’s existence.

2. What does Successful Crowdsourcing Look Like?

To be fair, it's hard to know what would constitute “success” for crowdsourcing in emergencies. In the case of Ushahidi, we could look at how many reports are posted on any given instance – but that record is disappointing, and the number of submissions for each Ushahidi instance is exceedingly small in comparison to the size of the affected population – including Haiti, where Ushahidi received the most public praise for its contribution.

In any case, the number of reports posted is not in itself a useful measure of impact, since those reports might consist of recycled UN situation reports and links to the Washington Post's “Your Earthquake Photos” feature.  What we need to know is whether the service had a significant positive impact in helping communities affected by disaster.  This is difficult to measure, even for experienced aid agencies whose work provides direct help.  Perhaps the best we can do is ask a simple question: if the system worked exactly as promised, what added value would it deliver?

Mobile Phones and Development: An Analysis of IDRC-Supported Projects

The Mobile Minute: Opera's State of the Mobile Web, California's Mobile Alert System, and Installing a Mobile Analytics Service

Today's Mobile Minute brings you news on the state of the mobile web, California's plan to be the first state with a mass mobile alert system, Cisco's (rumored) move to buy Skype, a guide to installing PercentMobile on different platforms, and results from a study on the effects of SMS reminders for taking birth control pills. 

March-Hare

March Hare Communications Collective, Inc. (MHCC) is a volunteer mutual benefit corporation that is dedicated to promoting emerging communications technology for the use of public organizing of grass-roots groups and non-governmental organizations. The focus of the March Hare Communications Collective, Inc. is to develop new, secure and open software to be used with existing technologies that will aid community and grass-roots coordination, social networking and organization specifically using mobile technologies. In addition March Hare Communications Collective, Inc. seeks to provide educational materials and trainings on how to use mobile technologies in a safe and effective manner that meets the needs of the user groups. March Hare Communications Collective, Inc. seeks to be a depository of both technologies and information regarding the innovative use of mobile technologies to promote social justice in the US and internationally by grass-root/community groups.

Barriers and Gaps Affecting mHealth in Low and Middle Income Countries: Policy White Paper

Mobile Minute - Daily m4Change News

Today's Mobile Minute covers the mobile gender gap, mobiles in the classroom that allow deaf children to learn alongside hearing children, a study about mobile over-sharing, mobile credits on cell phones during disasters, post-Haiti disaster management with ICTs, and a 90-second interview with Patricia Mechael about mobile health. 

• In developing countries, there is a 300 million-person gap between male and female phone ownership.  "A New ICT4D Paradigm: Women + Mobile Phones + mServices = Economic Development" examines the findings of Women and Mobile: A Global Opportunity and covers how women using mServices (mHealth, mPayments, mEmployment, mAgriculture) could lead to greater opportunities and economic development in developing countries. 

• The Child Africa International School in Kabale, Uganda encourages the use of SMS at school in order to foster communication between hearing and non-hearing students, as described in "Deaf Children are Being Heard in Africa." (Hat tip Textually.org)

• According to a Webroot Study of 1,645 social network users, 55% of people polled said "they worry over loss of privacy incurred from using geolocation data" on mobile phones."

• The Wall Street Journal writes about Concern Worldwide, an NGO, that is testing a mobile credit system in Niger for cash aid: "Looking to Cellphones to Deliver Aid in Africa." We wrote about the scheme a while back.

• "Disaster Response 2.0: Learning from Haiti" looks at how ICTs were used after the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, covering mobile donations, Ushahidi, and how ICTs can help during emergencies. 

• In a short, 90-second audio piece on Earth Sky, Patricia Mechael talks about mobile health, her work with ChildCount+, and the promise of mhealth.
  

[Mobile Minute Disclaimer: The Mobile Minute is a quick round-up of interesting stories that have come across our RSS and Twitter feeds to keep you informed of the rapid pace of innovation. Read them and enjoy them, but know that we have not deeply investigated these news items. For more in-depth information about the ever-growing field of mobile tech for social change, check out our blog-posts, white papers and research, how-tos, and case studies.]

Image courtesy Flickr user QiFei

The Mobile Minute - Friday's edition

The Mobile Minute, our new feature, is here to keep you up-to-date on mobile-related news. Today's stories are about the number of Google searches made on mobile phones, an updated version of the PDA survey kit, the relationship between ICTs and accountable governments, and an octopus-themed mobile app.

• "Mobile Accounts for 10% of Google Searches, Says Analyst" This Read, Write, Web article looks at comScore search market data – and found that mobile phones are used to make more than 1 billion monthly Google searches in the U.S. 
• "WFP PDASurvey" The World Food Program released an updated version of its PDA-based data collection tool. The group says that the program "allows very large questionnaires to be built very rapidly and deployed onto many PDAs using flash memory cards."
• "Full Circle: ANSA-Africa Newsletter" The latest ANSA-Africa Newsletter looks at government accountability and the role ICTs can play in giving citizens a means of expression. Other topics include local government social media and responsibility, ICTs in Kenya, and creating connections in Bangladesh. (via Accountability 2.0)
• "Paul the Psychic Octopus Gets an App" If you find yourself without psychic guidance now that Paul the Octopus (who gained fame by correctly predicting all of Germany's World Cup matches, as well as the final) has retired, a new iPhone app called "Ask the Octopus Oracle" can fill the void. 

[Mobile Minute Disclaimer: The Mobile Minute is a quick round-up of interesting stories that have come across our RSS and Twitter feeds to keep you informed of the rapid pace of innovation. Read them and enjoy them, but know that we have not deeply investigated these news items. For more in-depth information about the ever-growing field of mobile tech for social change, check out our blog-posts, white papers and research, how-tos, and case studies.]

Image courtesy Flickr user QiFei

Crowdsourcing Critical Success Factor Model

Budgets, Batteries, and Barriers: PDA Implementation Issues for NGOs

Kerala State IT Mission

Kerala State Information Technology Mission (KSITM) is an autonomous nodal IT implementation agency for Department of Information Technology, Government of Kerala which provides managerial and technical support to all the ICT initiatives in Kerala KSITM's primary responsibilities are: 1. Interfacing between the Government and the industry 2. Interacting with potential investors 3. Strengthening the IT / ITES industry base 4. Holding promotional campaigns for hard selling the state. 5. ICT dissemination to bridge the digital divide 6. E- Governance 7. Developing Human Resources for IT & ITES 8. Advising the Government on policy matters Kerala State IT Mission is a team of professionals from the industry and the Government and is headed by the Director, with the Secretary - IT as the Chairman.

The Mobile Phone and the Public Sphere

The Secret Weapons in Niger’s Fight Against Hunger: Photo IDs & Mobile Phones. A Guest Post from Concern Worldwide

This guest post was submitted by Amanda McClelland, Emergency Nutrition and Food Security Manager, Concern Worldwide, Niger.

I arrived in Niger three months ago to help the Concern Worldwide country team scale up and roll out an emergency program to respond to the emerging food crisis.  It’s hard to say when exactly this shifted from an “impending crisis” to a real humanitarian emergency, but we are there now. And we are putting every bit of the planning this team has done since December to the test. The official Food Security survey of April 2010 states that there are 7.1 million people facing hunger: 3.3 million of those are considered to be facing extremely food shortages and unable to feed their families’ without help.  Concern’s program is in Tahoua, the second worst affected part of the country.

Every day, we are working at maximum capacity on initiatives to prevent rates of malnutrition from reaching emergency thresholds.  We are distributing seed packs and fertilizer to help families plant crops in time for the next harvest; providing nutrition support to children under five, pregnant women and mothers; and are launching an innovative use of mobile phone technology (and manual transfers) to distribute emergency cash to the most vulnerable women. We have high hopes for this program—and we are starting to see its great potential. (Note of the editor: Concern conducted a similar mobile cash program in Kenya in 2008 that we wrote up on MobileActive.org here. Concern also published an extensive evaluation of the Kenya programme (PDF)

What we are doing sounds easy when I write it, but delivering aid in Niger is anything but easy.

Mobile Data for Early Warning

As we are completing an inventory of mobile date collection projects around the world that are focused on vulnerable populations and early warning, we've come across a few efforts that are worth highlighting. One is the SMS and PDA-based surveying of the World Food Programme (WFP).  WFP's food security monitoring systems are set up in many countries.  While some countries are still submitting paper records, there is a push to incorporate PDAs or SMS data transmission for faster and more reliable monitoring of food security.

The data collected includes both food security baseline data and food insecurity indicators. The bulk of WFP's data collected focuses on nutritional indicators, market prices, import, cross border trades, socioeconomic indicators, and health indicators. The UN agency is trialing both FrontlineSMS and RapidSMS, two mobile data collection software tools, in its current projects, as well as PDAs but is likely going to standardize its operations using one of the two with some custom gateway software.

In the process of collecting data, WFP always collaborates with governments and other UN partners. WFP staff are involved with the supervision, training and coordination but but the people who conduct interviews and collect the data are usually government staff, university students, or NGO workers As one WFP staffer noted, "We have huge armies of data collectors."

The scope of the work is accordingly large. Some of the efforts cover an entire country. In Senegal, for example, WFP has 250 numerators covering the country – 22 teams of 11 people each who are collecting data for six weeks, visiting 2,000 villages.

The video below features George Muammar of the WFP Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping Unit. He describes rapid data collection in an Emergency Food Security Assessment in Goma, N. Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo. 

Learning From Haiti: Health IT and Disasters

In the days following the devastating earthquake in Haiti in early January 2010, aid workers arrived on the island to offer medical and technical support. With the capital, Port-au-Prince, suffering the brunt of the destruction, transporting supplies and people over destroyed roads proved difficult. Communications technologies, in an immediate post-disaster environment, are critical for aid workers to coordinate relief supplies and to deliver post-disaster care.

Mapping SMS Incident Reports: A Review of Ushahidi and Managing News

Mapping SMS Incident Reports: A Review of Ushahidi and Managing News data sheet 18374 Views

Author: 

Melissa Loudon

Abstract: 

In this how-to, we test out two systems for SMS incident mapping: Ushahidi and Managing News. Incident mapping is a simple but powerful concept that does what it says - using SMS to report a given incidence and mapping the data geographically. This article compares the two platforms, their pros and cons, and outlines when to use either.

In this how-to, we test out two systems for SMS incident mapping. Incident mapping is a simple but powerful concept that does what it says - using SMS to report a given incidence and mapping the data geographically.

It has been used in various scenarios ranging from reports from natural disasters to tracking violent crime, citizen reporting in elections.

Ushahidi, a platform for map and time-based visualizations of text reports, has been used most prominently in crisis mapping. The first instance of Ushahidi tracked the post-election violence in Kenya in 2007, closely followed by an instance covering outbreaks of xenophobic violence in South Africa in early 2008. Following the Haiti earthquake in early 2010, an Ushahidi deployment at Tufts University provided a platform for aggregating, translating and disseminating incident reports and requests for assistance. Ushahidi is an open-source  PHP/Javascript platform.

Mobile Tools: 

Ushahidi