ICTworks by Inveneo

In the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake, Haitian citizens and the use of technology, particularly mobile and GIS technologies and social media, proved critical to response and recovery efforts. Ushahidi, NOULA, OpenStreetMap, and other volunteer-based efforts gathered data from multiple sources, including Haitian citizens, to produce timely information on the ground and around the world. Beyond the crisis, however, the work done by the open source software community and volunteer technologists has begun filling gaps in Haiti's outdated and incomplete spatial data infrastructure (SDI) - providing some of the most accurate and current information about Haiti's human and physical geography.

Thus, contrary to popular belief, I, Alexandra Morgan, believe that Haiti has tremendous assets that can be leveraged to rebuild the country. Among these are the aforementioned data gathered in the wake of the earthquake as well as an expanding technological infrastructure and technology-based services - personal computing devices, broadband networks, mobile telephony, etc. - and the Haitian people, the nearly 10 million of them who possess knowledge critical to making decisions about how to reconstruct the country. Unfortunately, to date, these resources - particularly the latter - remain largely untapped, underutilized, mismatched, or marginalized in reconstruction efforts.

Without question, reconstructing Haiti, in part, means restoring and improving education - which involves building schools. Yet, a host of unknowns exist that negatively impact the capacity of the Ministry of National Education and Professional Training (MENFP), or any domestic or international entity, to effectively improve the educational infrastructure. Mobile and open source GIS technologies and VGI present new opportunities for data collection and can play a key role in supplying needed data for school construction, renovations, and investments.

MENFP and partners, for example, could customize a standard questionnaire for schools to complete and submit via SMS or other electronic service, and engage the public to crowdsource information about schools in their areas, surrounding resources, and other types of information that cannot be captured through automated means (e.g. GPS or remote sensing) or due to resource constraints. As a starting point, this VGI can be combined and mapped with more credible i.e. verified sources, such as the breadth of data collected to map urban to rural migration as well as data related to the ever-changing Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) and spontaneous settlements that have reconfigured urban spaces.

Such an approach can at once begin verifying the credibility of the incoming VGI and help the Ministry visually begin to identify types and locations of various educational infrastructure needs. The Ministry and their partners then can use this information, along with other pertinent data, to determine candidate sites for new schools, and use the government's limited human resources, as well as those of their partners, to conduct more manageably in-depth assessments and analyses of sites to determine optimal locations.

The new data gathered and added to the spatial data infrastructure through this process would yield near- and long-term local and national benefits. In a sense, this approach would embed a sort of feedback loop whereby the existing SDI is used to inform the reconstruction process during which more data is created, collected, and added to the SDI, thus broadening it and making it more useful for further reconstruction.

Two years after the January 2010 earthquake, it's time to move beyond the crisis and towards an asset-based approach to reconstruction. GIS and VGI can be used to help establish a research-based framework that guides domestic and international reconstruction decisions and investment.

Welcome to the ICTworks bi-weekly ICT4D Retrospective, where we condense the last two weeks of news into a succinct list of links for your perusal. If you want your news to be featured, email them to ritse [at] ritseonline [dot] com. To get these links faster, follow me on Twitter: @RitseOnline

"Concern for [humanity]...must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors" — Albert Einstein

Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Japan. In light of the events that have occurred over the last few days, we would like to highlight a couple ways the ICT4D community is responding to the ongoing crisis.

1. Learn more about Google's People Finder and Ushahidi's Crises Map
2. Subscribe to CrisisCamp's Twitter Feed to Hear about Volunteer Opportunities
3. Read NetHope's Situational Report
4. Check out the OpenStreetMap Project
5. Respond...Wisely

Get a Job in ICT4D
Samasource (California, US): Designer
Ushahidi (Global): Developer, Ethnographer, Linguist

Mark Summer, Inveneo's Chief Innovation Officer, also leads our effort to bring needed information and communication technologies to Haiti. As part of Inveneo's contribution to the Clinton Global Initiative 2010 Annual Meeting, he wrote an article on our activities in Haiti for the Innovations Journal, a quarterly publication from MIT Press about entrepreneurial solutions to global challenges.

An excerpt from The Value of Information and
Communication Technologies in Humanitarian Relief Efforts:

For many disaster response veterans, the Haiti earthquake represents a turning point in our collective thinking about the value of ICTs in humanitarian relief efforts. A range of ICT-focused initiatives have demonstrated that technology — from accessing detailed maps of the affected area, to turning simple SMS messages into life-saving systems, to establishing broadband Internet connectivity to humanitarian organizations — improves both the speed and substance of relief efforts.

The impact of these voluntary and even spontaneous initiatives was real, measurable, and widely publicized. Their success, even in the absence of any planning or coordination, hints at the true potential of ICTs to revolutionize disaster preparedness and response.

Download and read Mark's article of the play-by-play account of Inveneo’s efforts to reestablish connectivity for humanitarian organizations working in Port-au-Prince immediately after the earthquake, as well as the impact of and challenges involved in those efforts.

He explains how relationships formed through the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) proved critical to the success of these efforts, and our plans for continued collaborative efforts to bring broadband connectivity to the rest of the country, where it is critically needed.

Now if you still question the impact of ICTs or Inveneo in Haiti, then watch this video and listen to Gary Shaye, Country Director for Save the Children, explain how broadband technology does save lives: