A- Technology Galore!!

Haiti was a technological display of all new gizmos and gadgets that had not been previously used in disaster response. SMS services, Mission 4636, Local Media, Geo-Tagging, and Crowdsourced Maps were the tools implemented for the first time in the response effort to the devastating earthquake in Haiti. SMS services were established by the International Federation of the Red Cross with the Viola cell phone company, and by Ushahidi.  These SMS texting services allowed texts to be sent by people who needed help or who needed to be rescued. That’s where Mission 4636 came in. Mission 4636 was an SMS service that was established in the living room of a Massachusetts professor that wanted to do some good. Local media was destroyed in the quake except for local radio stations. The radio stations, especially SignalFM, were used to broadcast information to survivors of the quake and to broadcast about local areas that were damaged or still in place. Geo-tagging was used to find people who had sent messages to the short code 4636. The geo-tagging was also used to make crowd-sourced maps. These maps became the standard for the search and rescue teams that were in place to help the survivors get to stable and secure places where they could receive help. All five of these technologies and areas were never previously used in a disaster response. In a way the response effort to the earthquake in Haiti was a technological experiment to see how technology could play a role in disaster relief, and what areas it could most help and most be impacted by technology. 

The "map" above explains all five areas that impacted the technology used in the disaster response to the Haitian earthquake. 

A- Failure and failure yet again.

"During Katrina, virtually every system failed: Internet communications, radio transmissions, cell phones, even backup gear such as satellite phones handed out by federal relief workers after the storm. Even when the equipment worked, officials from different agencies and jurisdictions could not talk with one another. Their radios were simply not compatible."

            -http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/09/AR2005120902039.html

Not only did nearly every communication system fail, communication between agencies and officers on the ground were hardly cooperative towards each other because of bureaucracy. A lot of the damage caused by the Hurricane Katrina could have been avoided if bureaucracy was put aside for the betterment of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. One of the biggest things that bureaucracy stove piped was the need for improved technology in the area. There were the wrong type of cell phone towers located in New Orleans and in the surrounding areas. In addition to having the wrong type, they were not waterproof. The generators were also neglected in New Orleans in the same ways that the cell phone towers were. Those two areas alone led to having massive power outages when they were rendered useless by the hurricane that hit the coast.

After the attack on the twin towers on September 11, 2001, the NIMS system was created to help coordinate federal, state, and local agency’s emergency preparedness and incident management. When the National Incident Management System was created we thought that the communication crises and failures that we faced during and after the attacks on the twin towers would be a thing of the past. Hurricane Katrina undid that optimistic view of the NIMS system. When Katrina hit and caused mass devastation to the Gulf Coast Region, we had thought that the NIMS system would solve the problems we faced in the aftermath of 9/11, rather it showed us that NIMS was a band-aid but not a permanent fix to the communication failures that occurred again.