Collaborative tools of the Fourth Revolution are reshaping the way we manage catastrophic events.
Examples from the Japan Earthquake:
If you are looking for information on people in the quake zone, Google has opened a Person Finder page.
Ushahidi, a crowdsourcing mapping tool, has set up a local platform for Japanthat allows people in the area affected by the earthquake to text the location of people who may be trapped in damaged buildings
And did you notice how Facebook is slow these days? That’s certainly because so many people use it to connect, give news to loved ones.
The full extend of how these collaborative tools will change emergency response is, I believe, not yet apprehended by Emergency Response Institutions. For example, this great video from TED shows how collaborative map making changed the response to the Haiti quake.
Emergency Response Institutions need to account for the Fourth Revolution. People are connected. They stay connected. And together they can greatly help themselves. When Emergency Response Institutions will know how to leverage this connectivity, their intervention methods will transform for the better.
Emergency Response institutions need to change. Let’s tell them.
