Technology for Emergency Preparedness and Humanitarian Efforts

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danpass
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Technology for Emergency Preparedness and Humanitarian Efforts

#1

Post by danpass »

I came across this story about a Microsoft beta product called Vine that aims to be a tool to aid in community management and emergency preparedness. This article also mentions a non-profit organization that Google helped found a year or two ago called InSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disaster).

InSTEDD states that its mission...
...is to harness the power of technology to improve collaboration for global health and humanitarian action. We are an innovation lab for tools designed to strengthen networks, build community resilience and improve early detection and response to major health-related events and natural or human-caused disasters. We grapple daily with the challenges of finding new approaches and new designs: a simple, reliable way to bring it all together -- the people, the tools and the data -- and create the kinds of information flow that we know will save lives. With new, free and open source technologies to help humanitarian and public health organizations around the world work together more effectively in crises, we can reduce mortality, accelerate recovery and help prepare communities to face the unexpected with confidence in their own resilience.
Given our (church's) humanitarian efforts as well as our emphasis on emergency preparedness, I was excited to find out about InSTEDD. As I browsed their website, I was struck by how closely the ultimate goals of this organization are aligned with our church's goals in this area.

I believe that some sort of association between our two organizations could be mutually beneficial. Perhaps some of the tools that they are working on could be integrated in future technologies that the church implements. Likewise, the church might be able to contribute talent and resources or even collaborate on certain projects.
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