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Electricity for Haiti: Wisdom from Africa

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Not surprisingly, a dearth of electrical power is one of the major obstacles to rescue and recovery efforts in Haiti.  While rescuers struggle to get emergency power in place, I’m thinking that low-tech inventions coming out of Africa might be helpful. For years, Afrigadget.com has been tracking such inventions for years. Here are a few that might be helpful in Haiti right now. The inventions here come from that site and links from there:

Recycled car batteries as generators:

Bicycle powered cell-phone charger:

The solar FLAP (Flexible Light and Power) messenger bag:

Wearable flexible solar-paneled vest

What computing and informatics tools will help Haiti?

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A great deal has been written about the how the combination of social media and cell phone technology has become a powerful fundraising mechanism in the wake of the disastrous earthquake in Haiti on Tuesday.  But that one example got me thinking about other kinds of computational tools that could help provide an accurate picture of both the reality near the epicenter of the quake and the ripple effects throughout the region and across the globe.

I posted a question about this via twitter with the hashtag #DistributedExpertise and got some interesting responses via Facebook and email that further fueled my own thinking. Some are examples of applications already providing vital information about the situation on the ground, while others could be created to provide useful ongoing coverage, especially as earthquake survivors emigrate to the US and elsewhere. I’m going to split the responses into a couple of posts. This one will focus on breaking news coverage, the next will look at lessons from the Katrina and the 2004 tsunami, and the final post will focus on tools for local coverage.

Breaking news coverage

They included searchable databases of victims, such as this Haitian Earthquake Registry,  which pulls information from a database maintained by the International Committee of the Red Cross, among other sources.

The New York Times is being widely applauded for its interactive map of the region with embedded audio and video:

Those seeking to track the seismological data on the quake would do well to consult Wolfram Alpha, which mapped and charted the quake and the aftershocks:

The Wolfram Alpha chart neatly summarizes information that is provided in greater depth by the US Geological Survey. In addition to the seismological reports, there is a podcast in which one of their experts answers questions.

Cyberjournalist.net points to another great map by USA Today that includes radio buttons that you can click on to overlay certain kinds of information

Georgia Popplewell, the invaluable managing director of Global Voices Online, has a great Twitter list that aggregates posts from Haiti

The unfortunately-named site Chartporn has a running catalog of interesting and useful data visualizations related to the disaster:

Services for donors and volunteers

Al Tompkins at the Poynter Institute points to Charity Navigator as a way to find credible organizations to receive donations.

Have you seen any interesting applications that should be included in this list?

Jay Rosen’s Explainthis.org Would Have Journalists Answer Users’ Questions

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Poynter.org has a good writeup of an idea that NYU journalism prof Jay Rosen has been batting around for a while, “Explain this.”  The basic idea is that news consumers would pose a question to a twitter-like interface and journalists would provide a credibly researched answer. (A typical question would be “why do we subsidize corn production?” ) It’s an interesting idea that could boost interest in explanatory journalism.

It could, that is, if journalists are regarded as reliable truthbearers.  There’s ample evidence that news consumers in the US and elsewhere don’t trust journalists. A March, 2009 survey found that only 3% of British respondents found journalists trustworthy. A September, 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press Found that Americans’ trust in the accuracy and fairness of the news media is at a 20-year low.

Read more:  Jay Rosen’s Explainthis.org Would Have Journalists Answer Users’ Questions.