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Ushahidi Situation Room Feed
Updated 4636 SMS stats:
Overall 3296
Deemed Useful 2039
With usable coords: 32%
Breakdown:
Food distribution 23.27%
Missing Persons 11.06%
Asking to forward a message 10.94%
Response 9.79%
Water shortage 9.33%
Health services 5.65%
Medical Emergency 4.38%
People trapped 4.38%
Shelter 3.46%
Earthquake and aftershocks 3.23%
Emergency 3.00%
Persons News 2.19%
Collapsed structure 1.73%
Non food items 1.73%
Vital Lines 1.04%
SMS update, 8:20PM PST:
Jean-Marc pulled through in a big way, earlier this evening. SMS to Digicel were in queue and he released them.
Also, exciting news: Digicel’s SMS broadcast services are being restored. We need to settle on content of that broadcast, e.g. “SMS your address and need or message to 4636″ in Creole. Every Digicel user will receive that message, and we’ll want to have volunteers and feeds set.
More info to come tomorrow re: call center being set up in-country.
Volunteers at 4636.ushahidi.com are simply amazing.
Action and feedback loop (12AM PST):
Breakthrough from Nico on the ground; aid group clusters [water, children and shelter] will now be receiving SMS updates. Meeting in the AM EST to work out details. Likely processed through daily email or print-out reports given to team leaders.
This opens up the possibility of closing feedback loop, asking receivers of info to mark which items where acted upon — that will not be critical for them, so the easier we can make it the better the chance it will happen.
Working on aid mapping system via 4636, but we need more specific requirements from orgs.
SMS Update (2:45 PM EST)
Team:
I am leaving now for SF. Will land 11PM EST tonight.
Word is now officially out via State re: 4636, media outlets also picking it up. http://blogs.state.gov/index.php/site/entry/text_4636_in_haiti
We are still waiting on status of the call and dispatch center in-country. In the meantime, we need to settle on call-back or SMS-reply mechanism for better location info on actionable SMS, especially SAR. Leaning toward local calls, but logistics are not worked out.
We need to move forward selecting small # of volunteers to be secondary filter flagging actionable SMS. Still waiting on Comcel to pull through on 4636 for their users.
See Rob Munro for success stories. Call me anytime at 540 454 2941 or email josh@medic.frontlinesms.com
Just gone over 1000 text messages into 4636, with 2/3rds deemed useful.
180 where volunteers were able to give lat / lon based on content
Update from InSTEDD. They’re working on a what they’re calling “SMS 2 Geo” project for getting much more accurate geodata on incoming messages and reports. More information that is forthcoming, and they’ll need some help with UI and UX for that once the initial core coding is done.
If you want to help, get in touch with Luke Beckman: beckman@instedd.org
SMS Update, 4:15AM EST
For future communication: 4636 is INFO
See Patrick’s post below on how the system is working. Breakdown for first 400 SMS:
28.06% Missing Persons
12.23% Water shortage
10.07% Food distribution
10.07% Asking to forward a message
9.35% Earthquake and aftershocks
5.04% Persons News
4.32% People trapped
3.60% Emergency
2.88% Health services
2.16% Medical Emergency
2.16% Died bodies management
2.16% Response
1.44% Looting
1.44% Shelter
5.04% Other
Red Cross is sole responder in Haiti with feed. We are planning to have numerous others linked in tomorrow and we are possibly splitting GeoRSS feed by category of need. Brian, please stand by.
EIS and InSTEDD have confirmed receipt of feed in-country. They are building list of mobile #s thanks to “register” keyword. They have local SMS gateways up and blasting info to those contacts.
We’re waiting on Comcel to cooperate. They were hit hard and are still scrambling. Hoping to have clearance and get 4636 up for Comcel users in the next 24 hours.
750+ SMS messages came in yesterday.
400 were processed (350 were junk) and sent to orgs on the ground in Haiti
115 were able to be mapped with lat/long
Reuters and InSTEDD are using 4636 too for messages, whereas at Ushahidi we’re handling the incoming ones and the database: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60G16420100117
Anyone who texts into us will also receive from them.
Currently InSTEDD team in Haiti is setting up 5-10 local SMS gateways for outgoing SMS, just waiting on SIMs
SMS 4636 and local media in Haiti
We need to get a push locally in Haiti to ensure that we get more Haitians knowledgeable about the free text messages that can be sent in via 4636. InSTEDD is doing local outreach, as is Internews.
If you have any ideas, Haiti contacts, or are working on this already, please update this post.
http://tnh.ht/tnhpresentation/contact.htm, http://www.lenouvelliste.com/contact/index.php, http://www.radiogalaxiehaiti.com/?page_id=13 and,
Courrier
Radio Metropole
Delmas 52, P.O. Box 62
Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Tel:+(509)22-46-26-26
Tel:+(509)22-46-53-35
Tel:+(509)22-49-20-21
Fax:+(509)22-49-20-20
Erik, I’ve emailed you local radio / tv contact information. The comment moderation system here does not link multiple URLs.
Still ground-testing the 4636 platform from Haiti. When fully function we’ll announce. No one has the greenlight for release on this until Josh Nesbit or Brian Herbert say it’s ready.
Situation Report from the InSTEDD team:
Ushahidi is working on getting a Haiti shortcode (4636, being arranged by Digicel and paid for supposedly by US State Department. Should be up and running by morning 16-Jan) to get MOs. MTs won’t probably work. They have no details on how they are going to get the messages yet.
Original envisioned process was as follows:
1. Put word out that people on the ground can send [Name location status/message]
2. SMS submitted, with varying levels of structure/detail. SMS responds with information. For all messages, there will be a tinyurl that has more info on Haiti recovery.
3. Enters database
4. Passed to a mechanical turk type outfit for structuring/tagging
5. Message is structured in the database
6. Gets passed off to orgs (via Sahana) for action
————
WE MUST HAVE THE SENDER’s number
What Ushahidi will have:
- URL is 4636.ushahidi.com
- Ability to tag and structure SMS messages (note from nico: not sure what they mean with “structure”)
- Structure= family name, given name, geotag, category of report (note from nico: same here)
- Ability to re-expose feed via geoRSS
- Data can also be output in the SMS table
- When the SMS comes in, they will see where it needs to go and deal with it on main page.
What we need from them by priority:
1 – an RSS with the sender’s number as the author of the rss item
2 – make the previous rss a Geo-RSS with the location of the sender
3 – have the crowd-sourced tags as RSS tags.
4 – Have them parse the “register” or “registre” + mobile phone and relaying that to us somehow. (Juan, any ideas on something easy for them/us?)
What we (InSTEDD/Manas) need to do ASAP:
Related to MOs
0 – Switch the EIS EC2 instance to the biggest one we can get. We can’t afford timeouts or overloads.
1 – Make sure the RSS importer recognizes the author as a mobile phone number and adds it to the list of registered phones.
2- Paginate that list (Juan, I think it’s not being paginated, and it’s gonna get big very quick).
3- Code: if the incoming item is a mobile phone number and it has a geo location, add that as the location of that citizen. (Juan, if they send us the lat/lon, we are loosing the clustering thing, we might need to reverse geo lookup to cluster them, we will see when we get there, but be ready and respond quickly)
4 – Re-test tags into Riff from RSS tags.
5 – Provide support for whatever relaying method of invitees Ushahidi gives us.
Related to MTs
1 – To Juan: It’s going to be a while probably until we get a way of broadcasting MT’s, we can test Clickatell tomorrow, but we need to figure out a way of round-robin between several LGW.
SMS shortcode update
A small team of individuals from multiple organizations is coming up with the tech plan to use the short code 200 for gathering information from people in need in Haiti and then connecting them with organizations who can help.
It will follow these steps:
1. put word out that people on the ground can send [Name location status/message]
2. SMS submitted, with varying levels of structure/detail
3. Enters database
4. Passed to a mechanical turk type outfit for structuring
5. Message is structured in the database
6. Gets passed off to orgs (via Sahana) that can do something about the issue
Just heard from Nico of InSTEDD and the AlertNet team of Reuters on the ground. They are about to deploy a citizen based- well networked, Emergency Information Service. They say that if the 200 shortcode is going to happen, that is the most needed thing on the ground. They will be ready to use that shortcode in the morning.
Josh Nesbit 8:49 am on January 20, 2010 Permalink |
Also, we are considering scaling an SMS reply system for 4636.ushahidi.com volunteers to request more location information from texters on the ground. This would work alongside any local call center we set up, making sure urgent SMS and mobile #s are passed to Haiti for call-backs (as opposed to only waiting for more info via SMS).