Assigned Post #7 Edward Granger-Happ and the International Red Cross

May I be the first to say that tonight’s speaker Edward Happ who works with the International Red Cross and also Net Hope was a very interesting speaker and had a variety of knowledge to share with the class. When the class began I found it very interesting that he has had three careers in his life already and he is still in the process of looking for two more careers before he wishes to retire. May I also add that the only disappointing part about this lecture was the lack of pizza. I think the next guest lecture should definitely include pizza. Overall, I think this was the best guest speaker we had thus far due to his massive amounts of experience in the humanitarian world. I think he was also the most famous that we have had the pleasure of hearing thus far. In any case after his introduction to the lecture I was already impressed.

According to Edward, his organization is based on three things; crisis, connections, and collaboration. Crisis in this sense is defined as the world stage getting more challenging. This makes sense because new disasters are always creating new problems to fix all over the world. The connections stage states that responding to crisis with technology is becoming more social. A good example of this is the use of social networking sites for humanitarian efforts such as Twitter and Facebook. Finally, collaboration was defined as different groups working together in order to achieve a common goal. The best example I can think of this was the earthquake in Haiti. Collaboration was at an all-time high during this disaster for government agencies, non-profit organizations, and even the victims themselves because everyone was sharing information.

Another event that I remember fairly well from the presentation was the earthquake in San Francisco, California in 1989. I was just a wee lad during that year and had no idea that it was even going on all the way over on the west coast of the United States. The earthquake conveniently hot at 5:04PM during rush hour, and we all know drivers in California drive fast to begin with. There was mass destruction including buildings being destroyed and many lives were taken. The speaker also brought up an essential point for us as a class; he said that in order for us to remember what his lecture was on he would tell stories to make the information stick. I think that is a genius idea and I will use that in my job in the future whatever that might be. 

Overall, I thought this speaker was the most interesting out of all the speakers thus far. He kept my attention easily and reinforced a lot of topics that we had previously discussed during class lectures. I found a YouTube video after class ended tonight on Edward and his work with Net Hope. It was titled Ed Granger-Happ on the Future of NetHope, and could be found at the following link:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUKP8qCdupg

This presentation was excellent and I am eager to see how the next speaker turns out.

Assigned Post #6 Andrew Alspach and OCHA

I would like to begin this blog post by thanking Professor Tapia for setting up this opportunity and also for getting us pizza and drinks before the class began. That was a great beginning to the class and we had an awesome introduction for Andrew Alspach. At the beginning of class before the lecture began we had individual discussions with the speaker to find more about his background. It just so happens that he is an Ohio State fan, which was kind of a downside. We quickly got over this fact when he began telling us his life story and all of the different places that he has worked over the years. He grew up on the farm during his younger years as a bee keeper, which surprisingly gave him a reason to get into the Peace Corps. Following this, he eventually became a permanent member in the United Nations and more specifically OCHA. Following this, we went around the room and some of the class introduced themselves and why they are taking this class and major. I believe that this as a great way to get the speaker acclimated to the class and to get us acclimated to him as well for the actual lecture.

                I would have to say that one of the main focuses of the speaker was his work in Haiti and different types of technologies used there. I thought this was pretty interesting considering we have been covering this topic for the last three weeks in class. He spoke of the reading Disaster Relief 2.0 describing the events in Haiti and how the events woke up the people in the United Nations. This was cool because we earlier read this reading for class a few weeks ago and this reinforced the topics of tonight’s lecture. Another topic that I enjoyed was innovation. Andrew played a video on innovation that basically explained that if people open up their minds and share ideas, the better ideas come out in order to form breakthroughs. This reinforced topics that had also been previously discussed in class in some of the past weeks. Haiti was a prime example of people from different organizations coming together to solve a common problem. Many new technologies were invented and implemented through civilians using their expert skills for the better of mankind and to help one another in times of crisis. The last thing that sparked my interest during the discussion was Relief Web. This is a website that is very good for finding crisis relief jobs and other careers of that sort.

            I thought that this class this evening was very interesting and productive. I learned a lot of new topics and Andrew reinforced a lot of older topics and made them clearer to me. Following the presentation I found an interesting video on the United Nations and how they helped to cope with the earthquake in general. The You Tube clip is titled UN Copes with Haiti Earthquake and can be found at the following link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LjfwMnWxCo&feature=fvst

Overall, this was an awesome class and I hope that the next guest speaker can live up to the expectations of Andrew Alspach; he left a very hard presentation to beat. 

Assigned Post #5 Gisli Olafsson and Net Hope

Tonight’s class was probably the most interesting class we have had all year. It was a nice change of pace and scenery as well instead of being locked up in that little corner back room. As for our first speaker, Gisli Olafsson of Net Hope was a very intelligent man who cared a lot about connectivity. I actually thought he was pretty funny when we either had some down time during the question and answer period or whether the sound was messing up between our class and him. I believe that most of the topics the speaker went over were very relevant to most of the topics we have been going over since the beginning of this class. There are many different aspects of his lecture that I would like to go over, but I will simply cover a few for this blog.

To begin the class, Olafsson defined Humanitarian Reform as old models of collaboration no longer working so they designed a new way to deal with large scale disasters. An example where this was implemented was the Earthquake in Haiti that we covered in last week’s class. He would also later go on to say during the lecture that the disaster in Haiti was the greatest test of their skills with connectivity. Following this, he went in to speaking on cluster models and the 7 principles that these models following. First, cluster models are defined as putting different organizations together to work towards connectivity in order to improve disaster relief efforts. Now that we know what cluster models are, the 7 principles they follow include innovation, collaboration, openness, interdependence, integrity, self-organization, and finally sustainability. Together these 7 principles make connectivity simple and effective for humanitarian relief efforts.

Another interesting point he made during the presentation was on mass collaboration. He defined this as taking a large number of people and get them to work together in order to meet common goals. This is an essential part of disaster relief that we have been going over for the past few weeks. I thought this was a key point and really wanted to get it up in this blog because this point comes up every week. He also covered another topic we went over in class which stated, “Collaboration does not happen between organizations and they cause a big problem when disaster strikes because they just want media time in order to improve their fame”. I believe it is stupid and pointless that big time relief organizations are sometimes more interested in their money, popularity, and information than suffering people in countries all over the world which require aid immediately.

I wanted to bring up a quote that really hit me during the presentation this evening. It stated, “The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness”. This quote reinforces the idea that organizations are much more effective if they collaborate with one another and take advantage of connectivity.

 In the link below I found a very interesting interview on YouTube with Gisli Olafsson:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak6hMhhycQ0

Overall I thought the night was very interesting, although the volume level over the computer did not work very well. Tonight was a great class and I can’t wait until next week!

Assigned Post #4 Earthquake in Haiti Technology Advances

Tonight’s class was specifically focused on the Earthquake in Haiti and the emergency response tactics after the earthquake hit. There were a lot of topics thrown around during the entirety of the class, but there was one fact to point out that was more important than all the rest. This select piece of information stated that with crisis mapping many people that were trapped in the disaster areas were tweeting, which were being read by thousands of translators and responders. At a more in depth look responses came in Haitian Creole; the responders had to translate this into English so that they could translate the tweets, categorize them and plot the areas that needed to be responded to. Following this, the most important information could be sent to the responders who would then use the information to go and save lives in the places they believed needed the most help. Another important thing to remember was that a lot of pressure was put on the translators, not as much on the responders because they had to pick out what the important information was compared to the information that wasn’t so pressing. This is not how it was in the past and makes this a very important first and unique occurrence.

Going into deeper and more exact levels of the technology is the next thing I would like to focus on now that the main point of my blog has been put out there. One example of important technology that was used for the post Haiti response was SMS text messaging. SMS text messaging was the main form of communication after the earthquake in Haiti. Unlike the 9/11 attacks the infrastructure did not fail due to the fact that there were not enough people in Haiti to bring down and flood the network with their cell phones. This was an excellent opportunity for emergency responders because it gave them exact GPS locations on the victims and they were able to help them and send them back information on where they could go and get help. Another important piece of information that happened for the first time after the Haiti earthquake was the collaboration between different agencies and organizations worked very well during this disaster unlike in the past such as 9/11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina. This is because they developed a new way to share information that worked very well. This was also the first time the government used social networking sites to help in the disaster relief. Surprisingly this worked very well with the concept of silos working together.

After class tonight, I was in the mood to look up other new technologies specifically designed to help with the Haiti relief efforts. After looking briefly in YouTube I found a very interesting video called New Solar Water Purifier Saves Lives in Haiti. This video can be found at the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmHw7WXPG0g

This video was pretty interesting and was a little bit different from what we covered in class. I advise watching the video if you are interested in different types of physical relief in Haiti. Overall, I would have to say that tonight’s class was very interesting and everyone that spoke did a very good job. I especially enjoyed the puppies on the screen.

Assigned Post #3 Hurricane Katrina Relief Tactics

In yesterday’s class the major topic at hand was disaster relief for Hurricane Katrina. In order to begin my blog I wanted to bring up a quote that really inspired me during a presentation during class. It stated, “The preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina showed that we are still a very analog government in a digital age”. To me, this quote meant that our government has the potential for so much more, and yet we were not well enough prepared when this terrible disaster hit New Orleans. The government needs to create better crisis mitigation plans for a lot of different possibilities, which can be very difficult at times.

I also feel that one of the most important things to take away from the Hurricane Katrina incident was the system NIMS. The National Incident Management System is a system used in the United States to coordinate emergency preparedness and incident management among various federal, state, and local agencies. Basically, NIMS wanted to get all the government agencies to come together and work as one unit, which failed terribly during Hurricane Katrina. All of the separate government agencies are too stubborn to coordinate with one another because they do not wish to share information with one another, due to the fact that they would all like to keep their own secret information. Because of this, disaster relief can never be maximized and just creates a sloppy mess during any type of disaster because information is not shared between the agencies.

It is for this reason that the government was overwhelmed when the Hurricane Katrina hit, which left the emergency response in the hands of the individuals and nonprofit agencies. One of the ways civilians attempted to help was to put up many different websites to either get or supply help for the hurricane victims. One very bright person decided to invent a program called PeopleFinder, which is still up and running till this very day many years later. PeopleFinder linked all these sites people were building to help one another during Hurricane Katrina, but had the problem later that they couldn’t remove their information once it was created. This program was very useful during and right after Hurricane Katrina, but years later it created havoc because it left peoples information up when they didn’t want it to be for everyone to see. This led to bad occurrences such as identity theft and so on.

I also wanted to discuss a little bit about one of the articles that was do for last class called “How high-tech is coming to the rescue”. The link can be found below and is on Angel:

https://cms.psu.edu/section/default.asp?id=201112FAUP___RSRA__397A001

In this article, I found a few new technologies that could be very useful at a disaster relief site. Some of these new technology prototypes included three foot long robot planes and helicopters that could survey and send wireless footage back to rescue teams. Two others included night vision sensor systems and triage sensors. All of these technologies worked well and I believe should be implemented into permanent use for disaster relief situations. I also believe we can learn from the mistakes we as a nation made at Katrina, and develop better layers of protection and mitigation in the future.

Assigned Post #2 Technology Advancements After 9/11 Attacks and Better Preparedness

I felt that yesterday in class we had a very productive evening. In this week’s blog post I would like to discuss two of the most interesting topics I heard in class which included viewing how the people react and get through natural disasters opposed to the government doing everything and technology changed after the 9/11 attacks. After leaving the classroom last night I feel that an interest was sparked in me that made me want to read parts of the 9/11 Commission Report.

One of the views of the public is seen as a powerful, self-organizing, and collectively intelligent force and they have a better understanding of how citizens respond to a disaster. I agree with this argument over the argument that people are not intelligent and scare easily during a terrorist attack or natural disaster. I think that it is a false statement for the most part that people just freeze up when in the face of imminent danger. On the contrary human beings frolic to danger; for example, if a plane crashed outside of the IST building I am sure at least half of the class if not more would go out and either get a closer look or attempt to help the crash victims. This goes to show that it is in human nature to want to help each other in times of danger and crisis.

The next topic that I wish to talk about is whether or not I think that we would be more prepared for another terrorist attack in New York City drastically similar to the 9/11 attacks. First and foremost, there would be no stopping the main sources of communications due to the fact that everyone would be on their cell phones, therefore overloading the system. This would render cellphones as useless pieces of junk and another source of communication would be necessary. As we all know, all of the telecommunications infrastructure were down from the crashes that day, but there were a few ways we could have been better prepared for the blackout. One example would have been to implement fiber optic cables instead of copper wire bundles because they have a single point fail point, which would make it easier to lose power. This proves that we as the United States could have been more prepared and had better mitigation planning to deal with these terrible events.

The following link was used in my presentation during this week in class:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzjWvn9oEBg&feature=related

This video was presented by FEMA, which is the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In this video, they tell the importance of a disaster mitigation plan, what steps need to be completed before the disaster occurs, and how the disaster can be mitigated after it occurs and finding the best possible ways to save as many people as possible. I thought the video was very interesting because FEMA was the main source of disaster relief during the 9/11 attacks, and this video had a good representation of what FEMA does and how they function. After watching this video I learned just how vital it was to having a good mitigation plan for disasters.   

Extra Credit Blog #1 National Geographic Commemorates 9/11 Attacks

For this extra credit blog I followed the link in the e-mail that the professor sent us for information on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. When I went to this site I found many interesting videos that gave a good tribute to this time period where instead of invoking terror on the United States Americans pulled together and became stronger as individuals by aiding each other.

The First video was entitled Finding Bin Laden and was found at the link:
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/national-geographic-channel/specials-1/remembering-911/ngc-finding-bin-laden.html
I thought this video was really cool and showed a lot of detail that I have been craving to see since the night it had happened. I can still remember the night President Obama was set to make an important announcement to the nation. After finding out Osama Bin Laden was killed that night my roommates and I went downtown for the biggest random celebration Penn State has ever seen on East Beaver Ave. I will never forget that night and the sense of nationalism that was flowing through our campus and most likely the rest of the nation as well. Not until today did I get to witness the actual video of seal team six actually going in and killing Osama. However, I thought the minuscule amount of defense Osama had set up was surprising considering the seals got right in and took him out with little to know trouble at all.  

The next video I watched was titled President Bush looks back and was found at the link:
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/national-geographic-channel/specials-1/remembering-911/ngc-the-president-looks-back.html
This video was very interesting and I was surprised the President kept his cool after hearing that a second plane hit the second tower. When the President was told that we were now going to be at war the look on his face was priceless. Yet he kept his cool and finished out the meeting he had with the students at the school in order to keep his good image. That day will live in infamy in the hearts of all Americans.

The last video that I watched was entitled True Heroes and the link was found at:
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/national-geographic-channel/specials-1/remembering-911/ngc-true-heroes.html
This was the most touching video of the three that I viewed, I also remember when this happened all those years ago because this plane crashed very close to my house. It was very sad listening to these paramedics talking about wanting to help these people, but there was nothing left of their bodies to help. The people on the flight who killed the terrorists and flew the plane knowing it was to their deaths into an open field truly know self sacrifice and will forever be remembered forever.

After watching all of these videos I realized that National Geographic brought with them a strong message and sense of nationalism for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Hopefully these videos inspire others as they inspired me into getting into a good field and helping our nation out any way they can with some type of counter-terrorism.