The recent devastation in Japan has been extremely distressing. I am wondering as a developer what kinds of free software we could come up with that would help in situations like this. Google's people finder for e.g. is a very useful one.
Any ideas?
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closed as not constructive by Yannis Rizos♦, Walter, Matthieu, Anna Lear♦ Jan 12 '12 at 20:29
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In any calamity, a device that allows the unfortunate person to
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In Japan, the keitai denwa (mobile phone) is ubiquitous. I don't know much about the providers or the models of phones they have, but a great many are smart phones. The closer you get to ground zero, the less likely the paasokon (personal computer) survived.
Amazingly enough, the Japanese internet was only marginally affected by the quake. Based on a bulletin from a kimono shop I've used, the news has preempted almost all television programming. I'm sure people have been using their mobiles to keep up with what is going on and find out the above information. The core basic needs that the people in the situation are not necessarily technology related. We're talking electricity, food, water, and shelter. Anything that helps the people providing those fundamental needs will also be helpful. |
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The recent devastation in Japan has been extremely distressing. I am wondering as a developer what kinds of free software we could come up with that would help in situations like this. Google's people finder for e.g. is a very useful one. I don't think, apart from very marginal issue (marginal as in we can do without that, and won't feel much difference) free software of any kind would make a difference there. The list of basic necessities that people need after a situation like that are pretty simple; food, water, clothing, shelter. Those haven't changed for a long time now, and are not likely to change in the near by future. Software for predicting that we don't need; those needs are pretty obvious. The problem however, is getting that to the place where it is needed. Let's say two million people are left without housing, and therefore without all the previously mentioned. Two million people = roughly 2000 tons of food, and 4000 tons of water daily. Since transports and distribution is obviously not gonna go there on a daily basis, those packages are usually packed as a weekly supply, meaning, we need roughly 14000 tons of food, and 28000 tons of drinkable water weekly. (for those counting, that's an average of 1kg of food, and 2L of water daily - I've increased the mass of food, since in there I also putted some clothing; so to simplify the account. Water 2L is a good estimate). Now, that's 42000 tons of stuff people are gonna need to survive without heating and adequate shelter. I admit, Japan is quite above average in terms of organization and finding shelter for its inhabitants, but still - these are rough statistics. 42000 tons is something out of the question for any kind of air transport. So you can either load up a ship from China or Korea, and send it to the destroyed areas, or you can transport those goods from other Japanese cities. In either case, to put long story short, and this is where the Japanese work culture and personal discipline are invaluable, it is more a question of transport and distribution than anything else. That and time. |
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I don't mean to be a curmudgeon, (but I'm going to!) but the single most effective thing you could do - if you really want to help people in Japan - is probably to just do a paid software contract and donate the money to buy supplies, rebuild, etc. |
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This is not really an answer to your question and I can't really talk about this due to legal issues so I'll have to keep it short. One of the most useful things on a catastrophic event is prevention. Hydrodynamic simulators, GIS software for risk analysis and land use studies allows government and the civil society to take informed decision and put people outside of risk areas. A few months ago in my home city, somewhere in country side Brazil, intense rain and floods took a toll of over a hundred lives. Had something with the half of impact that happened in Japan happened there I don't believe there was going to be a single building upright or a person alive. When you see Japan and the fact many building stood erect, where there still proper management in face of this chaos: that's engineering and information systems that saves lives. It's there and it's working. It's outside of the bounds of imagination what a magnitude 9 earthquake means. My prayers are with the Japanese people on this moment and for the people who designed buildings and information systems that saved other people: I'll be forever thankful. Take some open source GIS and put flood maps for you area on the web. Allow people to see if their homes have been in a flood area in the last hundred years. Many (most?) people doesn't even know. If you can do that for a place where this kind of information is much more scarce, like many places in South American, the Caribbean or Africa: bonus points for you :) Since this is not an exact answer, feel free to vote it down. |
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something like crysis managment system that can commulate all current problems and sub problems and keep track of whats happening in each of them, whats needed, whats missing , whats going on it can be connected with twitter & facebook to send update news to the world of any changes in the situations (to good or to bad) |
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I wrote a generic job search database and software for my own use during the .COM crunch. It is open to public domain for anyone that wants to use it. The current references in it are primarily oriented to programming in Southern California so I could use it and it is currently somewhat out of date because I haven't needed it in more than 6 years. It was available on the http://www.experience-unlimited.net web site, but I believe that the current web site has a bad link to the software. |
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Check out Sahana (Wikipedia overview), started after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. |
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I think the people affected by a crisis like this have more immediate needs than some piece of software. If they even have a computer left, and it has power to run it, and have an internet connection, and have a need for it, it'll already exist somewhere if they need it and don't have it. Things like shelter, food, medical care, are a lot more important. |
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