Disrupting disasters with crowdsourced welfare data and AI

When disaster strikes, emergency management decisions makers immediately come under pressure to make the best decisions, as fast as they can.

Information is both a key and a scarce resource.

Hurricane SANDY (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

The Case For Change

“Within 30 minutes of the Kaikoura Earthquake [NZ, Nov 2016], we knew the township had been badly effected.  But as for [200km north and 200km south]…  we were in the dark“, said a senior Civil Defence manager, reflecting on their firsthand experience of a recent 7.8 magnitude Earthquake in New Zealand.

Meanwhile, the pervasive, and dependent nature of internet connectivity has made social media, the ‘go to’ place for community in modern disasters.  New Zealands GeoNet website, which allows users to register that they ‘felt’ an earthquake, recorded 15,840 reports in the first hour after that Kaikoura 7.8, with the website taking 250 million hits in 24 hours (peaking at 35,000 hits per second)*.

“…social media replaced the church as the place many Christchurch people went to for support after the region’s earthquakes“, according to Erkant Veer, Senior Lecturer Marketing, Canterbury University, in response to the Christchurch, NZ 2011 Earthquake.

So…

what if we could harness the power of social media;

take the load off emergency services;

deliver real time welfare information, fast;

and

allow Emergency Services to make better decisions?

Disruption Via Crowdsourced Welfare Data

Emergency Management social enterprise “SituateMe” has recently released an alpha version of ‘Ema’, the ‘Emergency Management Assistant’ chatbot.

Ema enables the crowdsourcing of large scale welfare data in emergencies and represents the next generation of AI tools for emergency welfare managers.  A cloud-based solution that can be pre-deployed and able to scale massively in response to the next disaster; Ema is a multi-lingual, compassionate, conversational chatbot that gently guides people of all ages, ethnicity and degrees of technical competence through an online welfare assessment.

“Key tenets of SituateMe’s solution are there is ‘nothing to download’ and ‘nothing to sign up for’” says Rob Gourdie, co-founder of SituateMe and a former Red Cross emergency worker and military officer.

REUTERS/Adam Hunger

“The other critical aspect of SituateMe’s solution, is that we affordably put the CIP in the hands of as many decision makers in the emergency management ecosystem as possible, allowing operational efficiency through shared situational awareness” said Gourdie.  He goes on to cite that Ema is not only able to be deployed on one organisations online channels, but those of every organisation in the emergency management ecosystem, feeding into a single pane of glass in the ECC.

“So think FEMA, Red Cross, Local Law Enforcement, Local Fire, NGO’s, other State and Federal agencies; Ema can go on ALL of them for maximum coverage and feed into a single CIP” adds Helen Luwen Wang, fellow co-founder and survivor of the 2011 6.3 Christhchurch earthquake.

The team came out of a Techstars Startup Weekend run by Creative HQ, with a Humanitarian Aid & Disaster Response (HADR) theme and sponsored by the New Zealand Defence Force. Since then, the team has enjoyed great support from the NZDF, actively facilitating innovation both inside and outside their organisation. Currently the team is working with emergency management organisations to refine and test their product, which spans all phases of the Disaster Lifecycle. This includes the real time collection of welfare data immediately prior to a foreseeable emergency such as a weather event. This is where the SituateMe team gets really excited, as the ability to provide street-level preparedness data for accurate response planning, represents an unheralded advancement in modern emergency management.

New Zealand has the unenviable title of being one of the best places in the world to field test emergency management solutions, sitting on the Ring of Fire and surrounded on all sides by vast oceans and exposed to Mother Nature’s wrath at times.  However combine that, with its desire for innovation and problem solving, and the SituateMe team feel very positive about the impact they can have.

[For further information contact: Rob Gourdie, rob@34.203.9.156]

* https://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/story/2016p858000

  • COVID-19 Business Support Tool released in response to pandemic

      Many businesses are preparing to enforce ‘social distancing‘ in response to COVID-19, directing employees to work from home, potentially for extended periods of time.  However this unprecedented action brings many unaddressed challenges: How do you monitor the general health and wellness of hundreds, or thousands, of staff working from home for extended periods?    How do you […]

  • Emergency Preparedness instils confidence in our kids

    Emergency preparedness is a must for our kids In New Zealand this week, everyone is thinking about emergency preparedness. With over 500 active fault lines running through the country, our susceptibility towards earthquakes is always at the back of our minds. However, these have been brought to the fore recently as we get ready for […]

  • New Animal Welfare Chatbot Enables Quick Reporting of Pets Left ‘Home Alone’ in an Emergency

    Situate Me, the emergency management crowd sourcing specialist, behind compassionate Virtual Disaster Assistant, Ema, has launched a new animal welfare add-on that allows pet owners to register their animals left home alone in an emergency. Pet owners who are not at home, or who are prevented from returning home, to look after their animals when […]

  • The case for Situate Me’s emergency management intelligence chatbot gains momentum with $60,000 investment

    Investment from the Westpac Government Innovation Fund will take Situate Me’s virtual disaster assistant, Ema, to pilot, marking a very positive step for the future of how emergency management groups collect and receive key welfare information. In the dark with no data When the 7.8 magnitude Kaikoura Earthquake rocked the top of the South Island […]

  • Disrupting disasters with crowdsourced welfare data and AI

    When disaster strikes, emergency management decisions makers immediately come under pressure to make the best decisions, as fast as they can. Information is both a key and a scarce resource. The Case For Change “Within 30 minutes of the Kaikoura Earthquake [NZ, Nov 2016], we knew the township had been badly effected.  But as for […]

  • COVID-19 Business Support Tool released in response to pandemic

      Many businesses are preparing to enforce ‘social distancing‘ in response to COVID-19, directing employees to work from home, potentially for extended periods of time.  However this unprecedented action brings many unaddressed challenges: How do you monitor the general health and wellness of hundreds, or thousands, of staff working from home for extended periods?    How do you […]

  • Emergency Preparedness instils confidence in our kids

    Emergency preparedness is a must for our kids In New Zealand this week, everyone is thinking about emergency preparedness. With over 500 active fault lines running through the country, our susceptibility towards earthquakes is always at the back of our minds. However, these have been brought to the fore recently as we get ready for […]

  • New Animal Welfare Chatbot Enables Quick Reporting of Pets Left ‘Home Alone’ in an Emergency

    Situate Me, the emergency management crowd sourcing specialist, behind compassionate Virtual Disaster Assistant, Ema, has launched a new animal welfare add-on that allows pet owners to register their animals left home alone in an emergency. Pet owners who are not at home, or who are prevented from returning home, to look after their animals when […]

  • The case for Situate Me’s emergency management intelligence chatbot gains momentum with $60,000 investment

    Investment from the Westpac Government Innovation Fund will take Situate Me’s virtual disaster assistant, Ema, to pilot, marking a very positive step for the future of how emergency management groups collect and receive key welfare information. In the dark with no data When the 7.8 magnitude Kaikoura Earthquake rocked the top of the South Island […]

  • Disrupting disasters with crowdsourced welfare data and AI

    When disaster strikes, emergency management decisions makers immediately come under pressure to make the best decisions, as fast as they can. Information is both a key and a scarce resource. The Case For Change “Within 30 minutes of the Kaikoura Earthquake [NZ, Nov 2016], we knew the township had been badly effected.  But as for […]

Related Posts