One of the common challenges for building damage assessments is not only how to make them efficiently but most important how to make them meaningful after a catastrophic event. Lack of coordination between different groups, and little or no interest in gathering the data for post damage evaluation, leave communities short of lessons learned, and citizens ill prepared to access and use the knowledge produced during these efforts. The use of Short Message Sytems (SMS) between mobile devices may offer a simple, relatively cheap and efficient way to enhance current practices.

Art offers an interesting connection into one of the many possible ways SMS could be used. The Yellow Arrow project offered coded stickers (the yellow arrows) to be placed in the built environment. Each arrow has an individual code that can be texted from a cellphone, in order to receive shortly afterwards a narrative about that place that the person placing he sticker created and uploaded previously to a centralized web space, something that can also be done from a mobile phone. This space is also obviously accessible on-line and open to other users and interested public. Users had the ability to create themed projects, tours, or personal narratives. Ultimately Yellow Arrow as a project of its own was looking to make a "Massively Authored Artistic Publication", which conceptually touches on many of the needs and aspirations of building damage assessments geared to serve community relief and reconstruction efforts.

The current premise is that most regularly SMS remains the most accessible and reliable communication tool in a catastrophe zone. It unclogs transmissions, and permeates the channels well before other systems are back and running, in turn becoming a useful daily channel of its own. In essence a system for building damage assessments could replicate the mechanisms of the Yellow Arrow project to gather and display building damage analysis. Prearranged codes could be attached to evaluated structures that could then be texted by the next groups of evaluators, disaster management professionals, and citizen groups.

In fact, the ways in which Yellow Arrow did not become a global phenomenon and lacked some continuity to grow offers great lessons to attempt to use SMSing for building damage assessments and similar scenarios. Probably most critical is the need to created smaller, yet interconnected and permeable networks. Lack of a truly localized SMS number support and irregular behavior by phone carriers supported the growth of Yellow Arrow only where it had most resources, particularly in the United States. And it was in those countries where English was the language where it spreaded farthest. Localized and self-supported networks designed to cover preparedness needs, and be able to work efficiently engaging affected communities after a catastrophic event will be most useful.

These potential mechanisms offer plenty other challenges in aspects ranging from logistics to technology, from data protection to open communications. I am confident that with the adequate effort and support they could be tailored to solve this issues in innovative ways under a diverse range of solutions.