The District of Columbia alert system (Alert DC) has just notified me that Tropical Storm Fay is no longer a threat to Washington D.C. The problem is that it never bothered to tell me in the first place that it could be one.

When we developed the beta version of a fully functional Disaster Assistance Component Kit, including disaster preparedness curriculum, and resources on a website that ran off of a USB drive, we immediately knew that there would be much work needed to foster, and sustain a network of users. And just as important as supporting this community, it would be critical to expand the functionality and self-actualization of the data in a crowdsourcing fashion.

At the crossroads of innovation and experimentation there is also the risk of opportunistic discourses, that sometime touch on a desire to develop an idea no matter how well suited it might be for a variety of uses. The "Individual Lifting Vehicle (ILV)" not only explored the desire to develop a personal flying machine, but was also being introduced to help with border control, military operations, search and rescue missions, or its use by private citizens for leisure or to allow them to evacuate disaster prone areas.

Post-quake callers overload phone systems
The state Office of Emergency Services issues an appeal to limit dialing so that 911 calls can get through.

Ignoring repeated warnings, and isolating acquired knowledge, points to systemic failures.

Disaster simulation and scenario planning constitute a critical practice to help understand the consequences of catastrophic events, and to be better prepared for them. Lucas Roebuck picked up some of my early work around the uses of SimCity in urban simulation, planning, and city culture to consider if "SimDisasters" could help us be prepared for the real thing." Roebuck argues that some of the things done at SimCity provide lessons that can be applied on the real world. However, like I proposed in "A City is not a Toy"(PDF 1MB) I believe that SimCity offers little value other than as cultural stimulation and interpretation, and that its uses as a simulator are not only limited but counter productive. Disaster simulation is progressing in much more useful and challenging fronts. SimCity does offer interesting insights but they are not related significantly to disaster preparedness.

The Media Future Now is an informal and dedicated group that aims to generate conversations for Washington DC area professionals, focused on finding ways to keep media-centric businesses agile, innovative and future-focused. Looking at the meet up focused on mobile media, Andrew Mirsky asks two questions related to the emergence and usefulness of mobile media applications and social networks:

• What is the true community utility of mobile technology?

• If mobile technology increasingly enables non-traditional communications behavior and non-traditional media consumption, are we in the middle of or looking at the end-product of where is this going?

I think I can try to add to the debate around the topics looking at some of my personal use, and then at some of the ramifications that disaster prevention and response are offering.

InterAction and USAID have launched the Pandemic Preparedness Capacity Project to help prevent and understand pandemic disease outbreaks, in particular bird flu. The project platform has been crafted by Development Seed over open source technology with a great range of functionality for system administrators to access and manage data. The project offers a tremendous departing point to build up a platform to share knowledge and resources in order to prepare for pandemics. The bigger challenge remains in generating the needed conversation to see the effort grow to its full potential.

A new system to alert of domestic accidents for the elderly and disabled looks to self-sufficient digital monitoring, linked to SMS warnings. "Eldercare" has been developed by a team at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos of Madrid, which proposes to use artificial vision to detect falls or fainting when the elderly are alone at the residence. Automatic detection triggers an alarm for the system to send SMS-MMS to relatives or a healthcare emergency center. The system aims to shorten response times eliminating the risk associated with slow reactions. Such a solution poses technological, access, and severe privacy related challenges, which will require careful attention.

A disputed failure in the service of Euskaltel - the leading phone provider in the Basque Country - leaves users out of coverage for well over 7 hours. Besides the effect on private communications, and the problems associated with that lack of capacity, the most critical problem lies elsewhere. The collapse also affected the access to SOS Deiak, the local emergency number.

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.