911 on the internet soon?
The 911 system in the US works well under an average day's load but comes to a crashing halt under widespread emergency situations, according to two lecturers from the University of Maryland. To combat this, Ben Shneiderman and Jennifer Preece are proposing (subscription) a nationwide network of 911 web sites—911.gov—that will include input from the community as well as information from the government's emergency services.
During incidents like Hurricane Katrina, the Kobe earthquake, the British foot-and-mouth disease outbreak, and the Indonesian tsunami, communities collaborated via the Internet to provide supplies and assistance to those in need of help, which is what Shneiderman and Preece are looking to create. Under the proposed project, the web sites will be run by "trained volunteers with a few professionals, much as volunteer fire departments now operate," according to the proposition in Science magazine. The sites would accept text, video, and photos from the community to help emergency crews react more quickly to disasters as well as inform others of the status of the situation via the web. "Citizen reporters would report to a centralized authority who will take care of emergency response coordination and allocate scarce resources of police fire and medical services," Professor Shneiderman told BBC News.
Professors Shneiderman and Preece believe that such a project could succeed due to the popularity and growth of other social/community-driven sites, such as Craigslist and the Amber Alert system. With so many bloggers and "citizen journalists" out en masse during emergency situations—remember how many new sites and photos were online immediately after Hurricane Katrina?—such a coordinated effort could empower the community to support and protect each other. The site itself would be a national effort, but offer community-based sections for reports on each city, like Craigslist.
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9th March 2007, 09:48 AM
