[Column] General: Calamities and the Internet Response League

SBFord

The world is rife with natural and man-made disasters. As the Internet has grown, so has the ability to keep informed. In today's Devil's Advocate, we take a look at an organization, The Internet Response League. See what it's all about before tendering your thoughts in the comments.

Last Saturday, September 21, I had the pleasure of working my fellows at Rappler to hold the Manila Social Good Summit. It’s basically a symposium where speakers discussed a particular theme that technology and social media can address or help with.

In this case, the speakers tackled disasters: from disaster response and relief, to volunteerism and the uses of big data. In big data’s case, the idea is to provide more accurate and more timely information for responders to act upon in times of crisis.

Read more of Victor Barreiro Jr.'s The Devil's Advocate: Calamities and the Internet Response League.

hardicon

My only real issue with this is the people looking at this needs to be trained in some type of disaster response because to normal people simple car wrecks look like disasters, earthquakes and crap most normal people without training and most importantly hands on experience with these disasters will probably not know what response is needed or will ask for an over response to what the disaster calls for. 

 

It potentially is a good idea, even a great idea, it just needs to be closely monitored for potential abuse.  I have seen police officers freak out at simple accidents where no one was seriously injured so normal people looking at disasters to help determine the level of response is kind of scary to me.

mCalvert

I don't know. I kind of just want to be left alone. Pops ups in my game begging for humanitarian assistance are still pop ups.

reb007

The idea sounds good in theory, but what will stop people from trying to exploit or hack the system?  Imagine a team of hackers flooding social media sites with pornographic photos, and tagging them with "earthquake in my city."

 

And what other ways can a system like this be exploited?