Collaboration and Information Sharing in Haiti

In response to the devastating earthquake in Haiti on January 12, 2010, many organizations, public and private, commercial and non-profit, from around the world, collaborated in exceptional ways to provide information, bring help quickly to Haitians, and support operational requirements. This was an exceptional effort by diverse collaborators, and those who contributed the support deserve great credit (as do officials who adopted innovative procedures to encourage and accept it). There are many lessons to be learned for application in future disasters, both in the US and abroad.

In this environment, TIDES helped to catalyze the accelerated delivery of services to the US Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM) and the international relief community, focused on UNCLASSIFIED information sharing. Drawing on long standing ties with the civil technology community, crisis mappers, and other participants, TIDES representatives engaged soon after the earthquake and worked closely with USSOUTHCOM to ensure information supported command needs.

TIDES also encouraged the technology community to publish Situation Reports that integrated the exceptional capabilities being provided from around the world. This led to information that would have not otherwise been readily available in integrated formats. It also generated strong support from USSOUTHCOM and National Defense University leadership.

As an example: (1) Disaster assistance centers received messages in Creole which they couldn’t translate, (2) Using internet tools, colleagues reached out to the Haitian Diaspora for translation support, (3) Some messages had content like: "People trapped in building by school next to fountain," (4) The network found people with local knowledge of Port-au-Prince, who converted those into plausible street addresses, and (5) These were developed into lat-long coordinates, which were passed to search and rescue teams. One of the people thus found later came by a team member’s location in Haiti and thanked them for his rescue --made it all worthwhile.

In another case, the Coast Guard launched Medical Evacuation helicopters off of data from open source tools populated by volunteer graduate students, which were considered more timely than what they were getting through official channels.

Lessons learned from Haiti are being developed, data sorted, and analyses planned. Significant research needs to be done on network architectures and info sharing protocols to let officials and responders take full advantage of what’s available in the civil sector. There is the potential here to change the way public-private, whole-of-government and trans-national partnerships are formed, lives saved, governments supported, and partner capacity built.