Charging up: Networking resources and recovery after Hurricane Sandy

In the wake of a devastating storm, here's how you can volunteer to help those affected.

Even though the direct danger from Hurricane Sandy has passed, lower Manhattan and many parts of Connecticut and New Jersey remain a disaster zone, with millions of people still without power, reduced access to food and gas, and widespread damage from flooding. As of yesterday, according to reports from Wall Street Journal, thousands of residents remain in high-rise buildings with no water, power or heat.

E-government services are in heavy demand, from registering for disaster aid to finding resources, like those offered by the Office of the New York City Advocate. People who need to find shelter can use the Red Cross shelter app. FEMA has set up a dedicated landing page for Hurricane Sandy and a direct means to apply for disaster assistance:

Public officials have embraced social media during the disaster as never before, sharing information about where to find help.

No power and diminished wireless capacity, however, mean that the Internet is not accessible in many homes. In the post below, learn more on what you can do on the ground to help and how you can contribute online.

For those who have lost power, using Twitter offline to stay connected to those updates is useful — along with using weather radios.

That said, for those that can get connected on mobile devices, there are digital resources emerging, from a crowdsourced Sandy coworking map in NYC to an OpenTrip Planner app for navigating affected transit options. This Google Maps mashup shows where to find food, shelter and charging stations in Hoboken, New Jersey.

In these conditions, mobile devices are even more crucial connectors to friends, family, services, resources and information. With that shift, government websites must be more mobile-friendly and offer ways to get information through text messaging.

Widespread power outages also mean that sharing the means to keep devices charged is now an act of community and charity.

Ways to to help with Sandy relief

A decade ago, if there was a disaster, you could donate money and blood. In 2012, you can also donate your time and skills. New York Times blogger Jeremy Zillar has compiled a list of hurricane recovery and disaster recovery resources. The conditions on the ground also mean that finding ways to physically help matter.

WNYC has a list of volunteer options around NYC. The Occupy Wall Street movement has shifted to “Occupy Sandy,” focusing on getting volunteers to help pick up and deliver food in neighborhoods around New York City. As Nick Judd reported for TechPresident, this “people-powered recovery” is volunteering to process incoming offers of help and requests for aid.

They’re working with Recovers.org, a new civic startup, which has now registered some 5,000 volunteers from around the New York City area. Recovers is pooling resources and supplies with community centers and churches to help in the following communities:

If you want to help but are far away from directly volunteering in New York, Connecticut or New Jersey, there are several efforts underway to volunteer online, including hackathons around the world tomorrow. Just as open government data feeds critical infrastructure during disasters, it is also integral to recovery and relief. To make that data matter to affected populations, however, the data must be put to use. That’s where the following efforts come in.

“There are a number of ways tech people can help right now,” commented Gisli Olafsson, Emergency Response Director at NetHope, reached via email. “The digital volunteer communities are coordinating many of those efforts over a Skype chat group that we established few days before Sandy arrived. I asked them for input and here are their suggestions:

  1. Sign up and participate in the crisis camps that are being organized this weekend at Geeks Without Borders and Sandy Crisis Camp.
  2. Help create visualizations and fill in the map gaps. Here is a link to all the maps we know about so far. Help people find out what map to look at for x,y,z.
  3. View damage photos to help rate damage assessments at Sandy OpenStreetMap. There are over 2000 images to identify and so far over 1000 helpers.”

Currently, there are Crisis Camps scheduled for Boston, Portland, Washington (DC), Galway (Ireland), San Francisco, Seattle, Auckland (NZ) and Denver, at RubyCon.

“If you are in any of those cities, please go the Sandy CrisisCamp blog post and sign up for the EventBrite for the CrisisCamp you want to attend in person or virtually,” writes Chad Catacchio (@chadcat), Crisis Commons communication lead.

“If you want to start a camp in your city this weekend, we are still open to the idea, but time is running short (it might be better to aim for next week),” he wrote.

UPDATE: New York-based nonprofit DataKind tweeted that they’re trying to rally the NY Tech community to pitch in real life on Saturday and linked to a new Facebook group. New York’s tech volunteers have already been at work helping city residents over the last 24 hours, with the New York Tech Meetup organizing hurricane recovery efforts.

People with technical skills in the New York area who want to help can volunteer online here and check out the NY Tech responds blog.

As Hurricane Sandy approached, hackers built tools to understand the storm. Now that it’s passed, “Hurricane Hackers” are working on projects to help with the recovery. The crisis camp in Boston will be hosted at the MIT Media Lab by Hurricane Hackers this weekend.

Sandy Crisis Camps already have several projects in the works. “We have been asked by FEMA to build and maintain a damage assessment map for the entire state of Rhode Island,” writes Catacchio. He continues:

“We will also be assisting in monitoring social media and other channels and directing reports to FEMA there. We’ll be building the map using ArcGIS and will be needing a wide range of skill sets from developers to communications to mapping. Before the weekend, we could certainly use some help from ArcGIS folks in getting the map ready for reporting, so if that is of interest, please email Pascal Schuback at pascal@crisiscommons.org. Secondly, there has been an ask by NYU and the consortium of colleges in NYC to help them determine hotel capacity/vacancy as well as gas stations that are open and serving fuel. If other official requests for aid come in, we will let the community know. Right now, we DO anticipate more official requests, and again, if you are working with the official response/recovery and need tech support assistance, please let us know: email either Pascal or David Black at david@crisiscommons.org. We are looking to have a productive weekend of tackling real needs to help the helpers on the ground serving those affected by this terrible storm.”

Related:

tags: , , ,