Haiti Rewired launched by Wired.com following the January earthquake, is an innovative response to the problem of on-going disaster relief. Editor-in-Chief Evan Hansen, a member of FAC’s board, calls the project an online “collaboration of writers, editors, technologists, researchers, geographers, infrastructure specialists, aid groups and others” dedicated to rebooting Haiti’s future.
Posted by Evan Hansen on January 22, 2010 at 7:30pm
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Quake-ravaged Haiti faces a long-term emergency, one that will not end in a few weeks when the media frenzy dies down. And it’s clear the crisis will require more radical solutions than short-term relief groups can provide.
Will foreign aid to Haiti fail this time? Or will the tragedy bring with it a chance to reboot one of the world’s poorest countries — and rethink the the traditional ways of delivering aid and development? Port-au-Prince may be effectively razed and rebuilt from the ground up, and many other communities will be starting over from scratch.
Paradoxically, the disaster may prove to be a unique chance for an architectural and communications reboot of an entire country.
That’s why we’ve created this community, Haiti Rewired. We believe that better answers to the difficult questions could be created through the collaboration of technologists, researchers, geographers, infrastructure specialists, aid groups and others. Our writers and editors can aggregate information, report new stories and add to the discussion, but the focus of this effort is squarely on the thoughts, plans and actions of our contributors.
We don’t have the answers. But we want to test (five) simple principles that could transform not only Haiti, but the world’s response to crisis.
1. Collaboration. The events unfolding in Haiti bring together an unusual coalition: non-governmental organizations, the military, international organizations, state actors. To avoid waste, duplication of effort and confusion, they will have to break down cultural and institutional barriers, and start sharing everything: imagery, sensor data, on-the-ground intel. Old models of classification and need-to-know must be dumped.
2. Transparency. Haitians are rightly disillusioned with aid: promises unfulfilled by donors, corruption and graft by officials, a general lack of accountability when it comes to aid. While there may always be inefficiency, waste and corruption must be tackled. It might not sound like the most important element of the recovery, but we need data-based metrics. Funding will be tracked; aid will be measured; disclosure shall be the rule.
3. Innovation. Solutions for Haiti’s problems will have to blend time-tested ideas with new ways of doing things that have been enabled by technology. Transparency and collaboration have become radically easier with new communication and networking technologies. On the other hand, these same tools can fail us during major disasters. How can we incorporate and build new technological systems for Haiti that are both efficient and resilient?
4. Design. Rebuilding Haiti will be a test in the politics of architecture. How can planners, urbanists, architects, construction companies and local authorities come together to design a better Port-au-Prince on the rubble of the earthquake?
5. DIY. The old model of The Development Set — highly paid expat consultants who jet around from crisis to crisis — needs to be jettisoned. This could be rebuilding on the cheap and that could be a good thing. Empowering local communities, avoiding Beltway banditry and giving communities control of their own affairs might generate real results. Can smarter, locally rooted ideas provide immediate shelter for thousands in need and lay the foundation for the city’s seismic, social and economic future?
In the short term, the story is about survival: basic needs like food and first aid. But as the weeks turn to months, any sustained relief effort that wants to leave Haiti better off will have to solve a host of difficult technological, infrastructural and architectural problems. How should food and water be distributed? What type of communications infrastructure works best during the emergency and thereafter? What types of housing can be built quickly? How can health care triage be improved?
The specific answers to those questions — the networks that get pressed into service, the apps that get built — will pattern the future of Haiti. Can foreign countries come together with Haitians to build effective, resilient infrastructure for a country that’s long needed it?
We know from the responses to Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean Tsunami that the old models for creating and distributing information about rebuilding won’t work. A monthlong flood of information, money and particular kinds of aid fades quickly as newsier news shoulders aside the still-unfolding long story. But once the story has moved on, we plan to be here.
We hope you will, too.
One Comment
I’m really glad that people took initiative to go down to Haiti and help with the clean up. There were so many people suffering down there that had no access to medical equipment. I think we should keep helping other countries to improve their conditions…
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