bonus- technology

For my final bonus blog discussion, I have chosen to write about what appears to me as an interesting topic. I chose to speak about how technology affects us as American in our every day life. The interesting part, to me, is that we tend not to even realize that technology affects us on a day to day basic. Well to begin, I remember as a young boy, I rarely used electronic technology. Pretty much the only ones that I used was obviously the television and occasionally my game boy when I was traveling to hockey games in the car. But other than that I was always outside, whether it was cold or warm. I was either playing with my friends or just shooting some hoops or practicing my slap shot. But either way, technology really did not consume my life. it was not uncommon for me not to use any type of electronic until right before I went to be when I would watch television with my parents. But as I got older, I got a cell phone, got a laptop and my own television in my room. Suddenly my life changed. I was constantly texting my friends and surfing the Internet. And shortly there after, I found myself staying inside more and more. Looking back on it, that was a bad decision. But like me, I believe many other Americans did the same thing and still do the same thing. After awhile, we have become comfortable with using technology and it became second nature for us to use it. Now, we use technology instead of doing some of the simplest things on our town. For example, most Americans will use a calculator for a simple equation that we could easily use mental math for if we would just be willing to use our brains. I’m not saying that I am not one of these people, because I am one of them. But I regret saying it, which makes me want to change the way I live my life. However, technology is amazing and we should be constantly improving it, but we cannot go on living our lives like robots. Before we know it, technology has incorporated itself into every aspect of our lives. No matter where we go, we can surf the web and check the score of the game. Not to say that this is a bad thing, because having mobile Internet is very important in things such as business and disaster relief. All I am saying is that in some way, we need to go back to our roots and do things the old fashion way every once in awhile. We have lost sight in the good things in life and we cant just shy away from things just because they are difficult. Hard work pays off. Personally, when I work hard on something and really use my brain, I feel much better about myself. I get a good sense of accomplishment. Technology can’t change that.

bonus-Iphone

For this bonus blog I have chosen to speak about the Iphone. I know some of you may be sick of hearing about this devise but the fact of the matter is that this phone has revolutionized the cell phone world. It was the first of its kind to do so many things. Not only that but it has made this that use to be time consuming and almost impossible to do on the run, possible. For example, it was very rare to be able to search the Internet so easily and quickly on the go, like you could on your own personal computer. The Iphone has made that possible with safari on the phone. Also the 3g aspect of the Iphone was very technological advanced. Now, not only could you just get WIFI, but you could also search and play on the Internet no matter where you are. It made business, recreation, emergency response, and research so much easier because you no longer had to be grounded to do work. I believe that that is the reason that the Iphone quickly because the elite phone in the cell phone world. Not only was the Internet aspect very important, but also the applications are what really made the Iphone great. Now not only could you just make phone calls and text messages on your phone, but you can do so much more such as play games, check your email, make a shopping list, and even listen to you Itunes. This was really important because it made multitasking every easy and readily available. You can essentially do anything on your Iphone that you could do on your computer, laptop, Game Boy, and ipod, all at once. It gave you the power of the world, in a simple hand held device. The Iphone has set the bar for all other phones that come out in the future. They are known to be the best and most reliable phone out there. Since the Iphone has come out, almost every other company has tried to duplicate it as much as they can. They have almost all come out with 3G, applications and touch screens. Iphone’s are also very useful in emergency response. This is because you pretty much have everything you need in the palm of your hand. You need to look on how to get to a certain address? No problem, just type it into your application. You need to read about a certain place? No problem, type it into Wikipedia. You need to read your emails or sent out email? No problem, go right ahead. The point in trying to convey is that, if there is anything you need to do that you can do at home desktop, you can do it wherever you are with the Iphone. The Iphone is consistently coming out with new applications and new features to add to the phone, any competitors are going to have a hard time keeping with Apple. I challenge and company to rival the Iphone’s technology. 

bonus- final project

For this bonus blog I have chosen to speak to you all about our final project for our Security and Risk Analysis Crisis Informatics class. For this project, our assignment was to invent a piece of software, hardware, or a device that would help in emergency response in one-way or another. After some though our group has chosen to make somewhat of a check in system. Basically the design is made up of software data that incorporates a mapping-overlay technology used for sharing information. We are going to use a type of software that allows multiple devises that will upload or update useful information into the software. It’s going to allow you to overlay many types of information, at the same time it will allow you to choose specific information you want to view. It’s an organized way to rapidly find the information you need. The idea is to minimize information overload for humanitarian organization, reduce duplicated information, and solve any communication issues between the organizations involved. The benefit of this is to make it easier for the humanitarian workers to find the information that they want and or need and to get it fresh from the source and faster then ever before. The types of information that will be readily available for the users are locations of colleagues, what they are doing, and how far away they are. The basic use of this would be for law enforcement officers. The way I describe it is if a police officer is at a call at a certain address for lets just say a domestic disturbance, and he is alone. If things start to get a little sticky, he will be able to look up where his nearest back up is, how long it will take them to get there, and what they are doing. This is a great tool to have because it brings awareness to the officers and gives them a sense of partnership with their fellow officers. Because at every given moment, everyone will be able to know exactly what everyone else is doing and there will be no questions. However, just because I used the police as an example, it is no by means limited to them. It could be used by the military, emergency management, humanitarians, non-government organizations, firemen, Emergency medical technicians, and others. So basically there is no limit to who can use this software. The reason that we decided to create this software, is because when we had guest speakers, we would always ask them what they wanted to improve disaster response, and a common answer between most of them was that they would like a check in system. This is because they had a hard time knowing who was at the scene and what they were doing. So with us creating this software, I believe that it would fix this problem and even go above and beyond the call of duty. I truly believe that this will be successful and will be able to be used by many different organizations. 

bonus- OEM

For this bonus blog entry I chose to speak about the Somerset County Office of Emergency Management. The reason that chose to make this as my bonus blog is because I interned with them this past summer and really learned a lot. This was a great place to have an internship at because they were not just an ordinary emergency management place. They had a lot more going on. On their campus, they had the county maintenance buildings, the fire fighter training academy, Hazardous Material, and emergency response. So needless to say, this was a great place for me to work because I got the priceless opportunity of being able to feel out each one of these fields and pick out which one I liked the most. This is actually the place were I decided that I would like to become a volunteer fire fighter. I got a chance to witness the training they did, and talk to a lot of the fire fighters to gather some information. Since then, I have applied to be a volunteer fireman at State College’s Alpha volunteer fire company.

            So now that the background information is out of the way, lets get into the office of emergency management and what they do. Here at the office of OEM, I worked hand in hand with the county deputy coordinator. Working with him, I got an opportunity to take part in doing the grant money for the New Jersey State police given to them by the Department of Homeland Security. This was a good experience because I was able to talk to some of the policemen and get some connections for later in life, which is really important. Another thing we did was make emergency evacuation plans for the local government buildings such as the prosecutor’s office. What we did was draw up a plan, and present it to the people who work in the buildings.

            Another thing that I learned about what the calls they got called out on. I was fortunate enough to go out on one that had to deal with a gas leak in a building. We arrived in the HAZMAT trucks and went in with a meter that would read if any toxic gas was in the building. It turned out that they building was safe and all the workers were able to reenter. But it was just really cool to be able to go out on a call. i was also fortunate enough to check out the equipment that they would use in a search and rescue scenario. They had an eight wheel vehicle that they used to go throw dirt and off road. They also had numerous trailers that was packed with supplies that I had to organize and take inventory of. Usually people don’t like taking inventory, but I enjoyed it because I was able to check out what was incorporated in the search and rescue opportunities. They had everything from vehicles to sharpies. All in all, I would recommend anyone to work at the office of emergency management in their town. It’s a great opportunity that is priceless. I learned a lot. 

bonus- Facebook v Twitter

This inspired blog post is about facebook and its uses. Today, many controversies have arisen about twitter in numerous aspects including emergency response and social media of course. My focus today is going to be the use of facebook in disaster response and the question of whether or not we as responders to crisis should in fact use facebook. In my opinion, I believe that we should use facebook. However, I do not believe that we should use it before we use twitter, Peoplefinder or even shelterfinder. This is because all of those sites I believe are more reliable than facebook is. Peoplefinder and Shelterfinder are more concentrated on one task and hand, were facebook covers more of a wider spectrum. For example, if you were looking for a family member, were would you look first. Facebook? No, you would go to a site that souly does that, which is Peoplefinder, and the likewise for Shelterfinder.  So, with that being said, I believe that facebook should just be another tool that responders use for extra information that is not necessarily needed in a time crunch because twitter would be a lot easier for that. Although facebook is a great tool that millions of people use, it cannot be confirmed. In other words, any random person can post anything they want whether it’s true or not. Sure, this is also true for twitter, but that is also a issue with twitter. Furthermore, twitter is so much easier to use for groups. All someone has to do is put a hash tag and it shows up. Where with facebook, one usually has to be invited into a group and common sentences or words don’t all show up in one place. For example, if I posted on my twitter, “my neighbor is trapped under debris on 54 north bridge street #Help.” Everyone who said help in their post would all come up on a certain page, and it would be easy for responders to classify them and get them the help they need.  And if someone posted that exact same sentence as their status on facebook, onlookers might see that and call for help, but it would not get directed to a certain page. So in other words, twitter is much for efficient for its use in emergency response. Another reason why twitter is so great in emergency response is because it is actually starting to be adopted by agencies all over the world. Sure it has some flaws, such as the fact that it often needs to be translated, and it takes a lot of man-power and man-hours to translate those tweets, but it is on its way up and will soon be proficient. I believe that facebook, although ahead on social media, but falls short of twitter in the emergency response field. Im not sure if there is something that facebook could change in order for it to be better in emergency response, but if there is I would be very interested in seeing what it is and how it works. Maybe one day in the future we will be able to see such things. 

Bonus- war on terror

Today I am going to do my bonus blog on the war on terror. For those of you who do not know exactly what that is, it is basically the war that we are currently involved in in Iraq and Afghanistan. The reason that we are in this war is because of the attack on September 11, 2001. Furthermore, we are also in this war because we believed Saddam Husain had weapons of mass destruction that he could easily use against us, or another country. Although we did not find any of these weapons of mass destruction, we believe that he could have hid them somewhere off the boarder in lets just say Iran. The first step of this war was when we invaded Iraq with troops. We took a strong hold in Fallujah and Baghdad. These would prove to be huge gains in our war of taking over Iraq and putting a new governmental Democracy in place. It was important for us to instill Democracy in Iraq because for years, Saddam Husain has been dictating these people and not treating the people fairly and even humanly. To prove this, there are even rumors that in Saddam’s spare time, he would like to watch tapes of the torture that his men preformed on people who did not comply with his every wish. In the years to come, we would eventually capture Saddam and release him to the Iraqi people. Later, they would hang him to his death. After we took down Saddam and his army, we would release the power of the government to the Iraqi army. We would help them train and teach them how to fight and keep the peace. Recently, we have been consistently taking our troops out of Iraq, and leaving most of the power to the Iraqi army.

            Now our main focus is in Afghanistan. Here we are constantly fighting against the Taliban who are constantly ambushing American troops by ways of small weapons fire, and the increasing problem we are having with IED, or Improvised Explosive Devise. These are coming more and more of a problem because they are targeting our vehicles and our boots on the ground. There are usually two different types of Improvised Explosive Devices that they are using. The first one is a remote trigger. What they do is sit at a safe distance away and as soon as they see troops over that location, they pull the trigger and blows up the IED. The other one that they use is a pressure detonate. This works from the shallow based IED and when it feels pressure from lets say a body or a vehicle, it explodes. These two types of Improvised Explosive Devises are becoming the worst method of attack that is being used against the United States military. We are doing everything we can to hinder these attacks but they are nearly impossible to clear all of them out. It is just another example of how the Taliban is constantly coming up with new ideas and new technology of things to use against us. It keeps us on our toes, but we are making progress and eventually gong to win and finish this war. It will end. 

bonus- RA-115s

            

            For those of you who do not know what RA-115s are, they are also known as suitcase nukes. These were developed by Russia during the cold war. As of now only Russia, Israel and the United States are reported to have the technology needed in order to produce these suitcase nukes. However, none of these countries have made it public that they have the technology to fit these nukes in a regular size suitcase or briefcase. But that is only what they made public. Although they have not made it public, the center for defense intelligence says that they have produced a class of nuclear devises that are small enough to fit into a suitcase in the 1970’s.

            There is a huge problem with this. This being in 1997 Russia made it public that a few of these suitcase nukes has disappeared from their holding houses during the fall of the Soviet Union. Alexander Lebed who is a national security advisor for Russia released this. Later Russia would make a statement that all of that is false and declined that they have ever even made these nukes.

            Another issue with these weapons is that if they fall into the hands of the wrong person, they can be used in a very bad way. Not to mention if they get purchases by the Taliban, they can easily use them against us in war. A question might arise as to how can these nukes be preserved and for how long? Really, its simple; all you need is a high power plug in and the nuke can last for years if its kept in the right location. Nuclear weapons are not as hard to handle of some people think. In fact, if you give an physics college graduate the right materials, they should be able to make one relatively easily. The hard part is just getting the materials such as Uranium.

            Stanislav Lunev has said that it is relatively easy to to smuggle these suitcase nukes into the United States. There are two ways that the said its possible. One, by smuggling them in from the Mexican boarder by car or truck. And two, by launching a small undetectable missile from a Russian airport. He especially stated that these nukes might be stored in the Shenandoah Valley area. But come to find out, later the FBI would discredit what Lunev said and said that he was exaggerating. This is a very scary thought because at any time these nukes can be unleashed on American soil. If this happens, thousands of people will die and our landscape will be devastated. In my opinion we need to do everything in our power to find out the truth about these weapons, so no innocent people get hurt and so a disaster can be avoided. I also believe that it is very suspicious that so many people are making these comments and later they would be discredited by the higher ups. It seems to me that someone is trying to cover up some stuff. People need to come right out and tell the truth. Enough of this government cover up. 

Bonus 1

This is going to be my first bonus blog post. For this one I have chosen a topic that is on everyone’s mind lately. That topic is the Penn State scandal. The reason I have chosen to speak about this is because it is rare when people actually take the time to ask a students point of view on this topic. I feel that the majority of people just jump to quick conclusions that are often un warranted and wrong. Over the past few weeks I have had numerous conversations with other students on campus on their thoughts on this topic. The most common theme between these students is that Penn State jumped the gun on firing head coach Joe Paterno. The reason is that the media caught the first look at a huge scandal that involved Joe Paterno who has previously been known as a straight edge angel who has put sixty years into this great university. So once they got a chance to ruin that and get good rating on their station, they took the chance and ruined a great mans life. But later, facts would come out that Joe Paterno actually did more than people think. He went to his higher ups and demanded that something be done. And come to find out his higher up was involved with the police department. Later when he noticed that something has not been done, he was told to step down and that he was only a football coach. That is something that the media did not portray on his behalf. All they did was crush him and get his named tarnish almost to the point of no return. It is outlandish what they have done to this great man. I feel bad for him and his entire family. However, I am not defending him one hundred percent. There is always something more he could have done. I worked as an intern with the police department this past summer and did some work with computer crimes, and had to watch child pornography for a case that we were working on, and it made me sick to my stomach. I couldn’t imagine not doing everything I possibly could to put that men behind bars that are responsible. So in actuality, he should have done more, but he is not one hundred percent wrong. We want Joe Pa! Moving on, I believe that Sandusky should get prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. What he did was absolutely disgusting and in many way deviant. He is a sick individual that tarnished the name of this entire university and the football program that prior to this scandal, was known to be a happy, healthy, and law-abiding program. He ruined that for us and our alumni. But in the end, I believe that Penn State will be able to move past this a reclaim our name as on of the top universities in the country. I also want to make sure everyone knows that this has nothing to do with the students and that no student should be punished or prosecuted against for being a Penn State student. WE ARE!

Security and Risk Analysis

            In this post we are to explain why we think that Penn State Security and Risk Analysis students are well fitted to address issues in the integration of technology in crisis response. I believe that this is a great question to answer because it very well could be a question that a future employer would like to know in the hiring process. It is important that we as Penn State Security and Risk Analysis students are understood in the things that we do. This reigns true because the fact of the matter is that Security and Risk Analysis is a relatively new Major that up and coming students are taking an interest in as well as employers. But, because it is new, most people do not even know what it really means. I know this on a first hand basis because whenever people ask me what my major is and I tell them, almost ninety percent of the time, the follow up question is, “oh, what is that.” Security and Risk Analysis is not like the norm of a business degree where everyone knows what it is and everyone pretty much knows the core curriculum of what they students are going to do. Security and Risk Analysis is different because we are changing up our curriculum almost every year (or at least for the two years that I have been in it.)

            But to get to the point, Security and Risk Analysis and Information Science and Technology students are great for a job in Crisis Response. Ill tell you why. For one, a lot of the students in SRA have an interest in law enforcement and/or have a military history or future. Not only is this important, but we have at least a basic understand in technology and how to use it properly and sufficiently. And that is something that you do not get with a lot of the other more popular and older majors. The Penn State IST college really strives to challenge its students to the very best of their ability and this will pay off when we get out into the work environment. We also tend to do more hands on projects rather then just learn definitions and do paper work all semester. We get the skills that we need in order to succeed in the work force. I know that Penn State is not an Ivy League school, but I challenge that it will keep up if not surpass any other school in the country on this topic. Furthermore, Penn State has a wide variety of classes that help us. For example, we have a class that I am currently taking that is called Crisis Informatics. The cool part of this class is that it is only the second time that a class like this has been given in the whole world. Now can you say that about other majors or universities? All in all, Penn State gives us everything that we need in order to succeed and succeed we shall. 

Crisis Mapping

            This is also a make up post for blog post number eight. This week in class we had a great guest speaker named Patrick Meier. However, before this presentation we had about an hour of class time. During the time we had to opportunity for all of us to voice our interest in what we would like to do our final project on. For those of our viewing this blog that is not in our class, our final project is to make up a software, hardware, or device that we believe would be very useful to humanitarian efforts, law enforcement, the United Nations, Government agencies and also non government agencies. For me in particular, I voiced my opinion on how it would be nice to create a device that would provide a check in system for government agencies or anyone who it would be useful for that matter. See the point of it would a device that would show a google maps type of software that would be loaded with geotags to show their fellow colleagues were and what exactly they are doing. This would be useful for lets just say the police. If one responder is at a traffic stop or a domestic disturbance call, and things get a little out of hand and the officer needs backup, he is able to look really quickly as to were his nearest back up is and what they are doing so he can gage the situation and analyze what his actions need to be in order to handle the situation at hand appropriately.

            As for the second half of our class, our guest speaker, Patrick Meier presented to us over skype. This is not the first time that we had a presentation of the internet, but this one was different and better because it was a lot more clear and it was very easy for us to understand everything that he was saying. He spoke to us on crisis mapping and it was a very interesting talk. See, crisis mapping is very important because if we did not have it, then the humanitarian people that are on the ground trying to find out were places are what how long it will take them to get there would not be able too. Crisis mapping is a whole lot more complicated that it seems. There is a lot more too it them what meets the naked eye. It gets too complicated for me as barely even an amateur to try to explain to everyone but what I can speak about is just how important it is for everyone to use it to its highest degree. See the problem with mapping is that it is quickly out of style and technology is taking away for the original roots of it. I believe that it is important for us to stick to our roots and continue mapping because it is very useful and necessary. All in all this was a very great speaker and I look forward to looking into the research of Mr. Meier. 

humanitarianism

This is a make up post for the topic of humanitarianism. Before this class I had a pretty basic understanding of what humanitarianism was. But like most people I had a lot to learn about this topic. In my past I never really had an educated discussion about humanitarianism because the main topic of my studies was more on the terrorism side; so needless to say this class was interesting to me and brought new ideas and thoughts to my mind. At first I knew that humanitarianism had things to do with disaster relief and countries in time of need, but I was kind of taken back by the fact that the Red Cross actually started out by helping out both countries in a time of war by helping them with medical needs and helping to free prisoners. Another thing that I was extremely surprised about was the fact that they helped both sides of the war. I am not sure if this is just because I was naive, arrogant or just flat out oblivious but I just thought that the Red Cross was an American based and operated company that just helped us after hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, landslides and so on. But it was just mind boggling to me to find out that they helped out other countries as well.

            The next thing that I would like to talk about is the natural disaster of hurricane Katrina. Yes, we did have help from humanitarian efforts just as the Red Cross and FEMA, but I do believe that we fell short in the disaster relief. We were really not prepared at all for the effects of this disaster and it is my personal opinion that if we were more prepared for it, than more lives would have been saved. We should have done more things just as use twitter and other technologies in our response. But instead, we stuck to the old methods of disaster relief. This just doesn’t make sense to me because what good is technology if we are not going to use it when lives are on the line. This also doesn’t make sense to me because with out weather technologies we were able to predict the Hurricane days in advance. Now, wouldn’t it make sense to prepare everything we possibly could especially in a town that is below sea level? I just believe that there were so many things that the humanitarian efforts could have done so much better. They need to work on time efficiency, the common saying is that “time is money” but in this case “time is lives.” So, needless to say time efficiency is very important.

            All in all I learned so much about the humanitarian efforts in our country and even other countries around the world. There are things that I now have in my long term memory and not just my short term memory like I have for most of my other classes. I hope to see an improvement in our humanitarian efforts in the future so that we can avoid many of the mistakes that we have made. 

geo

Geo

In recent months there has been an explosion of people using the Internet to create, and assemble geographic information provided by volunteers. This would lead to sites such as Wikimapia and OpenStreepMap. Also, Google map is encouraging people to develop interesting applications using their own data. These are examples of VGI’s of Volunteered Geographic Information. An example of VGI is Wikimapia. This uses a lot of the ideas that wikipedia uses and applies them to this site. Anyone with an Internet connection can select an area on the earth’s surface and provide it with a description, including links to other sources. Anyone can edit entries, and volunteer reviews monitor the results by checking for accuracy and significance. This can range from entries as large as major cities to as small as a single building. It is defined by the ranges of longitude and latitude. You can also upload a hyperlink with pictures included.

Another example of a VGI is Misspronouncer. It was created by Jacki Johnson to help people pronounce some of the more distinctive Wisconsin place names. She developed a site that has an audio recording of the correct pronunciation of almost 2,000 places in the state.

Next there is Open Street Map. It’s an international effort to create a free source of map date via volunteer efforts. Which has a more elaborate focus on the earth’s surface.  For example a map of Dublin is incomplete with some street names present along with railroads and towns, but some minor street names missing. Dublin and other cities around the world lacks a cheap, readily available digital street map, so this volunteer effort can potentially fill a gap in the availability of digital geographic information.

Google also came out with redesigned software like this that was previously called Earthviewer. That would eventually be called Google earth. It was very successful because it was very straightforward. Google maps and Google earth popularize the term “mash-up”. Which is the ability to superimpose geographic information from sources distributed over the web. In some cases users could even edit the content created by others, which would become common among blogs and Wikis. The VGI would result in the growing range of interactions enabled by the evolving technology.

Next, Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) is a system that has been adopted for the geographic coordinates needed by many military agencies. It is basically a place name needed by normal people that provide the basis of geographic referencing. This is because very few people know the latitude and longitude of their house so it is essential to have tools that can identify the coordinates of locations on the earth surface. The most common of which is the GPS or global positioning systems.

Other tools used are geocoding and Geotag. Geocoding in the process of finding associated geographic coordinates from other geographic data such as street addresses or zip codes. A Geotag is a standardized code that can be inserted into information in order to note its appropriate geographic location. These have been inserted into many wikipedia entries when the content is related to specific location on the earth. For example, if there is a map of a country or state, there will be icons that you can click on that will bring you to the towns wikipedia description. 

Twitter

This week’s class began with a bang. For the first forty-five minutes our class took a trip down to the extreme even lab. Here they had four different sections with mac computers set up. In the front of the classroom were four flat screen high definition televisions. But that wasn’t event he coolest part. The coolest part was what was known as the cave. It was this huge projector screen that had three dimension capabilities. The professor that gave us the tour and or presentation of this room showed us all the different things that it could do. Two of the examples really sparked my interest. The first thing that he showed us was an United States military map of a town in Afghanistan. This at one time was classified information that only people who had clearance would see, but it eventually got declassified and was about to be viewed by the public. It was in three dimension and different parts of the map jumped out at us, when we were using our special glasses. The next part that really amazed me was the last part of it. Here we got to see an overlay of the United States and a picture of all the different flights that came in and out of LAX. This was really cool because it showed all the different flight patterns, and all the different airlines. It was really interesting to see how some parts of the United States were covered by flight patters, but others were completely untouched.

            The next part of class we had the students do their presentations. The main topic of these presentations was twitter usage during disaster relief and for humanitarian efforts. Today, there is big controversy among top official as to if twitter and facebook should be used as a source for disaster relief. The issues are that we do not know if the information that is posted is correct or if it is even important. It is very easy for people to lie or exaggerate the truth. But on the other hand, it poses a huge benefit as well. It is a great tool for emergency responders to use because a lot of the information is live and up to date. After all, like we discussed in an earlier class, survivors are in fact the first responders. So, with that being said, the information that they post is highly informative and important. As far as my opinion on the matter of should twitter be used as a tool for emergency responders? I believe it should be a tool, and that’s it. In other words, it should be used as a guiding device and not as a form of factual information. People should not rely on twitter or facebook but use it to their advantage. Twitter has been being used for longer than most people think because it is only recently that it has been popular but in all actuality it has been used for years in disasters. I think we need to learn from past events and move forward with our technology and our emergency response process.

Japan

Today’s class was very informative even know it was my shortest class this year. I had class during the first part of the class so I only was able to make the last fifty minutes. First and foremost, happy Halloween everyone. In today’s class we watched a documentary about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. This documentary really had me shaking my head in disgust and sorrow. It showed numerous home videos of people filming the earthquake and tsunami as it was happening. It showed people running away from the buildings and homes. It also showed people driving out of the city and into the inland in order to get away from the shoreline where the tsunami was going to crash into. This earthquake caused this tsunami by the plates in the ocean moving and causing the plates to shift up a few meters and pushing up the water forming the giant waves that would come crashing into the mainland of Japan. It was unbelievable to see the people and how they reacted in the time of pure devastation. They showed one clip that stuck out in my mind. This was the tsunami as it was rushing into the mainland. After it came rushing over the shore, the water would just keep rushing inland because Japan is so flat. This water wiped away everything in its path including houses, cars, people, trees, and everything imaginable. The one thing that I was surprised at was the fact that the water was black. This surprised me because growing up all the floods and water disasters that I have seen; the water has always been brown and muddy. So this was the first time that I saw water look like this. Turns out that it is like that because it is just picked up so much debris that it just changes the water to be black and extremely toxic. Another clip they showed was compassion of the landscapes, before and after the tsunami. It was left barren and devastated. Everything that was unfortunate enough to be in the path of the tsunami was wiped away with no time to react and no chance of survival. The tsunami took no prisoners. Another fact that was very interesting to me was the fact that after this earthquake Japan as moved two meters out into the Pacific Ocean. In fact, earthquakes actually change the shape of the earth. So, the earth is not the same shape that it was three years ago which is unbelievable to me. Furthermore, since the earth is a different shape, it rotates differently, meaning that our days have actually become shorter then they once were. Fortunately for Japan, we had good disaster relief organizations in place and were able to get to Japan on a moments notice to help in the relief efforts. We had our military there instantaneously because we have a base on Okinawa, Japan. Hopefully we have learned new techniques in disaster response and we can incorporate them into future disasters. I give out my deepest sympathy to the Japanese victims and their family’s along with everyone involved. 

Week 7

This week’s guest speaker was Edward Happ. Who had worked with the Red Cross and with NetHope. He was debatably the best speaker we have had thus far in our class. The reason for this is because he had a great variety of knowledge that we as the students tried to soak up and incorporate in our lives. One of the most impressive features and or accomplishments to Edward is the fact that he was the co-founder of NetHope. For those of you who do not know what NetHope is, it is a group of 32 international non-governmental organizations or NGO’s, which have a mission to improve information technology among humanitarian organizations in developing countries and areas that are affected by disasters. This was a great attribute to the disaster relief world. This weeks speaker just got off the plane and had tremendous jet lag so we had to push our class time back by forty five minutes which proved to be a good thing because it gives students like me more time to look more into the background of Edward and really get some good questions ready for him. For some of you that are reading our SRA blog entries may wonder why these high caliber speakers are making special trips just to speak with us. Well, the answer is that our class is going to be the new members of these organizations that they work for, and by them talking to us, we hear what needs to be improved and we will be studying and doing research on how to improve the things that are needed.

Another great thing about Edward Happ is his desire to succeed. He has already had three carriers and his looking for his next too. That is great because he is going to be spreading his knowledge in all different types of government agencies and even some non-governmental agencies. I wish that I had that sense of ambition to want to have five different carriers. If I did I feel like I would be a lot more successful in life.

Attached I have posted a you tube video that is an interview with a NetHope advisor that talked about outsourcing. This will give people who do not exactly know what NetHope is, a good idea of what they do. For more information visit their website or search them on Google.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmwd_HEx2l8

Something else that I found interesting about our guest speaker Edward Happ was the fact that at the end of our speaking session we had asked him what he in his career path needed in order to make his job easier or more proficient. His answer surprised me. He didn’t really give us a straight answer and just wanted up to use our imagination. This puzzled me for a little bit but then I thought about it and it was actually a great answer. It is necessary for new people coming into the career path to have new ideas and not necessary take after the people that are already in place. New people should mean new ideas. All in all this was a great class and I thank Edward for coming to speak with us. 

Week 6

This weeks class was very interesting. This weeks guest speaker was Mr. Andrew Alspach. He was a very knowledgeable man that works for the UN. Before class started we got the special chance to speak to him about his background and get to know him on more of personal level. Turns out, he grew up on a farm in Ohio. Later, he would go on to join to peace corps and work with people all over the world on developing their bee population and teaching them how to get the most honey they possibly can get. This was very interesting to me because I have often thought about joining the peace corps. This is because i really enjoy helping people as much as possible and this would be a great chance to do just that. Furthermore, I have also a great interest in traveling to Africa to help out the refugees in their fight against the rebels whether it is in the military or as a member of the peace corps. Next Mr. Alspach went on to discuss that he is a member of the United Nations and the work he does there. This was great because we all got a little taste of what the UN in really about and not just what we read about in the newspapers of hear on the news. In was great to hear what has changed over the years. For example, they no longer ride around in cars that are marked UN on the site, they now ride in unmarked cars in order to avoid conflict and violence. Mr. Alspach is a great man and a great speaker. He opened my mind to a lot of new ideas and things that I can and will be thinking about in the future. He was also nice enough to give us his email address so in case we want to email him any questions or ask for advice we can do so. All in all, this was a great class and a eye opening experience. 

Week 5

In this weeks class of Security and Risk Analysis 397A we had a very informative speaker. His name was Gisli Olafsson, who works for NetHope. He spoke to us about many different topics that were relevant to our class discussions. Along with that he also brought up some books that he thought we would or should be interested in reading. One being wikinomics. He would consistently refer to this book and others throughout his discussion with our class via Skype. This was my favorite class of the year just because we were not cooped up in a room just talking out one individual topic. For example in the past weeks, we just focused on Hurricane Katrina, the Haiti earthquake and the September eleventh attack on the world trade center, but this week we covered a broad array of topics. The best part about this was that we had a world-renounced speaker that took the time out of his day to speak to us for over an hour.

            Even though I found his entire speech very interesting, including the times with the technical difficulties with the sound and video feed, was the question and answer segment. This was my favorite time because it gave the class a excellent opportunity to ask questions on a first hand basis to an expert in the field. This is something that most people our age do not get the chance to do, which is unfortunate. So, being students and a Crisis Informatics class, we took the opportunity to ask him what the disaster relief field needs as far as technology advancement. His response shocked me in a way. He said that he needs a way for everyone to check into the disaster site. It occurred to me and the class that all these different corporations that show up to the scene have no way of actually knowing who is there and who isn’t. I think that partially the reason that I was shocked by this answer was because I never really thought about it before. It never occurred to me that all these different groups have no way of knowing if another organization has showed up. I believe that we as a country and even as people need to think of a way to quickly and efficiently accomplish this goal of getting everyone registered to the scene. Maybe this is something that we can work on for our final project at the end of the semester. I would like to thank Mr. Olafsson for taking the time out of his busy schedule to speak with us. It was very helpful and informative. 

Haiti

In many ways, the Haiti earthquake was a landmark event. It was the first time that many new technologies were used in a disaster relief such as twitter and SMS. Although twitter was used in the past in disasters like hurricane Katrina, it was not used by government agencies until Haiti. SMS or simple messaging service was not used in past disasters because cell phones could not be used because of the flooding of networks. There was one issue with the use of twitter in the immediate relief of the earthquake because in order for the United States to use the information that was being sent over twitter, it had to be translated from Creole to English. Since Creole is not a popular language in America, translators were in very high demand and hard to come by. This put a tremendous strain on the translators that were being used. They had to work long hours and some didn’t get sleep for days. In order for this information that was being put on twitter to be used effectively and efficiently, it had to be translated and analyzed very quickly so that emergency responders could get to the scene as soon as possible before its too late.

            SMS was a huge stepping-stone for disaster relief. Like I said earlier it was the first time that is could be used. This is because if other disasters such as the World Trade Center attack on September eleventh and hurricane Katrina, too many people were on their cell phones, which almost instantaneously flooded the networks and caused the systems to crash. Haiti was different. Since Haiti is not a very wealthy country, not as many people have cell phones as America. So, the people that did have them were able to sent SMS’s to responders. This was huge because responders were able to get the direct GPS coordinates of were the SMS was sent and immediately send responders to help.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV4oUWxm330

In this attached youtube video, it covers a story of volunteers sending relief materials such as food and medical supplies to Haiti. I believe that is very important for all Americans and other countries around the world to do. When people are in a time of need, we need to respond and help each other out. Along with food and medical supplies, Americans also sent our military to help. They did things such as keep order, help with the sick and rebuild roads and houses. This is a great thing for our military to do because it really gives them a sense of helping others in a non-violent standpoint. We have been in war for many years and it is good for our military men and woman to help people rather then kill them. Granted, sometimes killing is helping like getting the Taliban out of civilian villages, but physically helping in disaster relief efforts in always better. 

Katrina

Hurricane Katrina was the largest scale disaster since September eleventh. With that being said, it was the first time since then that we could try and test our improvements that we have made in communication, technology, and associations such as FEMA. It was the first time that we would be able to see how our improvements would work; in some ways it worked great, in others it failed. For example the new system known as NIMS (National Incident Management System) was basically the protocol that the emergency responders had to follow failed. It failed because all the different government agency did not want to share information and data with one another, so basically they all wanted to be the “heroes” instead of working together and getting the job done correctly. At other points, such as organization and the public response was a success. Two being PeopleFinder and ShelterFinder.

            One of the reasons why I think the emergency response failed was because people did not think that another attack of this magnitude would happen. In other words, I believe that the American people were very stubborn in the fact that it wouldn’t happen. I believe that if the American people were open to the fact that another attack could happen, then we would have been more prepared for this event. The government became logistically overwhelmed by hurricane Katrina. We exhausted all of our resources and personnel.

            We also had some successes though. For one, a private citizen came up with the idea of a website that would be the centerfold for other websites. The idea sprouted because there were dozens of different websites that would have posting from people looking for their relatives and vice versa. The problem with that was that people would have to look at all the different websites to find the one person they were looking for. The idea eventually launched into what is called PeopleFinder. This was a huge success because it gathered all the different information from the websites and put them all into one place. This made it easier for people to find what they were looking for.

            Furthermore, FEMA launched a statistic that 500,000 people were left homeless and another 500,000 people were left jobless. This raised a huge concern because how are 500,000 people who are located in a relatively close grouped area going to be able to find a home to temporarily live in? This is were the idea of ShelterFinder came about. The idea, much like Peoplefinder, would help people find homes from all over the country. People from all over the nation were posting up adds for Katrina victims to come stay with them, but they didn’t have a central place to post them, that is what ShelterFinder fixed. The best part about it was that it was not a government organization that designed it. It was a civilian that came up with the idea, and ran with it so to speak.

            There are many things that we have taken out of the disaster relief of hurricane Katrina, some good some bad. But we are making progress and things are looking up for the future. 

9/11 Ten Years Later

            In this post I will be discussing whether or not we has Americans have evolved in our technologies and our logic since the World Trade Center attack of September 11^th, 2001. The question has been raised if the American public would react differently if another attack were to happen, and if we have made and technological changes or improvements in the last ten years that would help us in our disaster clean up and response.

            First I will talk about the technological advances or lack there of. I believe that we have not made any real technological advances that would help us in a state of emergence. Of course, we have made technological advances in the past ten years, but not necessarily in disaster relief. For example, one of the major issues with the incident on September 11^th was the lack of communication with the victims and the responders. I do not think that this will change if another attack were to happen. This is because people would immediately go to use their cell phones and call for help, almost instantaneously the cell towers would become overloaded rendering them useless. Like we discussed in class, after we had a minor earthquake in State College, our systems failed. If it were to actually be a disaster, it would only make matters worse. Nothing has been installed in buildings that would help this issue such as CB radios on every floor. So all in all, our communication tools would still fail and no contact with the victims would be possible.

            Next, I do believe that our techniques and actions would be different if an attack were to happen again. Solely because it is human nature to learn from our mistakes and improve them so we do not make the same mistakes again. For example, while working with the Office of Emergency Management over the summer, I took a look at our evacuation plans and how they evolved over the years. I noticed a huge difference in the plans prior to 9/11 to the post 9/11 plans. They consisted of a lot more detail and a lot were scenarios were discussed.  Furthermore, I believe that the country is a lot more prepared for a terrorist attack or even a natural disaster. This is only because we as a nation learned for past events. Our emergency responders are now being trained on how to handle a similar situation and things would go a lot different then they did ten years ago. For example, I do not think that security guards would be telling people to go back to their offices after a plane flew into the building. This is because, buildings are now practicing evacuation routes and will be more prepared next time. This raises the concern that people do not and will not act the same for a practice evacuation as they would if it was the real deal. People naturally tend to panic in a state of emergency and there is no possible way to change or correct that. 

Crisis Informatics 1st post

My connection with Security and Risk Analysis is that it is my major at Penn State University. I am also the Intelligence modeling option. I am interested in Security and Risk Analysis because I have a growing interest in security, whether it is physically security such as law enforcement or military or it could even be cyber security such as protecting a firms assets. I am currently a junior, and have been involved with the major for a year. Originally I was a business major, but it just did not excite me as much as Security Risk Analysis does. This past summer I was an Intern with Somerset County Prosecutors offices. There I worked with the counter terrorism unit, gang unit, intelligence unit, and narcotics unit. While working with the counter terrorism unit, I worked hand-in-hand with the Department of Homeland Security. Although I am not able to discuss the cases that I worked on, I can say that it was a growing experience for me and really sparked my interest. After the internship was done I really got an idea of what I wanted to do with my life. I started to focus more on the federal aspect of law enforcement such as the Federal Bauru of Investigations and the Department of Homeland Security. This is because I really have a passion for stopping terrorism, whether it’s foreign or domestic. Because of this, in May of this year, I plan of shipping out to Officer Candidate school for the United States Marine Corps. This will be two, six week sessions on the Marine Corps base in Quantico Virginia. I will be doing my first session this summer, and my second session right after I graduate. I hope to get my orders in the infantry unit or in the mortars unit. There I will be leading my team of men into battle and training them to be the best Marines they can be. I believe that this will give me an advantage when I get out into the work force. This is because a lot of the departments that I will be applying to really like to see a military background on your resume. Especially if they see that you were an officer.
            I chose to take this Crisis Informatics class because It had a lot to do with what I did over the summer. When I was not working at the prosecutor’s officer, I worked for the county’s Office of Emergency Management. There, I worked with the county coordinator in efforts to maximize the potential of the emergency plans. We analyzed the plans that were already in place, and looked to see how we can improve them and get the most out of the assets that we have. I believe this class will give me more of an understanding as to why we did the things that we did.