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.
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.
It is actually quite interesting to think about how there can be so many different disaster scenarios. As you blogged about, the earthquake in Haiti is a good example of a scenario in which technology plays one type of role as compared to man-made disaster on 9/11, in which technology played a completely different role. In Haiti, the fact that many did not have a means of communicating for help, made the situation more difficult to deal with. Fortunately, communication technology was not foreign to all Haitians. As you said, there people able, some people were able to send SMS’s to responders. On the other hand, the issues surrounding 9/11 centered on the fact that too many people were using communication technology, and the networks were overloaded. I wonder if there has been a large-scale disaster in which communication between victims and responders was considered a success.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that helping is “better” than hurting/killing, however, sometimes war is necessary. But, I think using our military in humanitarian roles can be considered inappropriate. The motives of a humanitarian should be to help protect humanity without exhibiting any self-interested motive. By sending in a nations’ army to offer aid, brings into question political motives. After all, a government is not going to spend, probably millions of dollars, unless they are going to benefit in someway. However, some may still argue that it still is better to have government help instead of not help at all. This I would agree with. If a situation is too dangerous for humanitarian organizations, and a foreign government is willing to send troops with aid, then bring in the government forces. However, it is of utmost importance that the government thoroughly evaluates the scenario. If sending military troops results in increased conflict, a different method of sending aid should probably be considered.
I think it is very important that Military and Government agencies get involved with Humanitarian Efforts! However, many problems can arise when this happens, especially with the reputation the United States has. You say "it is good for our military men and woman to help people rather than kill them." I can see why you say this, however the problem with this thinking is that the United States Military is trained to do one thing and one thing only, winning wars. And in order to win wars their main objective is to kill people and destroy things. Mainly are simply not trained for relief efforts, and this can become a problem when they are tasked to show supportive rolls where they must use no force to control large crowds. They are not equipped or qualified to deal with such situations and this is why we must use our forces with caution.
ReplyDeleteAlthough this is all true I do believe it is vital we train our military to become better suited for relief efforts. And this is exactly what we have been trying to do the past decade. The military has technology, machinery, and pure brute force that other government and non government agencies don't have but need. Shipping supplies can be one of the most important recourses needed to a destroyed area, and with the help of cargo planes this can be done within a 24 hour period. The use of Unmanned Ariel Vehicles to assess damage and find those that are hurt, injured, or stuck can be vital to saving lives. Overall, I think the military will become one of the most important role players in the future of crisis management.
ERIK MATTHEW LEITZEL
I think you are exactly right, the earthquake that hit Haiti was a landmark event. Not because they have never been affected by an earthquake, but because it was essentially the first time so much technology was implemented into a disaster response effort. I understand that Twitter was difficult to fallow after the earthquake had struck simply because not many people understood Creole, and on top of that it was difficult to scramble quickly to and find personnel that were capable of translating Creole into English. I wonder how much quicker and more efficient the response effort would have been if American’s would have been able to translate the Creole much quicker or if Haiti spoke English. I feel like response would have been a lot easy.
ReplyDeleteSituations like this make me wonder why there hasn’t been a technology developed that is capable of translating two completely different languages. Its cases like this that a technology capable of translating would have been useful. Most people would argue that an application like Google translation could be used to translate. But, like we discussed in class, the applications like the Google translation isn’t completely reliable. Even Dr. Tapia said that there are many fault in the program. So, after reading your blog, I feel inspired to not create a translation application for a situation like this but to hope that someone will eventually produce such a technology.