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.