Dr. Ryan Sinclair PhD, MPH - http://gaiadesert.blogspot.com/ The LLU is known as a global hub for all aspects of health. Our Public Health Disaster Assistance and Relief Team (PH DART) exists to respond to these types of disasters. Our team is now working with ADRA international to conduct a rapid needs assessment on water and sanitation, logistics, and shelter among other topics in select regions of the Philippines. I believe that we have the institutional responsibility to respond to disasters of this magnitude and we have devoted effort to a relevant response. We realize that there are now many ways to volunteer for the present disaster in the Philippines. Donations are the obvious choice, but the types of social media and crowdsourcing is now also evolving. Tweets and Facebook entries are now the most common type of crowdsourcing, but often not organized into any central repository that can be used by agents on the ground. There are now new efforts towards "crowd-crafting" those first-person entries. That "crowdcrafting" is organized by a new handful of volunteer groups to stand-by and organize the random assortment of tweets, blog posts and facebook entries. A new way to volunteer is to start collaborating online with these groups. See the TedX talk below. The Stand By Task Force: A way to organize tweets and make them relevant. They have a defined time span deployment-style response to disasters. You can sign up and when a need is there, they will open the cycle for you to contribute.
Maps have always been a source of fascination and intrigue. Today's maps, however, can also help to save lives during disasters, document human rights abuses and monitor elections in countries under repressive rule. This presentation will explain how today's live maps can combine crowds and clouds to drive social change. Citizen Cyberscience Center Humanitarian Open Street Map (H.O.T.) This is a volunteer service that provides agents on the ground in the Philippines with map data. Its a useful URL to find detailed maps and they also collaborate with the SBTF. Crowd Crafting This site works with the SBTF. Go to the micromappers site to join the list serve. Some other ways for LLU folk to volunteer: Translators Without Borders Statistics without Borders Info4Disaster