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Authors LucasG
Location Haiti
OKH Manifest Download

Folks on the ground can look at local needs and resources. Appropedia can help by providing links to specific technologies, "appropriate" in the sense that they can be built with local resources and other resources that may be brought in with relative ease, and used to help with local needs. We can all expect to learn as we go along.

This page was initially based on Haiti earthquake assistance project by Bart Orlando, and later revamped by Lucas Gonzalez using the SCIM (simple critical infrastructure mapping) framework developed by Vinay Gupta et al, and detailed also in a STAR–TIDES and Starfish Networks: Supporting Stressed Populations with Distributed Talent (#70 of Defense Horizons).

Please give us some time to flesh it out a bit, and comment in the talk page. Thanks!

Overview[edit | edit source]

Haiti,W with 10 million people and a history of poverty, was struck by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake on January 12, 2010, at 21:53 UTC (4:53 pm local time). It was the country's most severe earthquake in over 200 years.

The damaged area is home to 3 million people. The death toll will be hard to determine, but is said to be "more than 100,000 deaths", which would be roughly more than 3% of the directly affected area's population. The number of injured, orphans etc is most likely very high. The whole country is affected either directly or indirectly, and the effects will last for a long time, in part depending on what's done in the early stages.

This hits an urban area where... ((fill in with data about people's age and previous health, weather, food, infrastructure, organizations, economy - some is to be stolen from crisiscommons's link below))

  • many people are young
  • weather is warm... rain?
  • roads, grid
  • currency...

Real-time consequences are being followed here: http://web.archive.org/web/20120320053125/http://haiti.ushahidi.com/ Some have been summarized in post linked to by @gaiapunk, about "numbers". (find it)

Longer term consequences are to be expected:

  • An urbanized area has no resilience if transport and communications don't work.
  • George Mason University economics chair Tyler Cowen has speculated that the earthquake has effectively ended the nation-state of Haiti. [1]

Some other reports are:

The response from the wikis has started:

Individual resilience[edit | edit source]

The first level in SCIM's frameworks is "people stay alive". In acute or chronic catastrophes, people die from being "too hot" or "too cold", from "hunger" or "thirst", from "disease" or "injury". "Death for some" is an indicator of "life is bad for many".

"Critical infrastructure" at this level is what's between us and the universe, that brings us what we need (and takes away what's bad for us) so that we'll live another day. So people need shelter and clothes, water and food supplies, healthcare and basic security. Some of that is already there, but some is compromised by the situation.

Too hot and Too cold: shelter[edit | edit source]

  • How much of a problem is it?
    • As we write this page, Haiti's capital has a temperature between 17ºC and 31ºC. So "too cold" and "too hot" is most likely not an issue, at least for most people. ((Please challenge this assessment if it's wrong.))
    • Hard information needed:
      • Temperature an issue for infants, elderly and generally frail?
      • Temperature an issue in certain regions?
      • Good weather maps?
  • Existing resources ((pages and categories in appropedia)):
    • Plywood, housing, schools, etc
  • Infrastructure solutions:

Hunger and Thirst: supplies[edit | edit source]

Disease and Injury: safety[edit | edit source]

  • Causes and on-the-ground assessment (how much of a problem it really is):
    • Earthquake itself, but also
    • Bad roads
    • Violence
    • Bad water
  • Infrastructure solutions:

Groups' resilience[edit | edit source]

Examples of groups

Communications[edit | edit source]

People use all sorts of ways to communicate. Particularly important seem to be text messaging, twitter included.

Central nodes need to be set up centrally, but there's satellites etc. ((grab link from http://www.star-tides.net))

System resilience can be increased with crank or solar chargers.

Space[edit | edit source]

Transportation[edit | edit source]

Resource control[edit | edit source]

Organizations' resilience[edit | edit source]

Shared map[edit | edit source]

Shared plan[edit | edit source]

Shared succession model[edit | edit source]

Nation-state resilience[edit | edit source]

Jurisdiction[edit | edit source]

Citizens[edit | edit source]

  • Some Haitian citizens have relatives across the border in the Dominican Republic.
  • There are tourists etc, and UN personnel, in Haiti.

Territory[edit | edit source]

Effective organizations[edit | edit source]

International recognition[edit | edit source]

Unsorted links[edit | edit source]

These links probably belong under "resources" for each SCIM category.

FA info icon.svg Angle down icon.svg Page data
Keywords earthquakes, emergency management
SDG SDG10 Reduced inequalities
Authors LucasG
License CC-BY-SA-3.0
Language English (en)
Related 0 subpages, 4 pages link here
Impact 488 page views
Created January 15, 2010 by LucasG
Modified October 23, 2023 by Maintenance script
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