Gratis og open source software er på vej ind i varmen hos aktørerne inden for håndtering af katastrofer. En underskov af frivillige udvikler IT-systemer, der er i direkte konkurrence med de systemer mange organisationer i dag betaler i dyre domme for.
BANGKOK, 30 May 2013 (IRIN): For decades, governments and NGOs have relied on private sector solutions to gather and interpret emergency data for crisis response, but a growing number of them have warmed in recent years to much cheaper “open-source” (OS) technology. IRIN spoke to experts around the world about their search for the most appropriate mix of technology to manage disasters.
Proprietary software does everything from providing imagery and geographic information system (GIS) data to centralizing government-generated data on a command centre “dashboard” during crises. It has been around decades but is costly.
Among the most prominent private sector companies working in disaster management is the California-based ESRI (formerly known as Environmental Systems Research Institute), which runs the ArcGIS platform that creates interactive maps based on satellite technology. Founded in 1969 and valued at nearly US$900 million a year, the company controls at least half the market for GIS technology.
But in recent years, especially after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, more cities and NGOs are turning to OS technology, which generally does not charge a license fee to download software, but may have downsides including lack of experts able to troubleshoot, and resistance from governments that favour more established proprietary solutions.
What is FOSS?
Free and open-source software (FOSS) can be downloaded, used, studied, copied and redistributed at little to no cost, with the goal being that users along the way improve the code and pass along a more “robust” piece of software. Stuart Gill, a co-founder of a community of FOSS developers called the Random Hacks of Kindness (RHOK) compared these “explosions of innovation” (from the design to the development of the code) to evolution where the most robust software code survives.
Since its founding in May 2009, the group – backed by the World Bank, the US government’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and US-headquartered companies Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and Hewett Packard – committed first to creating disaster management solutions, then widened its focus to broader humanitarian challenges, through bi-annual “hackathons” where volunteer technologists (hackers as the organization calls them) furiously develop prototypes in an effort to stay ahead of disasters.
Gill estimates that since 2009, of the hundreds of prototypes coded for disaster management at these events, 50 have survived, with 10 of them being “really good”.
Cheap and easy is the mantra of one hackathon product, First Responder.
“Cheap means not having to buy servers, hosting facilities. Cheap means using low-cost devices like smartphones and tablets. Cheap means minimizing training, upkeep, support and other costs. And cheap means, if you are a community organization and have your own technical support personnel, you can get a version of the software for free. Easy means fewer options and clutter. Easy means big buttons and simple layouts. Easy means access from any web browser connected to the Internet,” reads its mission statement.
Such missions “disrupt” how disaster management has been handled in the corporate sector, said John Crowley, a Washington-DC based researcher at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative who specializes in connecting governments with crowdsourced data during disaster response, and authored a 2011 study on information sharing in emergencies.
Proprietary software companies have thus far operated – and profited from – restricting access to software code, earning an annual income stream by maintaining their clients’ software, he explained. “Open-source disrupts that annuity stream and creates an ecosystem of developers.”
Québec, Canada
Læs hele artiklen: http://www.irinnews.org/report/98127/analysis-which-technology-to-use-for-disaster-management
