Human Map :: The living breathing first hand experience of world events.

The Missing Piece

With very little cooperation from existing infrastructure we stand on the verge of comfortably receiving an input stream comprised of each individual's needs wherever disaster occurs. Such a system should cost nothing to the end user because it actually saves significant sums in wasted effort and wrong guesses. Early warning alone could mean regime change.

A citizen with featurephone should be able to have a contact within minutes of major event and as each new tower comes back online, to capture as many weak signals and potential survivors as possible. The signaling of new towers will reassure each individual that systems are returning. Individuals should be able to initiate a Need whenever it comes up. It can be done for another party or along with. Each Need must have a location however. This is achieved by dead reckoning until GPS capable phones arrive into that scenario. A basic featurephone UI will allow users to make certain data added by voice. Location for instance. These messages may need to be transcribed but crowdsourcing may be a solution. Especially for disaster situations.

Region Level Shortcodes can be negotiated and should be part of any provider's operating agreements.

The data and all reporting is owned by the sender. To track, edit, delete or escalate at will. The feedback mechanisms and display ought to show every communication and reference associated with that need, until resolution. The need is able to broadcast requests, set virtual 'beacons' to repeat distress signal messages until the phone battery dies. Perhaps a very low power drain sequence of bursts. I should know the status of those nearby so that I can offer or request help. This again, though, happens peer to peer rather than from a government or agency looking down.

Whomever has any decision authority is running the show post-disaster. Accordingly, if a few agencies display similar items in their warehouses it ought to be up to the Sender to decide which aid, from whom and how the aid is delivered. In this way reviews of past experiences can be collected and aid received from entities who prove themselves worth working with.

Putting the onus then, on agencies to coordinate their own distribution system and governments to streamline the process of delivery. Assessment and categorization would have already been accomplished by the Senders and verified by a third party.

Each successively complex layer of technology, tablets desktops etc. would be putting compute resources to rendering larger swaths of 3D and performing file conversion as needed.

An intuitive interface with drag and drop filenames using mathematical operators between layers would enable complex ideas to be conveyed without any number analysis. The window title becomes the names of the layers themselves and the operator state should be retained in the file itself. The collection of imagery URL's vector files, operators and filters could be called a "Perspective" and could be editable in applications like QGis just by inflating the contained layer files.