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Date: 2025-05-01 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00004194

Initiative
CrisisMappers

Does anyone know of a one-stop-shop repository of open datasets useful for disaster response in the US?

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

The original question

On Mar 5, 2013, at 8:04 AM, Patrick Meier (iRevolution) wrote: Dear CrisisMappers, Does anyone know of a one-stop-shop repository of open datasets useful for disaster response in the US? Thank you, Patrick

My response

I have been of the view that getting basic data AFTER a disaster is a bad solution to the lack of data problem. In my view society has the need for such data all the time ... but of course these data are largely missing.

I grew up in England. Details of Okehampton, the little town where I grew up are in the Domesday Book, an inventory of important data about England compiled by William after his conquest of England in 1066. I argue that technology has improved substantially since then and there should be some way for important data to be easily available about everywhere all the time. Some of these data are emerging, and some of what Google has done seems pretty impressive.

There are all sorts of social issues including privacy and the value of these data for emergency response. I would argue that such data could also have an important role in transparency, accounting and accountability, monitoring and evaluation (TAAME) which should in my view be much more about impact in a place (and the society in the place) than impact in an organization.

The data needed for emergency response are a subset of the data I argue are routinely needed to get better progress and performance in society. In fact, because these data are not available for society ... though they often are available inside the corporate for profit fire wall ... corporate organizations are able to optimize performance and society all too often gets screwed.

I followed the data flows after the Haiti earthquake. One of my lasting impressions was how much data lived a life of its own, completely irrelevant to the issues needing to be addressed on the ground. This is a problem where there is operational inexperience ... an increasing problem in all of society. Maybe one can argue that much of modern society is in a permanent state of (economic) disaster and it would be good to deploy meaningful data now as much as possible.

What might I be able to do to help/

Peter Burgess

On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 1:14 PM, Andrew Turner wrote: Probably best would be to setup the pattern where data could be slotted in for a specific event. Kind of like a surge protector that you plug into the wall, then the data all can match any of N interfaces to provide: Infrastructure, People, Evacuation, Centers. That way it can adapt to whatever the most trustworthy/recent data that exist for that event. Take for example my experience sitting at FEMA during Sandy. Within a few hours FEMA went through 3 different sources for 'gas availability' - from the HSIP official, to the daily update based on credit-card data, to the IMSOCIO updating feeds. This would have been impossible to identify before-hand. #flexibility Andrew
On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 1:02 PM, Patrick Meier (iRevolution) wrote: Thanks very much, Andrew and Simcha! I love the idea of a Pinterest for open (disaster) data. Anyone know if the OpenDRI data is readily accessible? In terms of what we (QCRI & MIT/CSAIL) are trying to achieve: we're looking for linked data to pull into this free & open source DIY disaster response app. This project is still at the very early stages. Thanks again for your replies and for any additional guidance you may be able to provide. My very best, Patrick
On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 12:50 PM, Andrew Turner wrote: As Simcha said there is no one-stop-shop nor authoritative source and there never will be. The solution is data federation. There will be many sites and services for open-data that relate to disaster response, both directly and indirectly, that are owned, managed, and provided from many agencies, organizations and companies. In the US there is the 'official' HSIP (Homeland Security Infrastructure Program) that has all of the national infrastructure (roads, bridges et al) and is an aggregation of mostly commercial and some government sources - but then you also have OpenStreetMap. Sites like GeoCommons, Socrata, ArcGIS Online, CKAN et al. are all hosting different official and unofficial data sources. 'BigML' has a list of lists of thousands of data repositories [1] There have also been a dozen spreadsheets and google docs to collate these. Many are event-based and short-lived and too easily forgotten about or locked away behind an opaque URL. I think a better approach is to provide loosely coupled ways to bookmark and share these repositories. Imagine if we all use Pinboard or Delicious to tag repositories and categories that we can subscribe via RSS or API's to pull together. I'm also hopeful that we can use lightweight data standards to promote federated search and data sharing. For example GeoCommons provides OpenSearch + Atom feeds that it uses itself to search remote repositories and pull in data. Anyone can support these particular standards, or others like CSW, DCAT or more. Again, more options that you can simply collate together as a simple exercise [2] This is a valuable and important problem - but let's not try to crown a single repository or create yet another spreadsheet. A good discussion on what you're trying to achieve, and ways that work in the broad community as well as for responders and agencies is far more enlightening so that we can evolve a real solution. Andrew [1] BigML Repository list: http://blog.bigml.com/2013/02/28/data-data-data-thousands-of-public-data-sources/ [2] CivicCommons Data Standards: http://wiki.civiccommons.org/Data_Standards
On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 12:08 PM, Simcha Levental wrote: I don't think their is one authoritative source. It's time that we embark on a effort to creating a resources spreadsheet that can assist once data is needed. This also might help us recognize data gaps that might be addressed through a data philanthropy effort. I would be happy to lead this effort. On Mar 5, 2013 10:25 AM, 'Susannah Dyen' wrote: I would also be interested. Best, Susannah
On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 9:47 AM, Kerrie Aman Carfagno wrote: I would also be interested in open data sets. Kerrie
On Mar 5, 2013, at 8:04 AM, Patrick Meier (iRevolution) wrote: Dear CrisisMappers, Does anyone know of a one-stop-shop repository of open datasets useful for disaster response in the US? Thank you, Patrick
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