Promoting Coordination for Disaster Relief - From Crowdsourcing to Coordination

The efficiency at which governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are able to respond to a crisis and provide relief to victims has gained increased attention. This emphasis coincides with significant events such as tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, and environmental disasters occuring during the last decade. Crowdsourcing applications such as Twitter, Ushahidi, and Sahana have proven useful for gathering information about a crisis yet have limited utility for response coordination. In this paper, we briefly describe the shortfalls of current crowdsourcing applications applied to disaster relief coordination and discuss one approach aimed at facilitating efficient collaborations amongst disparate organizations responding to a crisis.