As noted below, I was lucky enough to sit in on a session at Web 2.0 last night organized by Jeff Jarvis and Greg Burton on Recovery 2.0, i.e. working to prevent future Katrinas through better disaster planning, preparedness and response. One of the primary exercises we went through was coming up with a list of characteristics disaster systems should have--and which were often seen to be lacking on the Gulf Coast.
I think it's important to keep in mind, as Jeff noted, that there's no one single IT here--we're not talking about building an uber-system, some sort of Ultimate Defense Against Bad Things Happening. We know that's not realistic--or even desirable, thinking about what fun the laws of unintended consequences would have with such a venture.
What we're talking about is 1) building a network of loosely joined people and initiatives who care and who want to take action (and a great place to start is the Recovery 2.0 wiki), and 2) working to insure that all the systems involved in helping people prepare, survive and recover from disasters benefit from the lessons that Katrina taught us (in short, insuring that Katrina's victims did not die or suffer in vain.)
So here's my copy of the list we brainstormed. As someone pointed out, it's contradictory. (Do we contradict ourselves? Very well then, we contradict ourselves.) And without last evening's discussion as context, it's somewhat cryptic, but I still think it's interesting:
Prepare
Learn
Information
Searchable
Fluid
Matchable
Swarmable
Parallelized
Sustainable
Transparent
Interfaces with authority
Adaptable
Inclusive
User-friendly
Trustworthy & credible
Global
Persistent community
Scam-avoidance
Discoverable
Human
Promotional
Lovable
Commercial
Time-sensitive
Consent
Accountability
Disaster-hardened
Redundant
Practice/testing
Where do we go with this? Hell, I'm not sure. But that wiki is as good a place to start as any. See you there.
(Also, if you're writing on this, use the recovery2 tag as a way to help spread the word and find compadres.)
