Photo By Master Sgt. John Laughter | Representatives from various non-government humanitarian and disaster relief...... read more read more
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PORT-AU-PRINCE- Imagine this: An entrepreneur wants to start a new corporation, so he employs 100 people. To each person he gives a separate task. To one individual he gives all the communications equipment, to another he gives all the marketing tools, another all the inventory, to another all the advertising, etc. The owner then sends these individuals out across the globe. Now what would happen if these individuals never spoke to one another? This new business would never get off the ground. To be successful, these separate entities would need to constantly communicate and share resources to be successful.
Here in Haiti the same concept applies. Hundreds of organizations, governments, and military forces communicate on a day by day basis in order to ensure that the humanitarian aid and disaster relief efforts are executed with the utmost efficiency and reach those people who need it the most. Each of these entities has their own focus or specialty such as providing shelter, medical care, clean water and improved sanitation, Soldiers on the ground building relationships with the citizens, and numerous others.
Through the sharing of information, these organizations expand their area of influence and improve on their ability to impact those areas that need their specialty the most. Cpt. Matthew Gilbert, commander, B Company, 2nd Brigade Special Troops Battalion, and the B Company paratroopers are pioneering the 2nd Brigade Combat Team's "Fusion Project" to enable just such communications between entities operating in Haiti.
For over seven weeks, Paratroopers from the 2BCT "Falcons" have been on the streets of the greater Port-au-Prince area, constantly receiving feedback during patrols around the internally displaced persons camps, talking with citizens, local leaders, government officials, and seeing exactly who needs what aid where. "It's like having 3,200 sensors on the ground," Gilbert said.
Gilbert explains the Fusion Project as a system where soldiers gather data from their daily interactions in the city and the relationships they have built with the citizens of Haiti. The battalions compile that data and forward it to the 2BSTB and 2BCT Fusion teams. The Fusion teams then take that data, and put it into a master list. A team from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) overlays the data on to satellite imagery. The master list contains six areas: IDP camp locations, non-government organization locations and points of contact, United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti locations and points of contact, key medical infrastructure, key government infrastructure, and local leaders. The data collected is extremely detailed and thorough with photos, phone numbers, and E-mail addresses to points of contacts and pictures of locations and IDP camps so that they are easily recognizable to someone reading the data.
But the focus of the Fusion Project is that the data includes what humanitarian aid and disaster relief has been provided to a particular area. This allows any aid organizations to see what has been done in a particular camp and then better focus their efforts. There were IDP camps that no one had any information on before, said Emese Csete, shelter cluster information manager, OCHA.
"An NGO who can provide improved sanitation can pull up this data base and look at all the IDP camps and prioritize where they can apply their expertise," said Gilbert.
What the Falcons have started in the Fusion Project is only the beginning of the process. "It's a huge contribution," said Csete. "It's brilliant data that can be used as a stand alone or cross referenced against the big picture."
All the information compiled from the Fusion Project is added to the One Response website, which "Is a collaborative inter-agency website designed to enhance humanitarian coordination with the cluster approach, and support the predictable exchange of information in emergencies at the country level."
"We are giving away all the data we are collecting," said Gilbert, "We are giving the NGOs instant and accurate information that can jump-start their humanitarian efforts."
Information shared in the database will continue to grow as organizations provide aid to areas and then update the database through what Gilbert calls a "Wiki" process. Once an organization has given a particular kind of aid to an area, they can update the One Response website with a quick blurb describing exactly what aid they provided and where.
Despite the massive influx of data created by the 2BCT paratroopers and the Fusion Project team, the process continues every day and the database builds upon itself. "We'll continue to update this data until about 20 minutes before I get on a plane to go home," Gilbert said.
| Date Taken: | 03.03.2010 |
| Date Posted: | 03.03.2010 16:30 |
| Story ID: | 46109 |
| Location: | PORT-AU-PRINCE, HT |
| Web Views: | 223 |
| Downloads: | 211 |
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