High-tech goes into action in disaster zone

Managing the information
Across the country, groups of computer programmers are also feeling as if they're making a difference, even though they may be hundreds or thousands of miles away from the devastation. Several efforts are drawing upon information technology experts spread out from North Carolina to California and Washington state.

One effort makes it possible for you to type in information about missing people, and have that information matched up with multiple databases of Katrina survivors. The online "Missing Persons Center" is being provided by the San Diego Supercomputer Center, AudienceCentral and the National Institute for Urban Search and Rescue.

"With the ability to tie all the database together, through XML and other new technologies, this seems like an advancement that's really going to help in situations like this," said Geoffrey Baron, who works in customer support at AudienceCentral, based in Bellingham, Wash. "The big danger is running multiple databases, and having isolated databases where people are just left in limbo."

The San Diego Supercomputer Center also is involved in an even more ambitious meta-search project called KatrinaSafe.com, which is being put together with assistance from the Red Cross and a variety of corporate sponsors (including Microsoft, a partner in the MSNBC joint venture).

Greg Lund, a spokesman for the center, noted that various organizations are offering at least 30 "safe lists" for survivors and their family members. "Each list is a little bit different, so the challenge is to make enough data points to accurately take the best of all those lists," he told MSNBC.com.

Matching up survivors and resources
Other projects focus on taking satellite imagery of the disaster zone and overlaying virtual "pushpins" that mark the location and the needs of survivors on the scene, in real time. Such a system was spearheaded by North Carolina-based Autonomechs and the search-and-rescue institute.

In the first days after the disaster, the U.S. Coast Guard used the satellite overlay system to target its rescue missions. A follow-up project is now being planned at the San Diego Supercomputer Center with assistance from San Diego State University's Immersive Visualization Center.

Autonomechs' Tim Murphy told MSNBC.com that he'd like to see such mapping interfaces used to put survivors directly in touch with resources. To that end, he's trying to arrange donations of satellite-based Internet terminals that could be sent to the disaster zone for use by the various relief agencies as well as by survivors.

"We need some way of being able to get resources that people are more than happy to offer up out to the field faster," Murphy said. "The Internet, which is obviously built by the community that uses it, has the capability of offering so many resources that FEMA currently doesn't have the capability to keep track of."

Murphy pointed to the eBay auction site as an example of what he was talking about.

"You have people who have stuff, and you have people who want stuff, and they're able to meet online," he observed. "There's no reason why we shouldn't be able to do that."

MORE FROM SCIENCE

Science Section Front

Pick the weirdest wonders   Dark matter discovery made in Minnesota? Snowflakes on Christmas cards drawn wrong Why bees always have a safe landing Ancient tree (almost) older than dirt Ancient Mayans likely had fountains and toilets How one odd duck says 'no' to sex Cosmic Log: Decades of future science Santa Claus: The real man behind the myth First Jesus-era house found in Nazareth Science Section Front   Add Science headlines to your news reader: