Hurricane Hackers – A New Way to Help, or Be Helped

“Hola! Welcome to #HurricaneHackers: a shared space for gathering information and organizing tech+social projects related to Hurricane Sandy.”

“Dear Civic Media fans —

If you’re in a safe, powered, Internet’d place, here’s a great opportunity to contribute to realtime and future work around Hurricane Sandy…

http://bit.ly/hurricanehackers-gdoc

Civic’s “Hurricane Hackers” is collecting ideas and datasets to create tools related to the storm…and already building tools with them. Everything is welcome. Well-developed projects already include a dynamic timeline, a map of livestreams, and an incredible set of hurricane-related resources — both historical and for Sandy.” (from their introductory email)

This pop-up site may become a very useful tool in the next 24-72 hours. It’s a contributory document, a group collaboration to gather relevant links and guidance. The organization behind the project is the Center for Civic Media at the MIT Media Lab. Find it here.

It’s best explained by example. Below, some excerpts (1045AM eastern time on Monday):

—–

Project Brainstorming:

What might we make? Add your own idea, or +1 those you like.

Ways to help

• SandBag.it: a map of places that need sandbagging, and a way for people to sign up to help sandbag at particular locations.
• AfterSandy Benefit Parties: when Sandy’s over, have people hold house parties as benefits for people who lose something. Start organizing these early, while there’s lots of attention. Maybe just use MeetUp to do this.
• CrashPads? Matching people with spare rooms with people who need them?

Sandy Impacts

• Some kind of alert system?Include a livestream of school closings, road conditions/closings and power outages
  • VOIP Drupal?
  • Olly@civiccenter.cc in IRC sez: “I have a project that shares hurricane information via an automated phone system…We built a system that takes a feed of hurricane-related emergency response information, such as ice pack and water distribution locations, shelter updates, military ration information, and makes that feed available to as many people as possible through a phone number.”
• Doesn’t have to be pretty, just list a current area and closures.
• Include storm surge reports/flooding reports
• Key idea is to show transportation, power issues for people leaving or coming home after the storm.
• Should aggregate through social mediums.
• Damages counter? Just aggregate victims: confirmed deaths, injuries, dollar amounts?
• Grocery/food stores and gas stations that are closed/open?
  Resources:MapsSystem
  • Google CrisisLanding: http://google.org/crisismap/sandy-2012
  • Sar Weather Hi-Res: http://goo.gl/Hb8WD

  Wind

  • US (continental) wind map: http://hint.fm/wind/
  • Weather Underground tropical storm/Hurricane perimeter: http://goo.gl/W4MFs

  Water

  • NOAA regional floodmaps, w/ current status & future predictions based on tide and dong surge: http://water.weather.gov/ahps/index.php
  • Long Island / NYS storm surge maps: http://goo.gl/JQs0w
  • National Data Buoy Center data: http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/radial_search.php?storm=at3
  • Complete set of inundation maps for New England: http://goo.gl/IpzGv
  • Coastal Emergency Risk Assessment: http://nc-cera.renci.org/cgi-cera-nc/cera-nc.cgi

  Evacuation

  • NYC OSM evacuation maps: http://gis.nyc.gov/oem/he/map.htm; http://goo.gl/QSMRK
  • NYC Google evacuation map: http://google.org/crisismap/2012-sandy-nyc
  • NJ coastal evacuation maps: http://www.ready.nj.gov/plan/evacuation-routes.html
  • WNYC Evacuation Zones map: http://project.wnyc.org/news-maps/Hurricane-zones/Hurricane-zones.html
  • VA Shoreline evacuation guide: http://www.virginiadot.org/travel/hurricane_defauLT.asp
  • TrafficLand traffic cam national map: http://trafficland.com/mapnav.jsp

  
  Power
  

  • Long list of power outage maps, convering 50 states: http://vielmetti.typepad.com/vacuum/2011/06/power-outage-maps.html
  • Dominion Virginia Power
    • https://twitter.com/DomVAPower
    • https://www.dom.com/storm-center/dominion-electric-outage-map.jsp
  • Novec (Northern Virginia Power Cooperative):
    • https://twitter.com/NOVEC
    • Outage Map: http://stormcenter.novec.com/index.cfm
  • DC/MD Power:
    • https://twitter.com/PepcoConnect
    • Outage Map: http://www.pepco.com/home/emergency/maps/stormcenter/
  • Con Edison PowerNational Grid (New England): https://www1.nationalgridus.com/OutageCentral-MA-RES
    • Outage Map :  http://apps.coned.com/stormcenter_external/default.html
    • Report/Check Outage : https://apps2.coned.com/csol/reportoutage.asp
  • NStar (Greater Boston): http://outagemap.nstar.com/outage/OutageMap.aspx
  • Delmarva Power (Eastern Shore DE/MD/VA)Outage Map Virginia Areas
    • http://www.delmarva.com/home/emergency/maps/stormcenter/

  http://outagemap.dom.com/DomComFlexOutageViewer/index.html

   

Apologies for the sometimes-ugly formatting. Cut-and-paste is not always perfect.

More later. Be safe.