From Random Hacks of Kindness
[edit] Problem Definition
[edit] Introduction
MadPub stands for Mobile Assessment of Damage for the Public
The goal of this project is to build an application that streamlines the process of reporting and assessing the amount of damage in the occurrence of a natural disaster in the United States. Beta testing will be for the State of Washington.
In the event of a disaster, each county has a 72 hour window to report a dollar estimate of damage to the state and federal government in order meet the threshold for a federal declaration. The current system for assessing and reporting damage has many inefficiencies, requiring government personnel from each county to manually fill out a form after talking on the phone with the person reporting the damage. There are many variations of the same fields in different forms. During times of disaster it is challenging to collect this information with increased accuracy, reduction of duplicative work and an integrated way for the 3,143 counties in the United States to compile data.
At the same time this application will greatly enhance the power of new technological tools available. Such as:
- the ability to auto map an address & satellite photo
- check FMV from tax values
- auto calculate values for accurate reporting
- and more
To solve this, we are building a system that allows businesses and individuals to report damage on a variety of platforms including: a phone tree managed with Tropo, a web form, and Android and iPhone apps.
[edit] Owners
- Willow of Jigsaw Renaissance can field most questions, then seek out Pascal of CrisisCampSEA (CrisisCommons)
- The Team did the work, but these are your contacts for further revisions and desires to help. Thank you, Team! <3
[edit] The RHoK2 Seattle Team
[edit] User Case / Scenario
[edit] Old method:
business/home owner calls into a phone line to report their damage to a teleoperator, who fills out a form from the phone conversation.
- home/business owner: “oh noes! my house/business has been flooded! I better call someone!”
- county: “we have to have all reports within 72 hours to know if we can get federal aid or not. But we have to employ all these people to take calls!”
- county volunteers: *ring ring* “omg, so many phone calls” *fills out form* *travels around taking pictures*
[edit] New method
(that we just built): owner/renter/business owner can call in, use a web app, or use an android or iphone based application to answer their own damn questions and take pictures
- home/business owner: “oh noes! my house/business has been set on fire by whales! Good thing I can take charge of my own life and fill out this handy dandy form which might ensure I gain back its value! I can even take pictures of the damage and it will geotag it for me! If I don’t have a smart phone, I can easily use the phone-tree with voice recognition!”
- County: “holy crap, we have all this sorted and usable data on a reasonable timeline!”
- County volunteers: "I can now go help with rebuilding and feeding people instead of answering phones! Hooray!”
[edit] Everyone wins.
[edit] Description and Constraints
- Must involve less time and effort than the current system of people calling in to a phone line and answering questions to someone filling the form for them
- Sometimes there is no signal, should be able to enter and store data in the absence of a cellular signal
- Information must be on a secured government server
[edit] Extra Credit
- All smart phone, web, and voice applications work in time for next city disaster.
- Same API can extend to all counties in the state (WA)
- Even more amazing, interfaces and API can be easily adapted to any county in the US
[edit] Similar projects and Resources
Current system is no fun.
[edit] What next and Sustainability
work to be done remotely via #rhokseattle in the upcoming week
- revise data structure
- provide schema
- add method on controller to pass data into sets
- iPhone needs API published, sync to latest authorized list
- county view/reporting
- focus of damage etc as secondary nicety
- Droid app needs to check against git, URL to post to website
- Voice needs completed phone tree, but operational; to connect to server
- server is having bugs worked out
[edit] Current Status
- Setting a drupal site up at beta.madpub.org
- needs PHP enabled, sites/default/files directory, and ./sites/default/default.settings.php to be changed to ./sites/default/settings.php
- module form needs be checked
- JSON conversion
- link to Sahana database
- test
[edit] Phone - Tropo.com
We are building an automated voice system using Tropo, so those without internet access on their phones can easily report damage through the form via voice-recognition and phone trees. First option will offer overview of questions, so people know what they will need to know.
- rest of questions need to be included (API spreadsheet)
- link
- test
[edit] iPhone and Android
- Because when disaster strikes, network towers sometimes go down, it’s important that users be able to quickly queue up data while in the disaster area and be able to upload later (within the 72-hour window set for by gov). To this end, if the user has taken time to download the application directly to their phone, they will be able to enter and store data until they return to an area with coverage.
- This is smart, how do we inform users about the service before disaster strikes?
- In the case of a forecast-able disaster, it can be included in emergency broadcast system protocol. Would require gov bureaucrats to be in the know.
- include any missing fields (API spreadsheet)
- link
- test
[edit] Documentation
The MADPub API allows developers to build applications to post damage reports to our database.
The dataset will be easily sortable by type, date, county, etc. Because all of these inputs are backed with the same API, it is easy to alter necessary information based on county- and state-specific needs. This system can thereby be easily implemented beyond King County and Washington State to the rest of the nation.
[edit] See Also