Indian Ocean Disaster Relief Portal (Tsunamihelp)

The Tsunamihelp website is an example of the use of information and communication technology (ICT) to enable voluntary, participatory citizen journalist reporting in a time of emergency. The specific type of technology being used is Wiki, which is a website (or other hypertext documents collection) allowing users to add or edit content freely. "Wiki" also refers to the collaborative software used to create such a website. Wikinews' mission is "to create a diverse community where anyone can independently report the news on a wide variety of current events." (Click here to read more about the history of the development of this technology, and its strategic elements.) One implication of this communal approach to information sharing and shaping is that, as a note on Tsunamihelp indicates, "Information provided here is often not verified by others, and scams involving donations are a problem in general. Please use the information carefully and at your own risk."

Tsunamihelp is an effort to help victims of the tsunami by providing information. It provides factual information about the disaster itself, such as ground zero information, helpline numbers, online and telephone resources for identifying the missing and found, and confirmed deaths by country (sourced to various news articles). Links to other media through which the impact of the disaster is being communicated - photo, video, and satellite image galleries, for instance - are also provided here. Specific tools for support and relief include links to aid agencies, fundraising events, relief maps, and health and safety information resources (e.g., how to handle a dead body and where to seek out post-traumatic stress prevention groups and tools). The idea is to give people the tools to find the help they need.

Emergency.

SEA-EAT, whose members are participating in the Tsunamihelp project, was set up by blogger and writer Peter Griffin just hours after news of the disaster reached him. Two fellow bloggers, Rohit Gupta and Dina Mehta, also in Mumbai (India), helped him put the information in place. Gupta says that in just 48 hours, the SEA-EAT blog had over 200 volunteer bloggers posting from the affected regions as well as from around the globe. "It was a smart mob organising a humanitarian response," he explained. A team of translators is working to make the blog - which includes the latest regional news, a missing persons page that makes use of a free, blog-like photo-sharing tool, and links to relief efforts - available in Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish.

To read some personal stories of how Tsunamihelp has impacted the lives of the tsunami's victims, click here.