Many minds - The value of the crowd in a disaster
At 1:30am on the first of April, 2010, an earthquake strikes Sydney. Buildings bend, people stagger and take cover, power fails.
In the moments after, the first message touches the network. It is soon joined by more, from those within the city and without.
As the messages flow onto twitter, a piece of software silently counts them as it has done all day, every day. Today is different, today the number creeps up and past a limit. As instructed, the software awakens another system. A disaster has occurred.
The system unfolds, deploying a set of web pages. Some contain nothing more than sensible advice for earthquakes, others contain emergency contact details specific to the location.
A subset are much more complex.
Using permission granted at some time in the past, the system dispatches messages into twitter via trusted accounts. Each slightly different but united in their message: "An earthquake has occurred. Your assistance is requested".
The first individual arrives. She is shown bare-bones information regarding the disaster and then presented with a button: Help.
She clicks the button and is presented with a simple screen. In one column, messages appear one by one. For each she can make a choice: is this message about damage? is it useful information? is it a request for or offer of help?
As she chooses, the system watches. More people arrive, and the system reaches the point where it is keeping pace with the messages coming in. Yet more, and it begins to send the same message to more than one person, checking that they agree on how it should be treated.
The system checks the history. Our volunteer has been conscientious, her selections almost always agree with others. It upgrades her to a new task.
Her screen changes. The messages on the left come much slower now, one at a time, each already filtered by her fellow volunters. On her right is a large map of Sydney. For each message she has a new task - find the location it refers to, selecting from one of the suggestions the system offers her, or pinpointing it on the map when they don't fit.
As new people arrive to take over filtering duties, the system upgrades other volunteers. Soon all the incoming messages are filtered and located by a crowd of individuals from around the world. Additional streams are brought online, SMS shortcodes are made available and some volunteers agree to transcribe TV, Radio and Video into messages for filtering.
Our volunteer is upgraded again. She is presented now with a small square block of Sydney, upon which all the buildings, water supplies, petrol stations and roads are marked. Messages come in slower once more, each filtered and located within her grid.
She takes these messages and attaches them to assets, changing the status of the asset according to the message, its reliability and consistency with what she has already seen.
Soon the crowd has grown sufficiently large that all of Sydney is covered in detail by volunteers. Specialist roles open up for those with local knowledge of the area or technical expertise, messages are passed back and forth and annotated, gaining additional reliability and accuracy.
By now, the Admin team who were notified when the system awoke have arrived and begin taking over larger roles.
They reach out to contacts in Government and Disaster response, granting them access to their own views of the system with different levels of trust. They reach out to critical providers of power, roading and telecommunications, granting them access to validate and correct data about their assets. They reach out to the media, giving them accurate, consistent information and a stream of tweets, links, photos and video.
As responders access the system, they receive detailed, reliable, up-to-date information in forms that match their needs. Those heading into the disaster zone grab printable maps and lists showing the information known to date. Those managing teams or logistics from the outside use mobile and computer interfaces with simple but powerful facilities to filter, search and visualise.
As our volunteer does her job, joined by hundreds of others from across the world, the fog and confusion lifts. Resources arrive where there is need, rescuers for the trapped, assistance for the hurt, comfort and support for the shocked and terrified. The homeless are matched with homes, the lost reunited.
On this day, 1/4/2010, the world no longer watched helplessly as disaster struck. On this day, the crowd stretched out across the Internet with hands, eyes, ears and minds and said "We are here to help."
