Team: Boulder72

Based off sf72, a Disaster Preparation resource for San Francisco which highlights the importance of being prepared to be self-sufficient in the 72 hours following a disaster

Members:

  • Robert Soden - robert.soden@colorado.edu
  • Sayani Ghosh -sayani.ghosh@colorado.edu
  • Kevin Stowe - kest1439@colorado.edu
  • Jennings Anderson - jennings.anderson@colorado.edu
  • Kyu Han Koh - kohkh@colorado.edu Auditing Team Member

Updated Project pitch

Despite widespread recognition that simple preparedness measures can save lives and help people weather major disasters, few people follow disaster preparedness steps put out by the CDC, the American Red Cross, and other organizations. At the same time, when disasters strike, responding agencies struggle to communicate effectively to affected individuals. Boulder recently underwent major flooding events and is currently looking at longer term strategies to increase the resilience of the city to future events. Our project will be a simple smartphone app that will seek to capitalize on the attention disasters are currently receiving by building a tool that 1: lets users enter simple information about their address, household size and composition, and other relevant information and receive basic guidelines on how best to prepare themselves and their families for emergencies; 2: receive news and alerts from the Boulder Office of Emergency Management during times of crisis; and 3: Send basic communications to friends and family expressing their situation or needs during emergencies. We hypothesize that by capitalizing on people’s current interest in disasters and desire to stay informed during emergencies, they will be willing to download the app. Once installed, the tool can be used to encourage them to follow basic precautions to prepare for the next disaster.

Management/communication plan.

For sharing electronic files, we have a shared Google Drive. We plan to meet regularly once a week: After class on Tuesdays in September and TBD for October and November (personal schedule availability subject to change). Decision-making will be via consensus. Serious disputes will be settled with a game of Settlers of Catan.

Competitive analysis

  1. SF72.org - SF72.org is a disaster preparedness website created by the City of San Francisco. It provides citizens with resources and information on what materials to gather and plans to make so they will be ready to take care of their basic needs for the first 72 hours following a major event. The website is nicely designed and the information is communicated clearly. Interestingly, they have also open-sourced the architecture of the site and provide guidance on how to set up similar initiatives in other cities. We think it could be interesting to explore this idea further with the Boulder City Government but it will not be the main focus of our project. sf72.org

  2. FEMA Mobile App - This app provides basic checklists on emergency preparedness as well as maps of emergency shelters and disaster response centers in the user’s area. It also has a disaster reporter feature that allows users to upload photos or otherwise provide situational awareness to a main hub accessible to both FEMA as well as the public. http://www.fema.gov/mobile-app Personal Emergency Preparedness Plan is a Facebook application developed by Lockheed Martin for disaster preparedness. “PEPP is designed to help invididuals become prepared by allowing users to identify three “lifelines” to provide support during an emergency, to facilitate communication between friends and family during emergency situations, to provide a platform for collecting geographical information, pictures, and video, along with any other data that will help first response manager a crisis.” Their focus also seems to be on during and post-disaster efforts, and linking the public with emergency responders. However, users can create a personal plan and send it to their lifelines. Link

  3. Sahana - Disaster Management System in Sri Lanka, developed for Tsunami relief. This research is designed to provide information to those affected by disasters, but only after the fact. Functionality includes identifying shelter locations, reporting missing people, and coordinating volunteer relief. These are useful components that may be implemented into an application that covers both pre- and post-disaster information. Link There is extensive disaster preparedness information on the website

  4. www.ready.gov, which is a FEMA backed govnernment PSA. This information is expansive and designed for a wide audience. This information can be used a baseline for disaster preparedness, but isn’t implemented in a way that is easily usable and accessible from mobile devices, which would be the benefit of developing a mobile application that could reference the wealth of information there.

Research Questions and Plan

Historical Relevance (Oriented towards last year’s flood)

  1. Tell me about your most-impacted moment during last year’s flood?
  2. Were you following some website/other sources to keep yourself updated during the emergency situation? If so, Which ones?
  3. What were the best and worst aspects about your information sources during the flood?
  4. How did you maintain contact with your friends/family during the event?
  5. Which specific DOs and DO NOTs were you aware of during the flood?

Preparedness

  1. How are you currently prepared for a disaster event?
  2. How are those in your social circle prepared for a disaster event?
  3. How aware are you of current disaster events in general? (Worldwide)

Relevant to the App itself

  1. What are your least favorite aspects of your communication device (smart phone or computer in terms of information sharing/consumption)
  2. Favorite aspects?
  3. Do you think an app which keeps track of your preparedness will be helpful? Would you use it? Research plan. How will you answer your research questions? How will you find potential users? Sketch out some ideas here about you can recruit research participants and learn about them. (1-2 paragraph)

Potential users

  • Residents who were here and affected during last years flood.
  • Residents who have dealt with the 2010 and 2012 forest fires.

Since our app is targeted towards Boulder residents, we want to reach out to as many different types of Boulder residents who could be interested in the project as possible. The following list separates users not by how great or how little they were impacted by the flood, but rather by different concerns they may have during a flood.

  1. Boulder home-renters
    • A resident who does not own a home will rightfully be more concerned about the flood impact on their belongings and themselves, not concerned as much about the edifice in which they reside.
  2. Boulder home-owners
    • A resident who owns their home will be taking extra measures to ensure the safety of their investment in addition to their personal belongings and self.
  3. Boulder business or multiple dwelling owner
    • A business owner or resident who owns multiple homes is going to have additional worries beyond their personal living space. They will need to ensure that these locations are prepared for a flood as well and will be seeking information regarding these other locations during the flood.
  4. Residents responsible for the safety others
    • People who are responsible for the wellbeing of others such as on-campus authorities, care-providers, and other non-professional emergency responders.

As students, we probably have the most access to other students. Students will mostly all fall into the first category of Boulder home-renters, which will be the most populated group of users. As for homeowners, we will look within our immediate social circles to find home owners who are also avid technology users and may be interested in assisting with the project.

As for business owners, this will take some investigation into businesses that were most impacted by the flood and see if they owners would be interested in partaking in the study.

Users within the final category could also be sampled from campus staff and officials, as they were responsible for the wellbeing of many students that had to evacuate dormitories during last year’s flood.

Participation summary

Overall a pretty solid team effort with a lot of discussion about each of the sections. Jennings built the website and worked on the research questions and plan. Sayani worked on the research questions and plan. Robert and Kevin focused primarily on the competition research. Most of the collaboration was done real-time over Google docs or in person so there was much consensus and discussion during the process.