Webcast on Disaster Relief and Emergency Preparedness (Role of the Internet and New Media in Tsunami Relief Efforts)

I attended a webcast on Disaster Relief and Emergency Preparedness series - 'Role of the Internet and New Media in Tsunami Relief Efforts'. The archive of the webcast is available here - DDN Archives.

There were a couple of interesting points I gathered:

a). An overwhelming enthusiasm and support of the role of 'weblogs' (including RSS Feeds). This is something that we already have in our Groove spaces (under News Feeds).

b). A commencement of an open-source project 'Sahana' (Disaster Management system). I have posted a comment in the public discussion forum for the need to have a web services interfaces (to connect to GWS) and citing our Groove spaces that are being used for the Tsunami relief efforts. A web services interface will (hopefully) permit integration of disparate systems with similar goals of end-users.

c). There is another open-source project 'AsiaQuake.org' that is similar to the above 'Sahana'. To this effort, I would also like to state that is should have a web services interfaces.

d). There was not much mention about specific sites/technology that catered to the Medical relief efforts. Our 'Virtual Medical Village' (VMV) project that uses Groove+SharePoint (Groove Mobile spaces) is unique by offering non-Groove users (using only a web browser) to participate with Groove users via the SharePoint site.

e). What was seriously lacking in the webcast (and the above two associated open-source projects) is the critical need of 'security' - the type Groove excels in. A disaster may be a natural one or a man-made one.