How Haiti's 2010 Earthquake Changed Crisis Information Work

Internews, the CDAC network, and the Knight Foundation released Media, Information Systems and Communities: Lessons from Haiti in January 2011 to assess communication tools used in relief after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake. It found that technology and volunteer networks had become more useful to aid agencies, but coordination, information sharing, and evidence still needed work.

Anne Nelson and Ivan Sigal wrote it with Dean Zambrano.

A severe communications crisis

A magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, 2010. More than 230,000 people died, and two million people from a national population of nine million lost their homes.

The earthquake also severely damaged communications systems. Digicel lost roughly 70 percent of its towers, creating major limits on phone communication when affected communities and relief teams needed information.

The report described Haiti as an important change in crisis response. Technology had demonstrated its usefulness at a higher level, volunteer activity had become more organized, and established humanitarian organizations had become more willing to work with both new tools and the people using them.

At the same time, the authors did not present Haiti as a complete model for later emergencies. They described it as a chance to learn from a major response under difficult conditions.

Text messages and mapping

Digicel made the 4636 short code free for the public after the earthquake. Work on the service began on January 13, one day after the earthquake, and messages started arriving about three days later.

Haiti’s second-largest telecommunications company, Voila, later added short code 200. These services gave people a way to send information despite damage to much of the communications network.

Haitians living outside the country helped translate incoming messages and place their details on maps. That information reached the US Coast Guard and other teams working at the front line of the response.

Volunteers at Tufts University operated an Ushahidi crisis map using messages sent through 4636. Ushahidi had been created in Kenya to map violence following the 2007 election, and the Haiti response showed how it could be used with emergency text messages.

Thomson Reuters Foundation also used 4636 for public health messages. It sent those messages to about 26,000 subscribers.

Mayur Patel, the Knight Foundation’s director of strategic assessment, said digital tools could strengthen relief work when responders coordinated effectively on the ground.

Radio served the public

The report identified radio as the strongest tool for reaching the public. It identified restoring radio broadcasting as the first priority for media recovery.

This conclusion placed radio alongside text messaging and mapping rather than treating older and newer media as competing systems. Digital tools could collect and direct information, while radio could serve a broad public audience.

The report’s observations emphasized that communication needs were not limited to relief agencies. People affected by the earthquake also needed useful public information, and radio was judged the most effective means for providing it.

The authors found many practical uses for digital media in an emergency, especially through text messages. But they also found that familiar media remained essential after a communications disaster.

Volunteers and aid agencies

The report identified three broad findings about humanitarian organizations and technology volunteers. Traditional aid groups were often willing to try technology, but they were uneasy about crowdsourcing because it involved sharing information and power.

It also found that joint humanitarian communities had developed many useful uses for digital media during crises. Text messaging was especially prominent among those uses.

Technology volunteers had started to see their activity as an emerging field of practice. They recognized that their work needed to connect with humanitarian codes of conduct, shared principles, and regular opportunities to exchange effective methods.

The report named CDAC and Crisis Mappers events as examples of forums for sharing practice. Humanitarian agencies, meanwhile, had come to recognize the value of informal responders and planned to involve them in planning and simulations.

The report was partly informed by a CDAC roundtable in Miami on May 24, 2010, supported by the Knight Foundation. Those attending represented Internews, BBC World Service Trust, Thomson Reuters Foundation, InSTEDD, Ushahidi, Microsoft, OCHA, and Haitian journalists’ and independent media associations.

The report also said aid organizations needed to include learning in program design. Many accounts of crisis technology existed, but there was limited data showing which approaches worked.