One of my biggest frustrations during a storm is when the power goes out. I sit by my battery operated radio listening to regional and national weather related news. But I never know what is happening down the road. A product named
MarkerFlare is taking aim at this very issue and not soon enough. As a sidebar, the U.S. has over 325 Million mobile phones in use. Globally there are over 6 billion mobile phones in use. Think about how this solution might have helped before the Japanese tsunami of 2011, where 95% of the population had mobile phones.
"MarkerFlare is an information publishing web app for emergencies. It was designed to be a better way to share information after Hurricane Irene and the Halloween blizzard resulted in massive communication disruptions last year. Town governments, utilities, and public services groups were told they failed miserably in communicating emergency response information and left citizens wondering what to do."
"Using any device they can get their hands on, officials can build, on the fly, public-access, local-information-only hubs if there is an emergency. MarkerFlare automatically notifies every registered user in town that the hub is active by text, email, and online posting. Because it's not a data hog it works even if infrastructure becomes degraded (two shaky bars on a smartphone). The big thing though, is its automatic information routing mechanism. Administrators can force a sign-off list that guarantees every submission goes through an approval process. Nothing gets posted until all sign-offs are complete (there's an override capability). This is a crucial part of emergency information management and unheard of in social media."
"The same mechanism also makes it possible for officials to let private citizens contribute information to the data stream and allows integration of a unique language translation approach. More and better information collection and distribution to ALL citizens, not just the ones who speak English."
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