[talk-au] Haitian Earthquake Emphasizes Danger of a Split Geo Community

[Jim Croft]

On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 10:19 AM,  <morb.gis at beagle.com.au> wrote:

> http://geosquan.blogspot.com/2010/01/haitian-earthquake-emphasizes-danger-of.html
including:
"For example, I watched Google, DigitalGlobe, and GeoEye all work
together to get stunning imagery collected, processed, and published
FREE to the international community to help a wide array of aid
workers and first responders within 24 hours.
I watched the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the US State
Department, and other government agencies get critical and informative
data and applications out the door and into the hands of people that
needed them within mere hours of the disaster - a far improvement from
the Katrina days!"

Now, wouldn't it have been much better if this highly commendable
public good action had been resolved and taken place *before* the
disaster struck so that first responders and people who needed it knew
it was there, knew where it was, knew its extent,  limitations and
reliability, and did not have to work out what they could or could not
do with it valuable hours after the event?

this is not to denigrate the actions, only to point out we can do even
better in making information and data available.

jim
-- 
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Jim Croft ~ jim.croft at gmail.com ~ +61-2-62509499 ~
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'A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point
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