Can open data change the way citizens respond to disasters?

The News Lens
Date: 2018/01/23
By: Morley J Weston

In the wake of 9/11, the U.S. government began urging citizens, “if you see something,

Photo Credit: Reuters / 達志影像

say something,” but whatever got reported was shunted into the black box of national security, never to be seen again.

One startup called GeoThings is trying to bring about a new paradigm of disaster reporting in which anybody can report a problem and teams of volunteers can map it out for anybody to use or solve. GeoThings’ co-founder and CEO, the ironically named Slayer Chuang (莊國煜), told The News Lensthat he saw the potential to work on this problem several years ago when he heard about uncoordinated responses to disasters.

Taiwan, Chuang said, experiences all sorts of “complicated disasters” like typhoons and earthquakes, and the country is relatively well prepared.    [FULL  STORY]