Haiti Case Study - The Department of Global Health and Social ...

awareness (near real-time) requires a holistic approach between those providing data
(individual persons, NGOs, IOs, military, etc.) and those hosting the data (share point, cloud).
In order to support the development of a common operational picture, nations, multinational
organizations (UN, NATO, EU, etc.) and NGOs should agree on technical standards and
minimum requirements to facilitate acceptance of using one site and avoid duplication and
incapability issues.
83. To respond to this missing information sharing platform there have been some
initiatives to provide a common health picture such as Healthmap or One Response. There
are efforts underway by the security community to provide a comprehensive interactive
information sharing point, with the aim to facilitate humanitarian and security responders to
share complementary capabilities and to better use limited resources. This "Medical
Assistance and Collaboration Tool" was recently tested between security and humanitarian
community members and could be support future responses to disaster or humanitarian
crisis. Ideally, those efforts should be combined with inter-agency coordination mechanisms
between UN and non-UN (military), specifically the IASC Need Assessment Task Force and
Real Time Evaluation.
84. Of note, several experiments in using social media to track population movements,
communicate with crisis affected populations and detect diseases with epidemic potential
were trialed in Haiti, some with promising outcomes, as will be discussed further in the
narratives. 74 More traditional media platforms such as websites were also established but
were only modestly successful. Websites included the UN’s OneResponse, Relief Web and
US Department of Defense’s All Partners Access Network but all were underutilized because
of technical difficulties (lack of bandwidth and electricity) as well as a glut of posted
information of questionable operational value. The US State Department set up
Wehave/weneed.org to try to manage an unwieldy number of donations which also met
limited success. 75
85. Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies, social media and cell phone data
can improve the speed of disease surveillance. The dynamics in the technical field are of
particular interest for civilian and military epidemiologist. Cell phone tracking data showed
that it can allow an accurate disaster response planning at strategic level. Currently, there
are no formal and legal procedures release those data to crisis and disaster responders.
Additionally, all those new features come with concerns if those data of individuals and
populations are used for their benefit only. Our next case studies will address those concerns
in more detail.
Summary: Global Response to Haiti's Disasters
• Coordination mechanisms and institutional arrangements necessary to undertake a
disaster response of this size and magnitude remain underdeveloped and inefficient.
• The Haitian government lost significant assets—personnel, infrastructure,
communications, records and administrative systems—at a time when their citizens were
in the greatest peril and counting on them the most.
• The aid community, including the UN peacekeeping mission MINUSTAH, UN agencies, and
aid organizations were also severely affected by the earthquake and were unable to offer
robust support of the Haitian state.
• Nations responded principally by deploying military assets including logistics, security
escorts, rubble clearance, engineering services, and tertiary care, all of which contributed
significantly to the overall effort of the international community in responding to the
earthquake; the US was the largest bilateral responder.
• The coordination architecture of the whole response included the HLCC at the strategic
level, the CSC at the operational level, and the UN sector-based cluster system, initially
chaired by the Haitian government for a limited period and subsequently by OCHA, at the
tactical level.
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