I did some research into building a database for missing people a while back. The first thing that I learned was that there is very little information on missing persons databases in the literature. I also discovered that building the database is probably the simplest part of the information system. Often the human processes required to make such a system work effectively requires significant effort.
One article in the December 2001 issue of "Communications of the ACM" was written by a fellow who set up a missing persons database in the aftermath of 9/11. He reported the following recommendations: Be aware of the magnitude of the undertaking. Provide every opportunity to make information accurate. Manage the level of trust in information. Any public service will be abused. Do not expect that instructions will be followed. Plan ahead for user support. Establish a central information hub ahead of time. The article describes the challenges faced by the volunteer team managing the database made up of several thousand names. The current disaster is on a magnitude several times greater with news media pushing the numbers higher each day (currently 80,000 dead and tens of thousands missing). The areas affected are vast and multi-lingual which adds additional complexities. Other sources of information showed that there is quite a lot of work to be done correlating data from missing person databases to other databases such as DNA, dental, and unidentified human remains databases. I feel that database systems are absolutely required to sift through the sheer number of missing and dead people. The question is: who should be doing it? Building such a database would take a day or two; maintaining such an information system would require months of work even for one area of one affected country. It would seem to me that this is work that should be done by disaster relief agencies who can provide people on the ground for the duration of the effort to groom the data. Any such agency worth its salt probably has an in-house information system with first responders trained to use it. I would be interested to know, has there have been any calls by the International Red Cross or regional Red Crescent agencies asking for volunteer technical support? Reference: Yee, Ka-Ping. 2001. Operating an Emergency Information Service. Communications of the ACM. Association for Computing Machinery. Available at: http://zesty.ca/pubs/cacm-dec-2001-oeis.pdf Kelvin Wong -----Original Message----- Subject: Re: [DDN] a DDN community on ICTs and disaster relief? what is required is a web database system for entering and searching on lost and found people. _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
