Harvard Designs Earthquake Portal

With up-to-date geographic data on Haiti after the devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010 scattered around different Web sites and agencies, relief workers in Haiti may find themselves with a headache when trying to find a central Web site containing comprehensive geographic information.

For that purpose, Harvard computer experts designed the Haiti Earthquake Data Portal, a

Web site that contains thirty-five processed datasets and fourteen links to various online maps, gathered from a variety of sources ranging from declassified legacy military materials to data of university researchers across the nation.

“The data was looking for a home, you know, and I was out pushing everybody’s button saying, this is a place where I want to host the data,” said Merrick L. Berman, research manager for the Center for Geographic Analysis and designer of the online portal.

Within ten minutes a researcher can have a working Geographic Information System environment with data downloaded from the Web site, Berman explained, but it takes hours or days to try to figure out which search result from Google to use.

In order to get the data, Berman had to coordinate various efforts from different agencies. The most amazing thing about creating this portal, Berman said, was to talk to those agencies and individuals of similar minds and to see them come together in this concerted effort to aid Haiti.

However, Mikael Schinazi ‘12, who went to Haiti before the earthquake in December 2009 with a Boston-based NGO, presented an alternative viewpoint.

Schinazi said that the real problem at Haiti is the lack of infrastructure instead of the lack of geographic data.

“I don’t really see why we would need such a Web site if you were in Haiti,” Schinazi said, based on his own experience.

According to Schinazi, there was only one route at the place he worked so that a street map was not necessary. In addition, their Haitian driver knew the place very well and stayed with them all the time, and he could always ask local people for direction along the road.

Moreover, Schinazi said that he learnt from a United Nations worker that the UN headquarters supported the ground effort by giving the UN workers data from satellites.