Group Blog- Project SOS

Introduction

Recent years have witnessed more nature disasters, especially the earthquake. Let us just to name a few: the 2007 M 8.5 Bengkulu, Indonesia earthquake; the 2010 M 8.8 Maule, Chile earthquakes; and the 2011 M 9.0 Tohoku-oki, Japan earthquake. For China, people’s memory is still fresh with the 2008 M 7.9 WenChuan earthquake and the recent 2013 M 7 Ya’an and LuShan earthquakes.

Natural disaster rescue has proven to be complicated and demanding since every minute counts and it is people’s lives that are at stake. Using the recent earthquake in Ya An, Si Chuan China that happened on 8:02 a.m 20^th April as an example, there are many elements in the rescue process: Water, Food, Shelter, Army, Police, Volunteers, Charities, Government, Hospitals, First Aids, Medicines, Infrastructure, Transportation etc. Some of the elements are also interdependent, which add more complexity to the overall rescue process.

It is very challenging to get all the rescue elements right and timely. There have always been news reports on the shortage of food, shelters, rescue teams etc.  Just as the 2010 M 8.8 Chile earthquake, on the day of happening 27th Feb 2010, Chilean President claimed that there was no need for external help. But 3 days later, looting broke out as thousands of residents in south-central Chile remained without food, water, electricity, gas and other basic services. This posed a valid challenge on how to manage the rescue process better.

TEAM TIE and TEAM HARMONY thus formed a virtual organization, Virtual Rescue Organization, to tackle this challenge and aimed to achieve real time rescue demand notification and co-ordination (Team TIE) and real time supply match, real time logistics commitment and real time rescue update (TEAM HARMONY).

Positioning: Technology, especially virtual organization, should be integrated into the physical rescue process to save time and LIFE.

Concept: Through the virtual organization, natural disaster’s rescue demand would be able to match with supply and execution flawlessly and timely. Virtual dashboard would serve as the platform to enable the co-ordination of the various organizations virtually.

People: There are three categories of people involved: (1) The committee in charge – Incident Commanding Committee, (2) The members – corporates, organizations and charities and (3) The broader Audience – the public.

(1). Incident Commanding Committee would be the team in charge of the rescue. It would adopt the common incident commanding system but would be simplified with only four representatives in total from government, charity, logistic specialist and IT specialist. Team Now would have more on their blogs.

(2). Its members would include broader agents such as: army head, police head, fire service department head, companies that registered or interested in donating across the world, logistics companies, hospitals, Medicines Sans Frontiers, Red Cross, other charities and volunteers groups. They are the participants, either donators or commercial service providers.

(3). General Public would also have access to the dashboard with read access except the donation part. They can get the real time update on the rescue process without searching various reports or following up on various TV channels.

Operating System – the Virtual Dashboard

Virtual rescue dashboard is set up by IT specialist to co-ordinate the communication and information exchange between commanding team and its members. The Chief Commander has the ultimate right over the virtual dashboard and is in charge of the information flow and update. While members have read, write and edit access to the virtual dashboard to either donate or bid for the rescue activities. With the virtual dashboard served as a bridge between participants, information flow is now real time and transparent.

The Process

 

 

The effective process on execute fundamental materials to affected area is crucial.  As such materials are critical to people who are in need and for survival purpose; for example, food, water, medication, rescue team, daily living supplies, etc. To illustrate this, a hypnosis of Maolin Taiwan earthquake was used to explain the process flow on (1) demand, (2) supply, (3) logistics and (4) execution.

(1) Demand. Team NOW would input and share the REAL TIME data on resources needed in each affected area through the Virtual Dashboard. The real time data would be gathered from government officers, rescue teams and volunteers of Red Cross, World Vision, local hospitals, Medicines Sans Frontiers, etc.  

(2) Supply. All concerned suppliers will be based on the dashboard data to donate or contribute concerned materials by updating the Virtual Dashboard. For example, on water supply that a few soft drink companies would like to donate the water and they updated their donation on the virtual dashboard while indicating where the concerned goods are located. Also such activity can be classified as either charity or non-charity to gain different publicity for the corporates involved. The system will be constantly highlighting the gap to get more attention to solve water shortage faster.

Dashboard is also open to resources that are not listed.  For example, Company ABC is a cookie manufacturer who would like to donate power bar to Maolin. They will indicate on total number of power bar that they will donate into the system.  And the Chief Commander can review the donation and approve it to be listed up to the dashboard. This would offer flexibility to companies who would like to participate and contribute. Once that is posted on the Virtual Dashboard, it is now at the hand of the logistic company to arrange delivery.

 

(3) Logistics. Then the logistic company members will log in and sign up for the delivery, either as

charity work or as a commercial activity. Same as the suppliers, each logistic company name will be showing in the system of virtual dashboard once got confirmed either as donator or commercial service provider.

Let us use the above power bar donation as an example. Logistics Company DEF will make arrangement for such power bar delivery together with other mentioned materials, if any, by fastest way to ship to Tai Wan International Airport or Air Force Base for consolidation. Once arrived at the airport or air force base, local logistic companies will work with the army and rescue teams to transfer those materials to Maolin.

 

 (4) Execution.  With the resources delivered, the rescue team together with the armies and police help, set for the rescue. They would then update any additional resource needed with the process of rescue as well as provide real time feedback to the incident commanding committees on the number of people rescued, sent to hospitals etc.  

Benefits of the Virtual Organization

The virtual platform has many benefits which we would like to discuss in this section.

Benefit #1: Information Symmetry

Utilizing the virtual platform allows information to be shared all at the time and concurrently.

Just as the class exercise we did that the group of demand forecast team and the group of supply providing team, without communicating, were coming up with set of resources unmatched between demand and supply. This is harmful in an emergency situation.

Like earthquake, everyone needs to source from the same platform using the same source of information to communicate and collaborate to avoid mismatch and confusion. This is a critical condition under which all relevant information is known to all parties involved simultaneously. It is the opposite of information asymmetry. Read more: http://www.investorwords.com /2463/information _symmetry. html#ixzz 2S8X JdWcU

Benefit #2: Shorten the delivery timeline, increase speed to market

Shortening the delivery time is vital to save time and save LIFE! Because of the efficiency of having transparent view at real time on a virtual platform, needs are being responded immediately and thus save time and save more lives!

enefits #3: Fast Track Results

Imagine what would earthquake disaster be like without real time communication? A disaster! Everyone will not be able to get in touch with the needs real time and no one will be able to know what is still needed. People may still be providing the same things but with wrong match to each affected area and thus delay the rescue process. With the progress of rescue, if no further real time feedback to the incident commanding committee, necessary items might still be lacking in the for rescue. With a virtual platform, the way to get results is on a better and faster track. Lives are saved. And time is used efficiently.

Last Benefit: Encourage contribution

In previous donations made to disaster recoveries, there is no proper tracking and transparency to usage or utilization. And donors rely on the media to reach to the public on their donations. But with the virtual platform, it becomes transparent how things are donated, moved, utilized or exhausted. And every contribution is applauded and broadcasted.

This makes the contributors feel a sense of appreciation, encourages more participation and engages more donors, or contributors into the picture as help is being rallied over the platform. The system which allows tracking and inventorying creates a good track record for follow up and does prevent corruption in the event of collection and donation made.

Conclusions

 

To conclude, the virtual rescue organization serves as a virtual platform to help rescue demand and supply match real time for delivery and execution. Such timely optimization of the rescue process and information gathering and update provide benefits that traditional rescue process would not achieve and thus save more time and LIFE.

While that was the main objective of the Virtual Rescue Organization, the project has also successfully establish itself as an appreciation platform for companies, especially those donors, would gain free publicity on their corporate social responsibility. This live, free and high hit rate PR would thus generate more participants in rescue and save more LIVES.

In any of crisis management, especially dealing with natural disaster, contingency plan is critical. Just as the cases of the supply match that when no corporates signed up for the water delivery, the chief commander will launch the contingency plan to approach commercial bidders. Such contingency concept is crucial throughout the process as well as on the key personnel backing up. And TEAM HARMONY learned it the real way when coming up with the above project.

The journey of learning continues. Please do share with us your insights and comments!

 

Reference

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