Two fellows in the Presidential Innovation Fellows program are using technology and crowdsourcing to make disaster response faster and more efficient, according to a recent article from Federal News Radio.
· Lantern is a new a mobile application which provides information about power outages and functioning gas stations.
It has set up a partnership with the Weather Channel and Weather.com to broadcast three Twitter hashtags during a natural disaster: #PowerLineDown, #GotFuel and #NoFuel. The data from Twitter will be pulled and filtered into the Lantern app.
· GeoQ quickly pulls in images of damaged areas for first responders and emergency personnel, using images from the Civil Air Patrol, as well as photos posted on social media sites.
“The thought is to pull in feeds from Twitter, Instagram and Flickr, because a lot of those images are going to come in faster than an airline pilot can fly over a damaged area”.