iCare: A good idea for Humanitarian Coordination

After doing research about humanitarian coordination in Indonesia right after the 2004 Tsunami I learned how valuable it is to connect the needs of the people affected by disaster to the resources that are being offered. In that time I had what I thought would be a good idea: Why not creating an interactive system in which disaster donors and the people on the ground could connect? The idea is that the goods that are being delivered during the relief efforts would actually satisfy the needs of the individuals without what they call call in the humanitarian field duplication, or the ineffective delivery of relief supplies and services.

I thought that eventually my contribution to humanity would be implementing this idea in several years, but...Alas, this idea (like most ideas) was by no means exclusive, so it went also to the right brains. In this case right the brains were those of Anand Kulkarni and Ephrat Bitton. These two PhD students in the department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at UC Berkeley (USA) are developing this type of program which they have named iCare (http://icare.ieor.berkeley.edu/). For more details on this initiative see:

http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/labnotes/0607/icare.html

http://media.coe.berkeley.edu/CET_Community/index.php?title=Tech_07:_iCare:_Direct_Person-to-Person_Charity_for_Efficient_Disaster_Relief

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6756641.stm

Well, despite the fact that I wanted to run with this idea and develop it, in all honesty I am really happy that people with the resources and the talent would have come up with this type of initiative. I wish them the greatest success, and hopefully I will be able to contribute to iCare in the future.