The Data Was There. The Intelligence Wasn't.
It was late in the month of June, and as it has been happening for years now, I had this great desire to visit my hometown of Sevilla.
"What we need is an enthusiastic but calm state of mind and intense but orderly work."
- Mao Tse Tung
It was late in the month of June, and as it has been happening for years now, I had this great desire to visit my hometown of Sevilla (Valle del Cauca, Colombia) and see my friends and family. August normally holds the Festival Bandola, which not only presents some of the most exquisite music, but also serves as the extra-official meeting point for the out-of-town diaspora, so it turns the town square as the prime spot to meet friends from all over the world who leave and come back for this occasion. Tickets purchased, locked and loaded...
Fate had it otherwise, and on August 10th a 7.4 earthquake hit San Jose del Palmar (Choco), where Sevilla was among the hardest-hit regions, and at that very second my future changed purpose.
Sistema de Información Geológica (SIG) - Cuerpo de Bomberos Voluntarios de Sevilla
I arrived on Thursday close to midnight, checked in with my family and after some much needed hugs and conversations, went to bed for a few hours only to wake up and be ready at the fire department's headquarters for 7am. The initial task was to survey damages, talk to people, and document the tragedy as best as we could to make an inventory of the damages for future reparations and study. We set sails and got going. 14-hour days were the norm, but the resilience and good attitude made it feel like mere minutes had passed every time.
During this time however, it was clear that a disconnect was growing between us and the official authorities like the Mayor's office, where the methodology was limited to pen and paper; the data was there, the intelligence wasn't. We had implemented technology from the very first minute to gather as much data as possible and five days after the event, our team founded the GIS Office (SIG in Spanish) and began a process of not only collecting data, but also interpreting and visualizing it. The implications were massive as we were now seeing the patterns emerge.
After a few weeks of working on this incredible amount of data, having visualized the tragedy from almost every point, having sat down with multiple authorities and organizations, looking for answers and finding more questions, we opted for the more pragmatic approach of using our information to knock as many doors as possible to find resources in order to build back, but with more control, information, and first and foremost with the community in mind.
I then started working on a visualization system that presents the probabilities for every natural phenomena that poses danger and give it a score. Then I remembered a conversation I had with someone a year back, what if we had an alert's system and a risk management plan that even without preventing a natural event, could have helped prevent some of the damages?
Screenshot of Vigia - The tool I made to visualize the current and future conditions.
With the technical skills and guided by incredible people along the way, I set to find all available data from as many sources as I could (NASA, ESA, DANE, SGC, etc.) and with the help of Ricardo, CEO of Red LabOT, I scraped it all and found hundreds of resources which all provide open data, which I then collected and synthesized. We initially kept the scope limited to the municipalities of Sevilla, Zarzal, and Caicedonia, as they are the closest ones and it is also where we have resources available in case any questions came up or specifics were needed.
The project started taking a life of its own and all of a sudden I realized the tools we were creating needed to be open and public, and together with the GIS team we decided that the application needed to have its sources open so anyone could use them. The power of information is best used when there aren't any gates keeping away from it.
The real lesson: The most valuable tools often emerge from the spaces between institutions, where a technologist who understands the ground truth can build what formal systems haven't prioritized.
Check Vigia out here, and check Red LabOT 's website here.
Part 2 will have all the tech details for Vigia. Stay tuned...