Relief efforts in Puerto Rico map and info assistance
froi opened this issue · 20 comments
Problem
Currently there are people that do now know where to get food, water, basic information, and relief services.
Proposal
Create a service where they can get this information via:
- interactive map
- SMS ( text food, water, etc.) -> get back an address, phone number or location
- Maybe throw an SOS
I think SMS will be crucial since connectivity has been spotty on the island.
SMS I can help with tonight. Do we have the actual data to reply with anywhere that can be accessed programmatically?
We don't have anything at the moment. I'm working on getting some sort of dataset.
It would be great to separate that issue into several so multiple people can start working on it and take ownership, avoids stepping on each others toes. I can work on the interactive map.
Actually, I already have a map. I thought I would never find a great use for this. https://github.com/jpadilla1/react-pr-map
The data is almost certainly going to be a much harder problem than mapping, sms, or otherwise.
The Harvey Needs API is redeployable (for shelters) and the Open Referral initiative has various other tools (like a more robust API). But if you don't have an organization that is maintaining a reliable source of data, it's harder than you might think to crowdsource.
This is a solid option to consider for the SMS piece https://github.com/RapidSMS/RapidSMS
Would we want users to be able to both add and access resources? So could sms "need food" or "get food", for example. Hard to vet, but people on the ground have most current info.
My 2c. Let me know what you guys think
We can break down the issue in 2 ways:
- We need to create a stable source of data for water, food, services, etc
- We need to provide that info.
For Collection -- quick idea (about to get on a plane)
-
get list of venues from foursquare:
https://developer.foursquare.com/docs/ -
Use realtime checkin api to mark the venue as active or not.
Could probably keep this in a DB or a spreadsheet. Same thing for relief service info.
This could be good for grocery stores, etc.
Then we could build an SMS interface (probably more valuable) and a web interface to it.
Thoughts/
@MrMaksimize this looks good to me! There's an SMS interface that was built for a different purpose. Maybe some of that code can be reused (interface with Twilio, etc.). Omar Ferrer in Slack may have more details. I believe he also got some Twilio credits we can use here.
@MrMaksimize @miguelrios is there a preferred backend stack for the data collection API? I could start building the foursquare connection and caching piece.
Looks like there's a stupid easy Foursquare wrapper for Ruby: https://github.com/groupme/quimby
@ike no hard constraints on stack AFAIK. I've seen mostly node.js code but this shouldn't be a big deal. Thanks!
Hey, this sounds like something I could contribute to. Maybe set up a quick API service that takes handles requests and returns the content which can then be sent as sms (or sends the sms directly)
Requests could look like:
resources.mariarelief.org?resourcetype=freshwater&lat=xxxx&long=yyyy&radius=zz&start=0&count=5
resources.mariarelief.org?resourcetype=firstaid&lat=xxxx&long=yyyy&radius=zz&start=6&count=5
resources.mariarelief.org?resourcetype=hotfood&lat=xxxx&long=yyyy&radius=zz&start=0&count=5
We could put together a node api service that could use appropriate outside services (cartodb, openfema api, other 3rd party apis, etc) to perform queries and return response to the SMS service.
Not exactly sure how the SMS piece would work? I reckon that our sms service would parse the sms, then send a request to our API, then return the API response via SMS. With a standard format, multiple devs could work on different integrations (fresh water, medical attention, shelter, flooding, etc)
Just brainstorming here. Curious if there is any progress on this, or how to contribute!
I'd love to assist with this. Consider perhaps using React Native and building a small native App that links to mapping and an API? SMS is trickier, since consuming an incoming SMS is hard to do with iOS (but possible with Android). React Native would also provide access to location via GPS service, and has some really useful pre-built components for Mapping and locations (https://github.com/airbnb/react-native-maps). Something like this would only take a few hours to assemble.
Hi, folks, I'm going to PR Nov. 28th on a relief mission. I can collect some data. I would really like a map to add my data to---has this issue died?
I'm not a GIS expert, but I wonder why we can't just create a Google Map and drop pins on it?
Hi Robert, we currently have aiudapr.com a crowd sourced map that shows resources around PR. In the map you can create and delete pins and categorize them depending on the resource.
We also have schoolsofpr.com that shows info about the schools, statistics and a map.
Hope this helps and let me know if you need any more info.
@RobertLRead this issue will remain open for questions such as yours. There are a number of efforts that have tackled this to some degree, @makobi gives a good example. I'm at work and can't really follow up too much. I'll write up something later.
We have a Slack channel dedicated to data and mapping efforts. You can join here and look for the #maria, #maria-data, and #maria-maps channels.
hello! we are currently working on something simultaneously. a similar rapid response SMS. we have the tech but the content is whats sparse. Looking to connect with Rapid SMS this week