Steve and I were back in Building 32 to interview Trung Dong Huynh about the relationship between disaster management and ‘data provenance’. It threw up some fascinating questions. To what extent can the news that first emerges from the ‘unknown quantity’ of a disaster be trusted? How much will it be shared? It all depends upon who authored it, what credibility they have, and what protocols they have in place for preserving the chain of data custody. The first 72 hours after a disaster is thought to be a critical threshold. Many humanitarian organisations consider the information thrown up during this interval to be so bad, that they refuse to send their people in to a disaster zone until it has passed. Hence the Red Cross emergency preparedness apps:
http://www.redcross.org/prepare/mobile-apps