Speed Evidence: Rapid, Accurate Information to and from Disaster Sites

World Vision’s Speed Evidence Project was designed to rapidly access, filter and harness the abundance of information competing for the attention of humanitarian professionals immediately after a disaster strikes.

 

Within hours, it gives humanitarian workers around the globe access to relevant, real-time disaster-related information required to make effective decisions. The prototype developed for the project provided information such as: damage assessments, number of people affected, their priority needs and essential logistics information. The prototype platform for the project continually and quickly updated information as surveys, done using smartphones or other technology, were newly completed. The project rapidly made information available that was location specific (geo-tagged), which helped give context to the information and made it easy for frontline staff and decision makers to determine the rapid response interventions necessary to meet urgent needs.

 

The project prototype was built and tested using World Vision emergency responses as test cases, but with an eye towards the needs of the entire global humanitarian community.