Shared Database Capability

[NicoMoon]

Not being the tech wizard on this team, but the only one here to post right now, I'll try to spell this out in plain English.

We are wanting to find a way to get all the available databases of information that is being accessed by the hurricane survivors into one place where any approved site owner can merge and update their own data on a regular basis.

We tried some initial data mining tricks, since none of the managers of any of the large databases has responded to our request to share information, but the formatting is a nightmare. If anyone has ideas or knows how to do this, we need your assistance.

Our inexhaustible webmaster, Franklin, has created a cell-phone notification system that searchers could plug into and get instant notification about any responses to their requests. A centralized database would give access to this function to all who are frantically awaiting responses to their pleas for information and assistance.

What we are also projecting is an ongoing need for numerous centralized databases. We need comprehensive job boards, shelter information, identified scam artist information, and centralized access to countless resources that are beginning to surface in the form of scattered posted offers on all the many and varied message boards, blogs, and websites. The list goes on and on if you think about it, as will the needs that are being addressed.

We believe strongly in the need for centralized shared information, since it is heart rending to hear of shelter residents spending hours after waiting hours to wade from one site to the next in hope of finding the information they are seeking. If anyone has a problem with this concept, I'd like to know who they are and why. This effort is, after all, meant to serve the immediate needs of tens of thousands of people in crisis, is it not?

It's obvious that all groups that are maintaining updated information are swamped with work, it's perfectly understandable that no one is chomping at the bit to coordinate with the all the varied and sundry websites out there, so in the spirit of the Meeting of Minds project, we are asking for those who can to step up to the plate and just make it happen.

If you have input, thoughts or ideas, please post here and/or contact Franklin@livewire.fm

[Julie]

I had an idea and conceived a plan - I think it will work. I sent it to you :D

[NicoMoon]

Thanks Julie!

Where did you send it? Can't find it!

Nico

[Julie]

franklin@livewire.fm it didn't bounce back.....

[Julie]

want me to resend it?

[Adrienne]

This would normally be sth I'd be raising my hand for to help with but I do think i'm swamped :D There are various orgs advertising they are WORKING on a centralized database but who knows? It would still be great to have here. Good luck! Kudos to you all ;)

[Franklin]

KatrinaList.net seems to the centralized person database we've been looking for. It was developed by volunteer tech folks. I will be on a conference call with them tonight to discuss getting myself involved and see if they (or we) can extend this central database idea to other areas, such as jobs, pets and shelters. And perhaps add the notification feature.

I have already upload our persons database to theirs. The process of converting the existing database to KatrinaList's format was not fun, but now that I have done it, I can provide a process to de-geekify for others. The idea will be to allow folks to input a variety of formats and create the proper XML to be uploaded. If I can convince the KL folks to host the ungeek process on their site, I'll do it there. Otherwise I'll provide the ungeek ability from this site.

[vervilledeb1]

Way to go Franklin!! I know you have been putting hours into this project and I want to say Thank You. I am dealing with families with lost loved ones and they know we are all doing our best. :)

Thanks,
Debby

[Julie]

I saw that - what a great idea. Did you figure out how to de-geekify? I'm trying to get a hold of the lists in Illinois. DHS has them but they are impossible to reach because they are overwhelmed by victims. I may have to write the governor.

I would be willing to put out a press release on it if they can put together a central location for people to send or email their lists. Could you ask on a conference call? Perhaps they could provide their list to the Missing and Exploited children org to try to match parents with kids.

If they want to be the central place, I could ask in the press release that data be collected in a certain format or that certain data be collected.

rsvp
Julie

[Julie]

Nola.com also has a central list. I wish we could find a central list of shelters, that would be excellent. We could send the list to the shelters to post in alpha order to make it easier for the victims. What most people don't seem to realize, is many of the victims don't even have access to phones!!!! This high tech stuff does them no good - they don't even know it's happening. And CN is great putting up the kids' pictures on the TV, but these people, for the most part, don't have cable.

They are reporters, why don't they use their resources to take photographs of kids with no parents and send them to every newspaper in the country - or better yet, every shelter.

Drives me nuts. If I had the vacation time and the money I'd drive around and do it myself.

[NicoMoon]

Hi Julie,

I'm sorry we didn't get back to you regarding your proposal. Franklin, our tech guy got involved with the katrinalist.net project all at the same time.

I've appealed to him to post the details in English so we all know what the deal is.

Essentially, their list is the result of data mining, so it should have all the available information from any site anywhere, and it's designed to be updatable from any other cooperating site's databases. For example, if someone posts on our database we use the katrinalist function to update our information into theirs.

It's an appealing project because the designers took into account the fact that some websites are hellbent on hosting "the one, the only, the best and most comprehensive list" which they can still do AND still interface with the shared database. So, they're giving us the best of both worlds.

Naturally, it will require cooperation, but even without it, there's still the data mining capablity that will catch what isn't voluntarily uploaded.

One small snag at the moment is that some guy is threatening legal action against the data miners for some bizarre reason. It's worth noting that said fellow has a donate button on his site and the donations go to him, since because he's being so kind and all, he can't earn any money. No donation button for the Red Cross or anything else, just Mr. Selfless.

No doubt if he keeps it up, he'll get lots of publicity so the whole world can be apprised of his selfless generosity!

Hope that helps, but also waiting for Franklin's hopefully more astute outline of the project.

Nico

[NicoMoon]

Hi Julie,

The database of shelters is the katrinalist.net's next project. So far we seem to have the biggest list. It will be uploaded to the katrinalist, if they dont already have it, but this is still a very good place to add any information on shelters not listed.

You're correct about high tech and the displaced, but it's got to be gathered somewhere, and the shelters are giving the residents internet access, so it's a help.

There's no question that the needs of many of the hurricane victims are not being served that could be. Currently our team here is getting organized to address that very problem as our focus here, so stay tuned.

We will begin radio broadcasting again in the next few days, and will be interviewing people from on the ground in the disaster areas, shelters, etc so we can begin to get the details out, and hopefully that will inspire our visitors and members to get busy and start providing and strategizing solutions to the ongoing needs.

Information is power, and we'll be working even harder to get as much factual, usable information out there as possible.

[Franklin]

Right then. I'll try to not be too geeky :)

I don't remember how I found out about KatrinaList.net, but I was quite pleased that they are doing exactly what I thought needed to be done. I was willing (if not able) to take on the project myself - of having an official site to go to in case of emergency.

There is a team of I don't know how many people, including geeks (software people), data-entry, media-savvy people, etc. who have gotten together to found this project. Initially, the project is to create a centralized Missing Persons data base. This has been created by "scraping" (using computer programs to read data from the many databases already out there) existing data, endless hours of data-entry and the creation of a standard for which to upload data.

The standard is using XML to update. XML stands for Extensible Markup Language, which uses tags to identify different data elements. HTML is a subset of XML. HTML uses tags, such as <B>, followed by the text to be bolded, followed by an end tag, </B>, which tells the browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc.) to make the text inside the beginning and end tags bold. When using XML to define data, the name of the field (data item, such as Name or Address) is inside a beginning tag and an end tag, E.G. <name>Joe Smith</name>,This tells the program that the value of the "name" field is "Joe Smith".

I have already used this standard to upload our persons database. It took me a few hours to work out the kinks. The geeky part is that the existing data must be formatted as an XML file, according to the PFIF (Person Finder Interchange Format) standard. (Sorry, that's as ungeeky as I can get - but you don't need to understand this, anyway)

To de-geekify, I'm working on a program (in my spare time) to allow a semi-geeky webmaster to fill out a web form with information about his/her database - where the fields are located, particularly. For example, the data may be in an Excel database. Fat lot of good it does there. But, the database can be opened in MSWord, where there is an option to convert the table to text. (Generally, the data is stored as a table, where each row represents a person, and each column represents a field [name, address, etc.]). So MSWord can reformat this to create a file where each row is delimited (seperated from other rows) by a new line and each field is delimited by a tab character. My form will ask what the delimiters are, and in which position is each field, E.G. Name is in first field, phone, in second, state in third, etc. The form provides one of them there Browse buttons where one can select a file from their hard drive and upload it. After they upload it, an XML file is returned to their computer in PFIF format, which they can then upload to KatrinaList. Whew! And that's the degeekified version. It's actually simpler than it sounds.

But I digress...

KatrinaList.net is now working on a ShelterFinder, to be available very soon. There is also an outbound database for persons, but has not yet been released to the public pending discussions about privacy. The outbound file would allow other websites to import KL data so they can host it locally and maintain their coveted visitor count.

Speaking of coveted visitor counts, someone from KL scraped data from Gulf Coast News ( http://www.gulfcoastnews.com ) and received a legally threatening email about copyright infringement, etc. This git at GCN has a button asking people to donate to his business because his circulation went down due to the population leaving, but no button for donations to the Red Cross or any other charity. I also find it hard to believe that his circulation is hurting at a time like this - certainly his website is getting a lot of hits.

End of Chapter 1. Chapter 2 to follow.

Cheers, Franklin

[Franklin]

Chapter II - Revenge of the Centralized Database

The Katrina List Missing Persons database currently has over 200,000 entries, though some may be dupes. It's located at http://www.katrinalist.net and is searchable by virtually any field. Server space was donated and, to my knowledge, everyone working on it is a volunteer. We have at least one person in the U.K. and another in Vietnam - a worldwide effort.

This idea is going to be extended beyond Katrina - the idea is to have these capabilities available for any future crisis. I believe there is going to be a major press release within a few days. I've also heard talk that it will be shifter to KatrinaHelp.net, which is sponsored by the Red Cross. As I understand it, there are legal issues holding that up - apparently because the Red Cross is a bureaucracy, unlike this ad hoc group.

I broached the topic on the conference call on Tuesday to include the email / cell phone text message notification that I implemented on our database and the response was positive. Should be working out the details shortly.

The NOLA list is bogus IMO. Like their message board, the data is not formatted well - sometimes it's hard to tell who's missing and who is looking for them. And it would be almost impossible to scrape, given the lack of format.

To volunteer and/or find out more about the Katrina People Finder Project, go to http://katrinahelp.info/wiki/index.php/Katrina_PeopleFinder_Project

Webmasters can go to http://www.katrinalist.net to see how to upload data to database. If you need any help, please feel free to contact me at franklin@livewire.fm The degeeker should be available within a few days.

Shelter data can be uploaded to the list, but there is no formal way yet to do it. If you find good shelter info, please contact me and I'll coordinate with the group to get it uploaded (if it hasen't already been)

Cheers, Franklin

[Adrienne]

Ah ha. It all makes much more sense now. Thanks Franklin! What a lot of hard work you've put into this conversion project. I'll email you some shelter links not widely known. You want that in Excel or Word :p Or notepad. Or... lol

Excellent progress! Stupid person with his own narcisstic concerns though huh. Sheesh

[sparkie]

Hi Julie, & everyone else

PR Web FREE online press service link...check it out. I know nothing of this subject.

http://www.prweb.com/index.php

Bye, Sparkie

[sparkie]

P.S.

Woke up at 3 am looking for a forum/discussion board of pro business flyer designers or similiar. Need a Katrina+ flyer tweaked.

Any suggestions? Just started looking & found the free PR help, link in above msg

Bye, SParkie

[Julie]

Do you want them to create the flyer or distribute it. Creating isn't hard, there's lots of software that does it. I could probably help there.
Let me know
Julie

[Julie]

Nico

I think once we have the shelter list, we could contact them and see if someone has an email address. We could then send our list, as it's updated to teh shelters so the residents can look through it and see if they find someone.

Rather than them having to contact us, we contact them and givethem the ibfo they need to contact the missing members of their families. That would take care of the people that have no internet access and just have a phone available. We could also snail mail to shelters that have no email capabilities at all.

I feel badly for these people. They have enough on their plates already. The more we can offer TO THEM the better.

I would be aware of partnering with the Red Cross on anything. They will copyright something, not allow you to do anything, and then mangle it - they are neither forward thinking nor particularly high tech - if they were, they would have done this already. My mother and Aunt were nurses in World War II - they had great disdain for the Red Cross.....and they would know. They were both in the Pacific theater. My aunt treated the survivors of the Bataan Death March. Both were overseas when the bomb was dropped.

Open source will always be better.

Just a word to the wise.

[bchrisbeck]

I have constructed a Geographic resource sharing system, at www.katrinahelpfinder.com. It is very structured but has a minor amount of data at this time as the effort of data entry, dispatching and networking is still getting pushed out. I have considered implementing an inbound and outbound Web Service for this for other sites to tie in. If someone wants to take a peek and give me feedback, I'd be happy to consider being involved in a larger effort as time permits.

Chris Beck

[Franklin]

Hi Julie and Chris,

KatrinaList is an open source project staffed completely by volunteers. There is currently a very extensive database of missing persons at http://www.KatrinaList.net . A shelter database is in the works, soon to be followed by a jobs database.

This is the central control we've been seeking. I'm working on the shelter data base in my spare time :) When I finish my current project, I hope to implement an email/cell phone text message notification of change in status for the Missing Persons database.

If interested in helping out with the project, please go to http://katrinahelp.info/wiki/index.php/Katrina_PeopleFinder_Project

I already submitted our shelter database to them and will send an update soon.

Cheers, Franklin

[Julie]

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3362814

Katrina evacuees in Houston got moved to day....some to Arkansas, others to other states, some stayed in Houston - found apartments.......wonder if they made a list - s'pose that would be too much to ask for eh? :eek:

[Franklin]

The KatrinaList project Shelter Finder is located at http://katrinahelp.info/wiki/index.php/ShelterFinder
There are links towards the top to search, update data (you need to register), and volunteer. The page has a lot of info about the project as well.

Cheers, Franklin