Introduction

As part of my participation in the TechChange Course “Tech Tools and Skills for Emergency Management”, I conducted an interview with colleague Adam Papendieck at Tulane University’s Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy. TechChange posted the interview on their own blog this morning, but I thought I would share it here as well.

Mini Biography

Adam Papendieck has an MPH from Tulane University and a technical background in GIS, Statistics and Information Systems.  He is currently the Sr. Program Manager for Technology at the Payson Center for International Development at Tulane University, where his role is to leverage appropriate and innovative information technologies in support of research projects, funded Public Health capacity-building projects in East Africa, and crisis informatics activities with the Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy.  He has worked on applied ICT activities such as the creation of a dynamic web mapping application for the World Vision US corporate information portal, the design and implementation of open source thin client computer labs in Rwanda, the creation of e-learning platforms at African institutions of higher education, various crisis mapping initiatives and disaster analytics activities for the Gulf Oil Spill, Hurricane Katrina and other events.

Interview Notes

I spoke with Adam today (Monday, September 26, 2011) about the technologies we’ve encountered in the TC103 course, his views on some of them, and where he sees the future of the field going. Adam is particularly interested in crowdsourcing and has experience working with Ushahidi, both on the development/applied side for the Gulf Oil Spill last year, and on the evaluation side following the earthquake in Haiti. Here are some of Adam’s (paraphrased) comments on the field, the merits and pitfalls of some of these technologies, and his vision for the future:

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