When Hurricane Gustav set its eye on New Orleans last week, internet professionals didn't just idly stare at their computer screens.

Led by NPR's Andy Carvin, internet professionals sprang into action. Over Labor Day weekend, they created a social media effort in support of Gulf Coast residents affected by Gustav.

It began with the creation of a Ning community titled the "Gustav Information Center." This community was renamed the Hurricane Information Center as focus turned toward preparing for Hurricanes Hanna and Ike. The online community is now coordinating the efforts of over 600 volunteers.

Thanks to the volunteers' efforts, the site is now aggregating video, photos, and Twitter updates. The community also created an annotated Google Map of Evacuation Centers and Routes, and an integrated volunteer match service.

A cornerstone of the work has been the creation of the Hurricane Information Center Wiki. Derived from a three-year-old Katrina-focused wiki, the site now offers information related to shelters, aid agencies, health and safety information, and other resources.

This effort shows a couple of things about the current state of online communities and data sharing:

• First-responder organizations and agencies cannot afford to continue to ignore the power of online communities and social media approaches.


• The technology barriers to creating online communities keep getting lower. Ning and similar services offer tremendous functionality that can be configured and deployed in hours.


• Twitter, IRC, Skype, and instant messenger enable real-time collaboration between dozens of people. But there are still logistical issues related to the fact that people are using widely different services and channels.


• Asynchronous communications such as emails, blogs and postings remain vital because volunteers work at different times in different time zones.


• Services that provide location-specific information are maturing. It's clear that text-based updates (e.g. Twitter) and video-based updates (e.g. Qik) will become vital to helping emergency responders get situational awareness of a quick-moving event such a hurricane, wild fire, or terrorist attack.


• Data in common formats (such as RSS) is much more widely available than it was during Katrina. This makes it possible to aggregate and filter large amounts of information quite easily.

As I write this, Hanna is dumping rain on my roof and Ike is drifting toward the Gulf Coast. There's still much work to be done. If you want to help out, join the Hurricane Information Center community.

(Media Shift has more about this community and similar efforts. Andy Carvin is also speaking at the Press Club on Sept. 9 at our event, Web Sites Without Walls.