Schmaps: another dual-use crowdsourcing app for disasters
Must admit that 
I’m not quite the intrepid adventurer of my youth, which is why I guess I hadn’t heard about the interactive web-based maps and tour books from Schmap.
Quite kewl, I’d say:
- integrate maps and guide content dynamically, producing real-time access to reviews and accompanying photo slideshows
- desktop version (for Windoz only until later this month — we Mac people are fundamentally homebodies, I guess) is based on Schmap 2.0, a desktop app that adds options such as virtual tours, printing full-color guides, and publishing self-authored guides.
It would seem to me to be a simple step following a disaster to take an existing Schmap of a city as the starting point, then add real-time, location-based information such as where elderly or handicapped residents lived, where there was significant damage, so the tour guide could instead become a real-time map for first responders and others to coordinate relief efforts.
Because individuals would already be familiar with the tool and how to use it, it would be relatively simple for a wide range of residents to each flesh out and update the information already part of the local Schmaps for their block, etc. as the disaster or terrorist attack unfolded. Crowdsourcing at its best!
(BTW, I notice none other than Doc Searls did one for Balimer — I wish this tool had been around in the late 50s when my grandmother launched my personal love of history by taking me on a tour of old graveyards and homes in the city and the Eastern Shore where the Dulaney family had lived since our first ancestor landed in 1703 — I would have loved to have documented the trip for my descendants! ).
Technorati tags: homeland security Schmap Google mashups Google maps crowd-sourcing crowdsourcing smart mobs swarm intelligence emergent behavior networked homeland security government IT collaboration location-based services geo-spatial web web 2.0 homeland security 2.0 disaster management 2.0 disaster management disaster planning disaster planning 2.0
