Hacks, hackers invited to participate in Random Hacks of Kindness, Dec. 4-5
On December 4th and 5th, Random Hacks of Kindness is holding a multi-city hackathon to create software to “mitigate or respond to disasters around the world and save lives.” The Hacks/Hackers community is invited to participate.
The organizers of Random Hacks of Kindness think both developers and journalists — who play such an important role in communications about natural disasters — can both contribute to the projects being developed.
This is the third Random Hacks of Kindness event. The first event, RHoK #0, held in November 2009, resulted in applications that were later used during the devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. RHoK #1 – held simultaneously in six countries around the world in June 2010 – produced a tool that allows engineers to easily visualize landslide risk to help guide urban and rural development and building planning. This application is currently being piloted in the Caribbean by the World Bank.
This year’s event will be held simultaneously in multiple locations around the world. U.S. locations include Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and Seattle. International locations are Toronto, Canada; Aarhus, Denmark; Berlin, Germany; Bangalore, India; Jakarta, Indonesia; Nairobi, Kenya; Lusaka, Zambia; Bogota, Colombia; and Sao Paolo, Brazil.
Program organizers are involving experts in disaster risk management to work with RHoK participants. RHoK is platform agnostic and encourages the development of open source software solutions. The event is an opportunity to meet and work with software developers and disaster experts from around the world, create new applications, and maybe even win some prizes. Visit www.rhok.org to register.