Re: Requirement for 3W interop standard (new proposed schema attached)

I stand corrected on "victim", it's a loaded word but so are "client" or "beneficiary" which imply that the person is not helping themselves.  

As for WHO/WHAT/WHERE, I would hope that anything pretending to be a real interoperability model specifies that this falls by elimination out of a theoretical map of many people who are mostly helping themselves but not everyone/everywhen/everwhere succeeding.  This does require perhaps a "top down" view of the whole response process but it doesn't imply imposing any terminology that is not instantly recognizable by people caught in crisis, even if it seems unfamiliar to people who don't see actual first responses.

If there were some principles we would agree on I would hope they'd include:

1. The very first responder is always the affected person themselves, even if that response is restricted to an immune system response or a movement away from immediate danger or a cry for help.  This is true even of children.

2. Family and proximate friends are always the next to respond, and will almost always be in a position to do this before any official responders.  When informed and equipped they can usually remove children or family members from immediate danger and treat minor problems such as hydration or nutrition or minor burns and scrapes.  

Accordingly WHO(1) and WHO(2) are defined pretty much by biology and by sociology.  The informal proximate or volunteer helpers like church groups or particularly well equipped or trained neighbours may be WHO(3).  There may be no official paid and certified responder involved until WHO(4) and that may be confined to people like police or firefighters or medical personnel who happen to be nearby ("is there a doctor in the house?" etc.).  So add another principle:

3. Over time the most heavily affected areas should, in a well managed incident, become smaller in size and involve fewer people whose needs cannot be met by those proximate.  The skills required to help them will in general become greater over time because the problems become worse over time (with exposure, lack of water or food, emotional stress, conflicts).

If one wants to make maximum use of proximate/family/volunteer resources,
starting with the assumption that WHO must be an agency of the type we would normally consider to be "running" an emergency operation seems very late in the game, as if the ontology had to change when WHO(5) arrives... when the original EIIF goals included unifying the ontology through the entire lifecycle of response and reconstruction and retraining with new lessons learned.  Without commenting on whether OCHA is doing a good job or whether the current global system of disaster response actually works at all, on neither of which I have any opinion, I hope we agree that it's valid to consider WHO(0) to be the human body affected by the incident and WHO(1) is that person's mental capacity (which may be unavailable if they are for instance unconcious or in shock), WHO(2) is that of the proximate family or friends, WHO(3) the local volunteers, WHO(4) the official helpers who would normally intervene in a non-"emergency" incident, and that WHO(5) and (6)
 and so on can be reserved for more global responses.

A few formal use cases might make this clearer, but think about earthquakes for a moment.  The quake hits and as it hits people flee for what they think is safer ground or places like doorways in buildings - that is in itself a response to the danger.  Afterwards, people who are pinned by minor wreckage that others nearby can pull from them, tend to be quickly freed and to assist in the freeing of others.  This continues as the official response is only beginning to be mobilized.  By the time the official response arrives, it's well understood (by those on the scene) who needs more equipment and skilled help to be freed.  But those people are only identified by a process of elimination as others are freed by a collective effort of say up to a dozen untrained people moving a beam or whatever, not being able to move something pinning that last person down.

So it's easy in that example to see how the affected area could be well represented by a data structure marking a region and then perhaps a much smaller neighbourhood out and then as more and more people become more involved in fewer and fewer very affected places, that splinters into a larger number of smaller WHERE.  But this is only going to happen if the data structures representing the untrained and volunteer response have a resemblance to the data structures telling the trained crew where to go.

So the question isn't whether large emergency response organizations need a map of WHO/WHAT/WHERE to go, clearly they do and they'll have that for themselves.  The question is whether the interoperability model specifies that this falls by elimination out of a theoretical map of many people who are mostly helping themselves but not succeeding at that everywhere.  I do not think it's correct to say that this is somehow a "top-down" model nor that it defies or denies what current emergency operation theory says to do.  Most national organizations are moving towards needs-based models and recognizing the role of civilian and volunteer first responders.  So when using the term "bottom up" it would be more correct to refer to this kind of activity on the actual ground, not start halfway up on the clouds that national governments and agencies so often define into existence ignoring what is really going on among the citizens.

So start the ontology early enough and the problem just goes away I think.

Craig Hubley

--- On Sun, 8/10/08, Paul Currion <paul@currion.net> wrote:
> From: Paul Currion <paul@currion.net>
> Subject: Re: Requirement for 3W interop standard (new proposed schema attached)
> To: "public-xg-eiif" <public-xg-eiif@w3.org>
> Date: Sunday, August 10, 2008, 11:20 AM
> Gavin is right about the position of the W3 in the
> humanitarian
> response - it is a system to identify Who (which
> organisation) is doing
> What (which activities) Where (in which locations). Clearly
> there are
> other information requirements in an emergency, but that
> doesn't
> invalidate the W3 as an essential tool. It can and should
> be matched
> against areas such as beneficiary requirements using the
> georeferenced
> Where - at least that's what we were aiming for.
> 
> 
> 
> paola.dimaio@gmail.com wrote:
> 
>   Gavin
> 
>   
> 
>   
>   
> 
> My understanding is the 3W is 'just' a directory
> application, hence the
> schema is designed around providing directory services.
>   
> 
> May I ask what is that assumption based on?
> 
> Did we as a group discuss/agree on such a constraint? 
> 
> Is there any more useful purpose for which we need a 3W
> metaset?
> 
> Is the schema for a service directory part of our mission ?
> 
>   
>   
>   
> 
> I think the assumption is based on the fact that we're
> looking at the
> W3 as a use case scenario, and that is the use for which
> the W3 was
> designed, in response to the actual requirements of
> humanitarian
> co-ordination in repeated emergency operations. Once again
> I had
> assumed that, since the group had agreed that this was a
> valid area to
> consider at the face-to-face meeting, this was clearly
> understood.
> 
> 
> 
> cheers
> 
> 
> 
> Paul C

Received on Thursday, 14 August 2008 20:27:48 UTC