#nethope

..as NETHOPE, Ushahidi, YARN present findings to stakeholders As the effects of climate change continue to unfold and become an undeniable reality, the need to adopt urgent and effective adaptation measures has become more critical. In Ondo State, a recent survey sponsored by the Youth in Agroecology and Restoration Network (YARN) with the support of  NETHOPE and Ushahidi has identified…

New Post has been published on https://takenews.net/from-redmond-with-wifi-how-this-microsoft-worker-helped-deliver-essential-infrastructure-to-a-hurricane-ravaged-caribbean-island/

From Redmond with WiFi: How this Microsoft worker helped deliver essential infrastructure to a hurricane-ravaged Caribbean island

Nicholas Harland frightened about his uncle Roger.

Roger Harland, a resident of the smallest of the U.S. Virgin Islands, St. John, is on medicine for a current liver transplant, and over the summer season, with Hurricane Irma approaching, the household couldn’t get in contact. So his nephew started hatching a plan together with his household to get to the island and ensure his uncle had the medicine he wanted.

Nicholas Harland, a senior supervisor at Microsoft, ran right into a roadblock immediately. St. John lacks its personal airport, so the standard methodology of passage can be to fly to the island of St. Thomas and take a ferry over. However Irma decimated the St. Thomas airport, forcing Harland to search out one other path.

So he turned to the web, discovering a Facebook group of individuals making an attempt to get provides to these affected by the hurricane. There he linked with a restaurant proprietor cooking meals and sending them by boat to St. John from St. Croix, an island 45 minutes south that was spared the total brunt of Irma.

“I flew there, and these folks that I didn’t know put me up of their home in a single day and fed me and gave me an air-conditioned room,” mentioned Harland. “After which I bought on a ship the subsequent morning and went over to St. John.”

Slightly greater than per week after Irma hit, Harland reunited together with his uncle and aunt Fran. It turned out Roger was properly provided with 4 months’ value of medicine, and Harland introduced one other two months’ value.

An skilled backpacker, Harland introduced all the things he wanted to outlive for a pair days. He says he wished to assist, not flip himself into somebody who wanted help.

That’s when his mission took on a bigger goal. He had introduced with him $7,000 value of satellite tv for pc telephones and different communication tools to assist Roger and Fran keep linked to the household.

Harland’s tools stash included 12 Baofeng UV5-R radios, highly effective handheld Ham Radios, handy out to mates and neighbors. In the event that they caught on, Harland mentioned, he was able to recruit of us who might arrange radio towers to revive some type of communication to the island.

Nevertheless it turned on the market was a bunch already doing that. After getting a sign, Harland began asking round to search out out who was engaged on re-connecting the island. He connected with a bunch of native IT execs working to revive web service by way of a brand new WiFi community. Although cell service was down and the island was with out energy, the group was in a position use an undersea cable that also labored because the spine of its community.

They arrange the primary WiFi hotspot on the island 4 days after Irma hit, earlier than Harland arrived. In addition they managed to arrange a point-to-point hyperlink at a Nationwide Park Service workplace the place first responders from the Federal Emergency Administration Company had been stationed and at just a few companies, so prospects might run bank cards.

When Harland arrived, he met up with the group at a pizza store that might function their residence base. Collectively, they got here up with a plan to supply WiFi to your complete island.

Harland was solely supposed to remain a few days, assist out his uncle, drop off the tools he introduced after which head out. However the second catastrophic storm to hit the world, Hurricane Maria, disabled the St. Croix airport, leaving him stranded.

Harland did ultimately get off the island, however three months later, he’s nonetheless making journeys to St. John from Redmond, Wash., and is again there once more between Christmas and New Yr’s. Every time he has hauled with him hundreds of in gear to bolster the WiFi community. This effort is a primary for Harland, taking his philanthropic giving to a brand new degree of engagement.

“I give to charities, I’ve payroll deductions, however I’ve by no means really been ready the place I had abilities and expertise that would actually impression a whole group like that,” Harland mentioned.

Harland and the native IT guys — Matt Gyuraki, Jason Monigold, Morgan Barlas, Rob Tutton, Pete Miazga — have since based a nonprofit known as Love Metropolis Group Community. The purpose is to proceed growing a plan for bringing WiFi to storm-stricken areas like St. John and function a useful resource for different teams that need to replicate that effort. Harland recruited a fellow engineer, Majdi Abbas, a former Yahoo engineer, to hitch the hassle, and he has since grow to be a essential group member.

Harland is in St. John once more proper now, his fourth journey there, and probably his final for some time. This time round, he might be establishing extra point-to-point tools to extend the capability of the community, as it’s beginning to run up in opposition to bandwidth points.

And even when he can’t return for some time, Harland will stay prominently concerned within the effort. Throughout an interview at his Microsoft workplace in Redmond, Wash., a part of the community briefly went down, illustrating that the work didn’t finish when the community launched. His workplace, the place he’s surrounded by a quartet of screens and a poster exhibiting Irma’s path in September, is a mixture of his work life and his rising mission on St. John.

At his residence, additionally in Redmond, Harland has been testing the tools he brings to St. John. That provides him what he calls “in all probability one of many quickest WiFi networks round.”

Harland has at all times been an web fanatic. He bought his first job with an web service supplier on the age of 15, again in an period when each small city had a dial-up web service supplier. He’s been with Microsoft for 5 years now, and immediately he works within the firm’s International Community Acquisition Group, which plans and manages Microsoft’s worldwide community of information facilities. He is aware of just a few issues about managing a fancy community.

These abilities got here in useful when the group was hunkered down throughout Maria. Nonetheless with out energy, the group needed to take down a lot of the infrastructure it had constructed due to the chance posed by the second storm. In order that they started constructing a plan to current to assist and governmental group to get funding for his or her work and the tools they wanted. In placing collectively the bones of the brand new WiFi community, they went analog.

“We bought out a map and a few pins and strings, and pieced collectively sight strains to get point-to-point wi-fi all around the island,” Harland mentioned.

As soon as the storm clouds cleared, the group that might grow to be Love Metropolis Group Community bought again to work. And so did different island residents. That included nation music star Kenny Chesney, who has a house on the island that was destroyed by Irma. His charity Love for Love Metropolis aimed to establish the largest wants and create an avenue for folks to donate cash and provides to the rescue effort.

A buddy of Harland’s in Boston purchased some wi-fi tools and despatched it down on a personal jet owned by a hedge fund supervisor on the island. With the native public airports nonetheless decimated, that very same airplane bought Harland off the island almost two weeks after he first arrived, together with some injured residents.

Rich and remoted, with 70 p.c of the 20-square-mile island an undeveloped nationwide park, the challenges on St. John had been completely different from these in dense cities. With solely about 5,000 folks, a small proportion of the general Virgin Islands inhabitants, Harland says St. John was not the highest precedence for presidency response. The group counted on their data of the island, discovering the best spots on the rugged terrain to place up their tools

On the identical time, different organizations on the bottom had been working to get issues again up to the mark. One was a bunch known as International Catastrophe Quick Response Staff, or International DIRT. Based to reply to the huge 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti, the group goals to fill in gaps in catastrophe response and work with each authorities organizations and locals taking part within the restoration.

Within the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, the group has been working to get communications again on-line. Zac Clancy, director of IT at International DIRT, informed GeekWire that the locals on St. John have made an enormous distinction within the restoration — doing all the things from getting communications again on-line to creating meals to only strolling round and asking folks what they want.

Because the web and smartphones have proliferated all over the world, getting the net again up has grow to be nearly as vital as getting energy once more, and that’s why it’s amongst International DIRT’s prime priorities on the bottom.

“When you’ve gotten these bigger our bodies arriving, like your Navy, your Coast Guard, for those who don’t have any kind of communications infrastructure laid out already, or if there isn’t a option to talk in any case, issues grow to be very difficult,” Clancy mentioned.

The very first thing the International DIRT group did once they arrived in St. John was hand out a bunch of satellite tv for pc telephones. And the big quantity of kit introduced down by Harland, the native IT execs on the island and different volunteers sped issues up. One of many native IT guys, Gyuraki, extrapolated what they did on St. John and put in a WiFi community working with Google, Facebook and the non-profit NetHope to arrange an “air fiber” connection linking cell towers on a 19-square-mile Puerto Rican island.

Regardless of all this work, there stays a lot to do. It took nearly two months for the primary buildings to get energy again on St. John, and Harland’s group estimates that also solely about 60 p.c of homes on the island have energy. In Puerto Rico, devastated by Hurricane Maria, many stay with out energy.

Past the efforts of residents, help organizations and authorities businesses, tech corporations have stepped as much as assist the restoration mission. Tesla, Facebook, Google and lots of extra all labored within the instant aftermath of the storms to revive energy and connectivity to the areas.

Microsoft has pitched in with each donations and know-how. It gave $1 million for catastrophe reduction within the instant aftermath, and as of November it had donated greater than $5 million.

Microsoft is teaming with NetHope and help organizations to supply connectivity by way of TV white house know-how. That includes tapping into unused blocks of broadcast spectrum between TV channels to ship wi-fi broadband connections over nice distances and troublesome terrain.

The efforts of those tech corporations has drastically aided restoration, mentioned Clancy of International DIRT. What helps most when it comes to long-term restoration is manpower. Getting gifted engineers down to repair issues is a key a part of getting connections again up and protecting them purposeful. An extended-term presence past simply the preliminary shock of the storm makes it simpler to take care of and handle new programs constructed in the course of the restoration.

“It’s arduous to realize perspective over a smaller time frame,” Clancy mentioned. “One of many causes we discover ourselves so efficient is as a result of we’re right here for months, and we might be right here months later. As a result of we’ve been right here for that lengthy and since we anticipate being right here for that lengthy, the decision-making of how we’re doing issues turns into a bit simpler as a result of we don’t essentially really feel a crunch for time and we don’t essentially really feel like we have to take advantage of quantity of impression in a pair days and hope it pans out.”

Past the hassle on St. John, Harland hopes the Love Metropolis group group will help present a mannequin for re-connecting communities after disasters. Harland mentioned preliminary restoration efforts from non-governmental organizations don’t usually give attention to getting companies up and working so the economic system can rev up once more.

That was an enormous a part of their work on St. John.

NetHope: Providing Technology Around the World

When it comes to providing technology and developing infrastructure to developing countries, few organizations come close to the scale of NetHope. Under the leadership of organizers including director Cory Eaves of General Atlantic, NetHope brings together 42 humanitarian organizations from around the world to provide communication and technology to the areas most in need.

NetHope encourages…

By Caleb Henry | January 26, 2015 | Feature, Middle East & Africa, Regional, Satellite TODAY News Feed, Telecom

NetHope has set up more than 100 VSATs in West African countries affected by Ebola. Photo: NetHope

[Via Satellite 01-26-2015] Gisli Olafsson, emergency response director at NetHope, a consortium of 42 top global humanitarian organizations, has been in West Africa as part of the international response to the Ebola outbreak since October 2014. He has traveled between Ghana, Sierra Leone and Liberia, spurring on the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to combat the disease throughout the three countries.

Telecommunications infrastructure, a vital part of any emergency response, is often very basic in rural parts of Africa. Most of the time in these regions, General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is the fastest mobile data network available, while in the absolute most rural areas, there is no mobile signal at all. In an interview withVia Satellite, Olafsson said the influx of responders into affected rural areas has put pressure on already fragile networks.

Fortunately, there has been an unparalleled response by the satellite industry.

A New Year morning coffee spent listening to disaster news on the BBC World Service, while reading the latest edition of NetHope's digital magazine.  Through the ears: news of doom.  Through the eyes: news of NGOs and the tech community pulling together to respond to and prevent said doom.

Following a game-seven World Series win this past week, our biggest San Francisco Giants fans fly into San Francisco to celebrate. Kidding. 

We are heading into San Francisco, but will be spending the week in Silicon Valley at the Cisco Headquarters for the NetHope Member Summit. DV and KMB will be on site helping coordinate every minute of the Summit, while JAA runs a workshop. While out there, he'll also be meeting with the Snippet App team. Not too far off, KC and SW are leading an immersion with a client in Los Angeles. From there, SW flies into Narita in order to catch the bullet train to Tokyo, scouting the next wave of immersions for our clients. KC and AB will be in RVA the latter half of the week. And ST will return to RVA this week after completing the NYC Marathon this past weekend.

Start a conversation with any one of us. Or as SW's learning to say: