What Sandy Has Taught Us About Technology, Relief and Resilience

[Commentary] Nerds in the aftermath of Sandy sprang into action: We’ve seen some innovative technology solutions address many aspects of the fallout of the storm. It got me poking around at what’s working and what isn’t, and starting to look at communications solutions we can start to put in place before the next storm, disaster, revolution or what-have-you.

In the end, we need to take the lessons we’ve learned about last-mile organizing, disaster relief elsewhere, ideas for technologies that include traditional, commercial infrastructure and ad-hoc deployment, and roll them up into one big package. Not simple. And we’re of course not sure whose responsibility this all is, or should be. Given that climate change is not just an idea, but a clear reality, getting to work on resilience now is the only way we’re going to be able to take care of each other.