A new laser-toting disaster lab aims to save lives by saving data

Expected to reach 25 billion connected devices by 2020, the emerging class of "internet of things" companies are starting to realize its potential to address global poverty by helping the international development community narrow the gap between data and action.

Refugio, Texas was ravaged by Hurricane Harvey, leaving behind damaged houses, schools and businesses and people who can not afford to rebuild their lives. However, this town has used its community and found strength in their love of football and their support of one another to keep moving forward.

FEMA’s response to Puerto Rico post-Hurricane Irma has been the “longest sustained domestic airborne food and water mission in the nation’s history. The agency has never distributed more food or installed more generators.” However, due to bureaucracy and delayed decision making, there are still thousands of Puerto Ricans who have not received aid, or were underserved.

In countries like Cambodia, Angola, and Mozambique, rats are saving lives by detecting untriggered land mines. An international nonprofit, Apopo, provides funding a training and works with local organizations to operate at the local level. The rats are light enough that they don’t trigger the explosives and can cover up to 2,000 square feet in just 20 minutes – something that would take a human up to four days to complete.

Europe's generous social policies, such as allowing employees to retain their salaries while taking sick time to care for themselves or family members, may help to mitigate the coronavirus outbreak while also safeguarding the economy. Although the long-term impacts are yet unknown, in the short term, government-provided incentives are helping people and businesses stay afloat.

In order to effectively manage the coronavirus outbreak in South Korea, government officials have stepped in by increasing transparency, subsidizing home medical equipment such as face masks, and rapidly distributing testing kits. The efforts have resulted in many more people already being tested than anticipated and behavioral changes taking effect within the population.

As the novel coronavirus outbreak continues to spread, the San Antonio Food Bank is working with other organizations to get more food out into the community. Although volunteer turnout has decreased, the Texas food bank has partnered with groups like Pre-K 4 SA to hand out food to students and their families. Every day, the food bank says it is sending $500,000 worth of food into the community.

When New York legislators abolished a state law that had long shielded police officers’ disciplinary records from public scrutiny, they were not just responding to recent protests but also to activism over many years by reform advocates and families of victims of police violence. Long-running legal challenges had failed to pry the records loose. But activists – opposed by police unions and their allies – had used public testimony, publicity, and their families’ stories to lay the groundwork for changes that then came quickly after George Floyd’s death sparked nationwide protests of police brutality.

Disaster preparedness in the form of close inter-agency coordination and communication helped Cuyahoga County, Ohio, protect its unhoused population from COVID-19 to a greater extent than Lane County, Oregon. Although Cuyahoga (Cleveland) is larger, with more resources, its effective responses still offer a model to Lane County (Eugene), where a scattered approach and homeless-camp sweeps proved counterproductive. In Cleveland, hotels were quickly enlisted to house people, reducing crowding in shelters by half and street homelessness by 30%. Its largest men's shelter ended up with a low infection rate.

Volunteer citizen seismologists in Haiti are collecting data on earthquakes and aftershocks with equipment provided by researchers to better understand seismic hazards and fault locations in the country.