The White House Strategy To Improve Disaster Resilience: Leveraging Open Data

"You might not be aware of that, but floods kill more people in the U.S. each year than hurricanes, tornadoes, or wind storms on average. Half of all flood deaths have occurred when vehicles are swept away due to moving water. In the case of flash floods, as Deputy Chief Chris Anderson of the Tucson Fire Department, recently said in a statement, 'the challenge is knowing where and when exactly the floods will take place and staying in front of the impending natural disaster.' And technology could play an important role in both predicting where the dangers will be and educating the public about those dangers. That’s why, on December 14th, the White House Office of Science and Technology Police, unveiled the first in a series of Innovator Challenges, asking the disaster preparedness community: 'How might we leverage real-time sensors, open data, social media, and other tools to help reduce the number of fatalities from flooding?' Those willing to participate just need to send a one-page description of their idea, or of the prototype, to disastertech@ostp.gov. The Challenge is part of a broader initiative, whose main outcome was the launch, on the same day, of disaster.data.gov, a portal designed to aggregate open data, tools and other disaster-related resources that were previously scattered on the Internet ..."