Relief workers in Haiti received an emergency text message Tuesday about a collapsed school, with children still alive in the rubble. A search-and-rescue team on the scene, however, couldn't find the right location.

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Then a group of volunteers in Boston pinpointed the origin of the message, sent using the 4636 SMS shortcode. They rapidly relayed the information back to Eric Rasmussen, a former top naval medical officer working with rescue teams in Haiti.

A team was then dispatched to the correct grid location. The coordinates were accurate to five decimal places.

That small vignette, provided in e-mail update from Rassmussen, shows how volunteers are using social networking tools to aid relief efforts in Haiti. It's not a fix-all, but it does suggest that something new and unprecedented is happening in humanitarian response.

One of the biggest challenges is getting SMS messages translated rapidly from French and Creole, and relayed to international rescuers. Rob Munro, a graduate fellow at Stanford who works with the nonprofit Energy for Opportunity, was pulled into the effort: He specializes in computer-aided methods for managing and processing medical SMS messages in multiple languages. He has been coordinating volunteers around the world who are translating the messages sent to 4636, categorizing the messages, and – where possible – plotting the exact coordinates.

"The average turnaround for us receiving a message and having a geo-coordinated and translated report to teams on the ground is about 10 minutes," he told Danger Room by e-mail. "The total number of texts is in the thousands, and they arrive every five seconds in busy times, to every 10 minutes overnight."

Some of the messages are urgent pleas for help. Others are requests to relay simple messages to loved ones. Rescuers shared a few examples of translated messages. [They asked that we redact all numbers and family names to protect privacy, and to prevent the relatives of victims from being deluged with calls.]

"Please tell Mrs Maxime ____ of Boston that by the grace of God that everyone is okay. Her number is ____. It is Lubin ____ that sent the message.)

"Someone please I have a brother in France can someone call and tell him that I am not dead only my house got destroyed the number is ___"

"My name is Jean ____ my brother is working in Unicef and I live in C__ 11 A___ I have 2 people that is still alive under the building still ! Send Help!"

Organizations are sharing information in other ways. The Sahana Software Foundation has set up a Haiti 2010 disaster-relief portal that serves as a repository for over 500 organizations now on the ground in Haiti. It lists contact information, as well as activities by geographic area and sector.

In an e-mail, Sahana President and CEO Mark Prutsalis told Danger Room the foundation's request-management system was being fed by two streams: one through text messages sent to 4636 and processed by Ushahidi, and the other through Twitter (they call it, "tweak the tweet"). Requests are categorized and searchable by aid agencies.

"Registered users can make pledges to fulfill requests and mark them as completed or alter their status," Prutsalis said. "We are working on developing reporting and tracking and ticketing capabilities for this, as well as the ability to process and handle requests that come in by e-mail or those that are manually entered by aid agencies into the system."

Sahana also has a mapping system, which provides an annotated map of what is going on the ground. Base layers include imagery drawn from OpenStreetMaps, Digital Globe high-resolution imagery, Ikonos satellite imagery and Google Maps. Sahana adds info from its registry and locations database, Ushahidi events, 4636 SMS messages and other information. They can also provide feeds in a variety of formats, so organizations can effectively use the data being collected on the scene and remotely.

Obviously, this is all still a work in progress, and it remains to be seen if it can be sustained over the long term. The Ushahidi situation room is already looking to train volunteers.

Photo: U.S. Department of Defense

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