Thursday, April 5, 2012

Google Goggles for Incident Reporting

We've been experimenting with voice and text based technologies for situational reporting; more specifically, field observation reports that Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) members share with the incident management hub.

Can Google's Goggles be an instrument to improve the efficiencies and effectiveness for grassroots CERT members in supplying information. We found the voice-enabled technologies are best suited for developing non-English speaking and lesser computer literate countries like Sri Lanka. Emergency responders are familiar and find it easy to use simple voice calls.

Given that Google's Goggles can record a voicemail and take a photo, a possible Sahan interface may be to use such a device to enable rapid incident reporting. Procedure is simple, tell the story about the incident (of field observation), click a photo, then location and time stamp it, press submit.