Crowdsourcing: gathering information to support forest fire fighting

Elena Rapisardi, a new friend who contracts with, and does innovative volunteer work for, various parts of the Italian government, has reported out on an interesting meeting here. I bring this up because we don’t always notice when new ground is being broken and new fuel is being provided for our own further development and innovation. She’s open to further discussion!

Rapisardi, a communications expert and programmer who has a background in TV production, is a global citizen of good will and rising leader who is very interested in harnessing social media to make a difference. Most recently, she has done this by [1] collaborating with colleagues to develop applications to gather and organize citizens to help in emergency situations such as earthquakes (in Italy, emergency management is termed “civil protection”) and [2] applying the concept of crowdsourcing to forest fire spotting.

Now read this other GovLoop blog post – does it give you ideas about further unexplored potential? And go here to read about a recent group conversation with this amazing woman. Finally, her 2009 NYC Web 2.0 Expo slide deck is here.