Maps about the San Diego Fires

paul.kedrosky.com

5 points·far33d··3 comments

I know I've discussed this here before, but this is exactly the kind of scenario that the system would handle - 300,000 displaced people in an area with massive network connectivity, trying to figure out where to go.

These Web 2.0 sites are showing the outline of what is possible, but they don't have the granularity (i.e. individual people looking for help) that could be managed with a dedicated system.

The shelter, by the way, just came up on Wired. So, c'mon, somebody bite - tell me why your mapping tech and my shelter design couldn't work for the next fire season.

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/multimedia/2007/10/ga...

I found it very interesting that the newspaper decided to use blogging software instead of their own website to publish updates. The blog model is very good for this kind of always changing, always updating, live news coverage - much better than the traditional "front page" newspaper front page model.

Well, I live in San Diego and I didn't use any of this stuff. My first thought when this became a big problem was not to look for mashups.

I didn't even know the Union-Tribune was blogging, I didn't see a link anywhere on the home page because I just came there looking for updates to their map.

The map itself is pretty interesting because it makes heavy use of GIS data, which is orthogonal to Web 2.0 cutesyness.

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