SMS Data Collection for Risk and Disaster Management

About the Project

In the event of a natural disaster, the National Bureau for Risk and Disaster Management (known by the French acronym BNGRC) is the entity responsible for coordinating programs and activities linked to emergency response and assistance. Additionally, the bureau is also responsible for preparedness and prevention to reduce the impact of disasters.

The Challenge

For several years, post-disaster data have been collected through either

• landline telephones
• radio communication
• hard copy paper reports (mainly for communities close to the BNGRC central office)

There are significant delays associated with collecting disaster data via these paper reports; in times when people need direct, immediate assistance, these lapses can be catastrophic.  Moreover, the processing of information requires 30 minutes or longer for each report received.

Such information processing is time consuming, and the cost of telephone calls increased in parallel with the extent of the damages.

“Every year, an average of 500 villages are affected by cyclones, Madagascar’s most prominent natural disaster. The processing of information is time consuming, involves a lot of personnel, and delays the decision-making and the sending of response teams; however, in the meantime, the extent of the damages is increasing. It is even possible that there will be deaths before the emergency response team arrives”, says Nianja Raonivelo, Webmaster/Data Analyst.

Action Taken

In collaboration with the members of other disaster preparedness projects, BNGRC decided to modernize its post-disaster data collection infrastructure with an HNI-developed mobile phone data reporting platform. The goal is to provide alternatives to disaster-affected communities for reporting post-flood and cyclone information and to reduce the processing time of information that reaches BNGRC’s headquarters. The BNGRC equipped 1,700 reporters in at-risk communities.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) invested in an additional 300 mobile phones for the project. International partners such as CARE, CRS, ADRA and UNDP mobilized their field staff working in areas prone to cyclones and flooding, participated in the training of the reporters and lent various other types of support to this undertaking.

The Result

BNGRC’s mobile phone reporting system for disaster relief, prevention and management is currently operational. The system is considered affordable, reliable and robust enough to meet the organization’s needs in times of crisis.   

According to Nianja Raonivelo, “Now, communicating, processing and compiling the data is done quickly. We map our data, send messages to raise pre-disaster awareness and increase preparedness, access our collected data in real time and share it with other stakeholders.”

Welcome to the Team ThoughtWorks University!

New, capable hands have been added to the DataWinners development team. We are proud to announce that ThoughtWorks Inc. has chosen to work on the DataWinners mobile data collection platform during its six week on-boarding program for newly hired software engineers called ThoughtWorks University (TWU).   The program is designed to instill ThoughtWorks’ core culture and agile programming processes in each new team member.  TWU students gain valuable on-the-job experience by working with a real client.

Joining the existing ThoughtWorks team focused on DataWinners are 15 freshly minted graduates working from ThoughtWorks’ Xi’an, China office. Coursework started in October and will continue until mid November.  We at HNI are grateful for the opportunity to work with these new ThoughtWorkers and are excited about the fresh perspective, energy and enthusiasm these engineers bring to the project.

Several reasons make DataWinners and ThoughtWorks University an ideal fit. First, DataWinners is a mission-driven initiative from which any development organization or social enterprise worldwide can benefit. As such, these new ThoughtWorkers have the opportunity to contribute to a project that has the potential to speed up development.  In addition, team members benefit from working on an open-source project that has a team of collaborators distributed across multiple countries and time zones. These recent graduates also receive first-hand experience in the art of balancing the needs and wants of each involved party while managing upcoming deadlines and responsibilities. We at HNI have a very clear vision of what niche DataWinners will fill and what specific functionality we need. , We’re able to provide clear instructions and expectations for the software upfront, allowing the University students to focus on the programming.

ThoughtWorks University students are entry-level developers.  During the six week course, they are figuratively “thrown into the deep end” and are expected to make a meaningful contribution to DataWinners.  These students and their trainers have been entrusted with some critically important new features to DataWinners. Over the course of the next 6 weeks, ThoughtWorks University will develop the following new functionality for DataWinners:

• Trial accounts that allow anyone worldwide to sign up and use DataWinners free of charge for 30 days
• Simpler SMS syntax that makes submitting data easier for Data Senders
• Bulk SMS engine that allows user to send out or broadcast SMS to multiple recipients at once
• Ability for users to easily track their inbound and outbound SMS traffic
• Enhanced back-end support to help HNI manage its subscriber base

We would like to thank Ms. Shilpa Nair for lobbying TWU on our behalf.  Shilpa leads the ThoughtWorks team based in Pune, India that has been working on DataWinners for most of 2011.  Shilpa is a former instructor at TWU and was well placed to advocate for DataWinners inclusion.

We welcome this expansion of the fruitful HNI-ThoughtWorks partnership and are delighted with the work ThoughtWorks Xi’an and its University students have contributed thus far.

DataWinners Beta+ is Complete!

DataWinners is now entering its second beta phase, in preparation for the commercial launch in mid-December. Having successfully completed the first stage of beta testing, we have decided to implement a number of changes to optimize DataWinners’ usability.  Here are the improvements that we are most excited about:

1) Reminders! If you use DataWinners to collect data from the field, you are now able to send SMS reminders – either to all of your data senders, or specifically only to those who have not yet submitted data during that reporting period for a project. This functionality is important in guaranteeing the timeliness and completeness of your collected data.

2) Multiple languages! DataWinners is now available both in English and in French.  Given the intended primary audience of the software – individuals and organizations working in international development – we believe that making the French language version available from day 1 is important in order to make the DataWinners tool accessible, especially across the African continent.

Moreover, project managers can now set the language in which they want to send all feedback messages (success and error SMS) to field staff.  Language options include English and French (with Malagasy  coming soon).

3) Submit data via the web! For field-based personnel that have access to a computer and the internet, the ability to submit data via the web is now available to them. Our UI provides clear instructions and detailed feedback messages that ensure Data Senders experience no trouble when submitting data.

4) User friendly SMS syntax! Teaching data senders how to compose a data submission SMS is often the biggest hurdle in mobile-based data collection.  DataWinners aims to make it as easy as possible for a field worker or any other – possibly untrained – individual to send in data.  As such, we have decided to test the use of uncomplicated question code identifiers in the second beta phase, and aim to offer an even simpler syntax for the commercial launch.

We continue to work with UNICEF, Catholic Relief Services and Population Services International to complete the beta testing, and anticipate a commercial launch by the end of the year.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter (@datawinners) and check back here for more blog updates!

The Idea of DataWinners is Born

In late 2009, we at Human Network International decided to address a significant challenge we‘d heard about from other non-profit NGOs working in Madagascar: the absence of timely, reliable data from the field on which to base operational decisions. It was the same challenge each time: poor roads, vast distances and unreliable transportation made collecting data using the traditional pen-and-paper system impossible. Moreover, these organizations faced significant obstacles to modernizing their data collection systems:  shortage of time, lack of adequate in-house IT expertise and considerable upfront cost.  Our partners in Madagascar had an acute need to modernize their data collection techniques, but no viable solution.

As humanitarians, we wanted to assist these mission-driven organizations.  As technologists, we believed we had the expertise to help.  Mobile devices are inexpensive and ubiquitous in Madagascar (nearly one in three Malagasy citizens possess a cell phone).  Mobile phone penetration and coverage areas are expanding daily.  As such we focused our efforts on developing mobile phone reporting systems via SMS.

We began meeting separately with each organization to help identify individual need. By examining each organization’s overall goals and objectives and existing paper-based data collection systems, we helped each prioritize their key indicators/questions .

After we completed the needs assessment, HNI’s programming team created a separate custom data collection and communication application for each organization.  Our partners worked in different development and relief sectors (Conservation, public health, natural disaster management). Each project had specific data collection needs.  However every application we developed featured two main functions.  Each of them 1) accepted answers sent in via SMS and displayed the results in a usable format and 2) allowed headquarters staff to send SMS messages back out to individuals based in the field.  We essentially opened a new and direct line of communication between our partner’s headquarters staff and their employees in the field.  Information then flowed back and forth along this new communication line.

In just a couple of months, we modernized our partner’s internal capacity to collect their own data.  Our partners include some of the largest development agencies in the world and are all making major contributions:

• RTI’s Santénet2 Project (child and maternal health)
• Conservation International (environmental protection and awareness)
• Marie Stopes (reproductive health and family planning)
• The World Bank (HIV/AIDS medication tracking)
• Catholic Relief Services (Cyclone relief and disaster management and Water/Sanitation)

We learned a few things by working closely with these partners.  First, while missions differ, the format of these organizations’ data collection needs didn’t.  Organizations had a series of key questions they needed answered.  The subject of these questions differed; some organizations focused on improving peoples’ health while others worked to maintain Madagascar’s incredible bio-diversity.  However the format of their data collection needs was fairly standard:  a questionnaire with 10-15 key questions and answers that were either numbers or text.

Secondly, we needed to do more to further reduce the barriers to mobile data collection.  Our individual, customized approach was successful; we built our partners’ capacity to collect data themselves.  However, we needed anywhere from 2-6 months to complete the job.  This meant only the largest organizations in Madagascar could afford our services.   Our face-to-face approach also meant we couldn’t build an organization’s capacity outside Madagascar, a request we were getting more and more frequently.

So around the middle of 2010, we decided to create an online do-it-yourself data collection service to eliminate the remaining barriers to mobile data collection.  Thanks to our work with our partners in Madagascar, we had a sophisticated, step-by-step process already developed.  This process went from an initial needs assessment all the way to how to present the display of the collected data.  Our goal was to recreate this step-by-step process in our online tool, so organizations could follow the process themselves, online.  We could then drastically reduce the cost and great expand the number of organizations we could help.

So the idea of DataWinners, the online, do-it-yourself data collection service was born. We decided that a hosted service that allows development organizations to create their own data collection projects has significant advantages over the one-off, tailored systems described above. Among the advantages:

Subscribe to DataWinners and start collecting data immediately as opposed to waiting months for professional software developers (like us!) to finish a custom solution.

• Collect as much data as you need.  There’s no limit on the number of questionnaires you can collect, or the number of records your data senders can send in for each questionnaire.
• Modify your questionnaires immediately as your project’s needs change
• Access DataWinners online; no special software or complex configuration required.
• One low monthy fee.  DataWinners is affordable (and you can try it free for one month) and does not require any long term contract or large upfront investment.
• DataWinners is dynamic.  We’re adding new features in each new release; share your feedback with us and we’ll work to incorporate your ideas.

By focusing our efforts on DataWinners we hope to build our partners’ capacity to collect their own data, make better decisions and achieve their organizations’ missions throughout the developing world. Check back with us around the middle of December 2011 when we hope to go live worldwide with DataWinners.

Family Planning and Reproductive Healthcare

Here’s another success story we’d like to share with you that illustrates the power and importance of modernizing data collection efforts.