The message is simple: text your observations about the disaster and your location to 3441, beginning your message with "FL" for flood relief. Using this information, PakRelief Crowd Map creates a dynamic map of the flood emergency and directs relief agencies to those areas.

Recent floods in Pakistan have claimed over 1600 lives and displaced over 18 million individuals -- about one-tenth of Pakistan's population. Enabled by a global outpouring of support for the Pakistani people, relief aid and resources have been immediately dispatched to affected areas. But access to relevant, timely, and up-to-date information about the flood remains elusive in this emergency context. Relying on patchy information to allocate limited resources create distortions both in emergency relief and in long-term policy planning. Pakistan Flood Incident Reporting, or the PakRelief Crowd Map, is a centralized database for gathering information on disaster-related variables. PakRelief relies on information communicated through SMS, recognizing the wide use of mobile phones throughout Pakistan. With your help, PakRelief Crowd Map can ensure the efficient distribution of limited resources through incident reporting. All it takes is a simple text message to 3411 relating your observations of the flood.

Past initiatives like PakRelief Crowd Map, based on the Ushahidi platform, have saved countless lives. For example, students from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy used Ushahidi's crowd map technology and Google Earth to direct and guide the search efforts of United States Coast Guard in Haiti. For more on Ushahidi's innovative platform and their use in crisis situations, please visit their website at http://www.ushahidi.com/platform.

SUPPORT US

Send us information: if you have access to a mobile phone, and have first-hand information about how the flood is affecting your situation, text 3441 and begin your message with "FL" for flood relief. At this time, we are not yet equipped to process urgent emergency information -- so please send only your location, observations, and current situation. We will relay this information to relief agencies as received.

Help us with logistics: Do you have spare laptops or computers to donate? Or space in Islamabad? Any money to spare to assist in communication costs? If so, please contact us with your information at pkfloods@brightspyre.com.

Help us with your time: If you would like to assist in designing multi-lingual brochures to spread the message of the 3441 short code, operations support, coordinating reports of incoming SMS and email messages, approving and mapping the reports coming from flood-affected areas, training humanitarian agencies in incident and report verification or spreading the word through Facebook, Twitter, blogs, or other social media -- let us know! Contact us at pkfloods@brightspyre.com.

JOIN US

Humanitarian Organizations: Partner with us to receive instant, immediate information regarding the unfolding crisis. If you have information you would like to add to PakRelief CrowdMap, please report it here: http://pakrelief.crowdmap.com/reports/submit.

Media Organizations: If you have journalists or other information from the front lines of the emergency, we would appreciate your help in making the PakRelief Crowd Map as comprehensive as possible. Get in touch at pkfloods@brightspyre.com.

Current Partners:

Digitania Pakistan (http://digitania.com.pk/) is providing SMS shortcode, mobile messageing gateway and all the SMS infrastructure.

Cogilent Solutions (www.cogilent.com) & BrightSpyre (www.BrightSpyre.com) are leading the project, managing the technology and coordinating the project activities.

HOW DOES THE SYSTEM WORK?

People with access to working mobile phones can text message 3441 and relay their first-hand information of the flood's ravaging effects. Once the information is submitted, a team of administrators verifies it, updates it if necessary where information may be complete, and then places it on the map. This group currently comprises collaborators with significant experience in global disaster coordination. Once verified, the information is mapped onto the CrisisMap. PakRelief then notifies an agency working in the location to the need.

ABOUT THE PAKRELIEF TEAM

Faisal Chohan, Founder, BrightSpyre & Cogilent Solutions; Senior Fellow at TED;

Patrick Meier, Director of Crisis Mapping and Strategic Partnerships, Ushahidi; Ph.D Candidate at The Fletcher School, Tufts University;

Jonas Welton, Fulbright Scholar, Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy Candidate at The Fletcher School, Tufts University; ;

Ali Asjad Naqvi, Candidate for Ph.D in Economics, The New School for Social Research;

Imad Ahmed, Master of International Business Candidate at The Fletcher School, Tufts University, and at HEC School of Management in Paris as a Schmidheiny Global Business Scholar;

Awab Alvi, Pakistani dentist, blogger, and Fellow at TED;

Nabiha Syed, Information Society Project Student Fellow, Yale Law School, J.D. 2010; Marshall Scholar, Oxford University, 2010-2011;

Dania Khan, Fulbright Scholar, Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy Candidate at The Fletcher School, Tufts University;

Maria Hasan, Fulbright Scholar, Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy Candidate at The Fletcher School, Tufts University;

Fatima Jafri, Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy Candidate at The Fletcher School, Tufts University; J.D. Candidate, Columbia Law School;

Rizwan Ladha, Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy Candidate at The Fletcher School, Tufts University;

Sabah Khan, Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy Candidate at The Fletcher School, Tufts University;

Bilal Baloch, Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy Candidate at The Fletcher School, Tufts University;

Daniyal Noorani, Business Developer, Metabolix, Inc.