That is the excuse that I am going to use.
Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda): The Mapping Response from the Tech Community
We have been hearing plenty about the typhoon in the news. Like all natural disasters it is tragic. It also sounds like more could have been done to prevent the amount of destruction and death in the community. We should not focus on placing the blame on anyone. Instead we should use it as a learning experience.
The article today talks about how volunteers used crowd sourced information and specialized groups to help monitor and analyze data to help emergency response groups. I have talked about crowd sourcing in the past and how geotagged social media entries can be used to create response priorities. As this article mentions, the amount of data coming in can be overwhelming, distracting, or incorrect. By using a system of keywords and permissions you can filter out all of the unnecessary data. Over time the system can learn and start providing useful information.
It will be interesting to see how this type of technology develops and becomes available for all natural disasters and even smaller private corporation projects.