Introduction

In Christchurch over the past year New Zealand has experienced up close and very personally how disasters unfold on the ground.

Though emergency services responded very well to the challenges they faced - it is almost certain that better information could have been provided faster to both crisis responders and the public, both during the crises as they unfolded, and in the aftermath which as we know continues more than a year later.

In startup weekend terms this is "the pain" that needs to be addressed by our startup.

Our new web startup is called groundfacts.com.

We are seeking feedback from:
1. earthquake survivors;
2. friends or relatives of earthquake survivors;
3. people concerned about earthquakes and who want to be prepared in case shit happens;
4: media professionals - PR and News;
5. crisis response professionals.

Background Information

groundfacts.com is proposing to develop three products for three markets:
the public (a mobile application to enable people on the ground to receive news from their immediate vicinity - and to help them inform the rescue responders what is going on);

& information feed products for:

government and corporates(particularly for first responders such as the police, fire service, civil defence, councils and utilities - a sophisticated crisis response system which can be turned on when a crisis happens and which both encourages the production of good crisis information - and verifies and delivers it as fast as possible to relevant crisis responders);
media (an interface to sort the wheat from the chaff to assist in presenting breaking twitter news in a useful form to those affected by the crisis, the wider public and reporters )

So if you are a member of the public who is the danger from natural and man-made disasters then we are interested in hearing from you. And we are particularly interested in hearing from people affected by the earthquakes in Chile, NZ and Japan in the past year.

If you fall into one of the later two categories two special surveys are coming soon - when they are completed they will be linked here...

Media Questionaire - Coming Soon
Government/Crisis Responders Questionaire

Background information

groundfacts.com is one of the teams competing at this weekend's Startup Weekend in Wellington. The team is led by Miles Thompson (so far) includes Tim McNamara, Simon Coggins, Joav Beerman, Peter Kerr, Matt Burgess and Alastair Thompson. We have two spare tickets if anyone wants to come and help us some more on this project tomorrow - we are particularly looking for a designer to help mock up some of web our pages - if you are interested email groundfacts@gmail.com or tweet @groundfacts.

ENDS

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