Katrina PeopleFinder Project

The Katrina PeopleFinder Project was set up in early September, 2005 in response to the dozens of groups collecting lost and safe lists for people affected by Hurricane Katrina. The project was conceived on Friday, September 2, and data entry was stopped with over 90,000 entries (when no new entries were apparent) by Tuesday, September 7. Dozens of technologists and thousands of volunteers had helped make it happen.

The Katrina PeopleFinder Project is an example of a nonprofit technology initiative implemented entirely by volunteers.

= Motivation =

As had happened in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, a multitude of sites had been independently gathering lists of survivors or missing-persons requests. This project set up a system for entering data according to a PFIF (PeopleFinder Interchange Format, also known as PFIF), and reached out to the other sites gathering this information to encourage them to use the same database and avoid duplicating effort.

=Organizational Contributors=

*CivicSpace Labs

*Salesforce.com Foundation

*Social Source Software

*Craigslist

=Individual Contributors=

Over 4000 volunteer data entry crew members

Andrew Hoppin

Carlos Miranda Levy

Paola Di Maio

Gabe Wachob

Darci Chapman Hanning

Wendy Edwards

Deborah Elizabeth Finn

Sue Cline

Jon Lebkowsky

And many more

=See also=

Hurricane Katrina and technology

= External links =

[http://katrinahelp.info/wiki/index.php/Katrina_PeopleFinder_Project Katrina PeopleFinder Project homepage] (via katrinahelp wiki) (Information for volunteers who want to help reunite loved ones who have been displaced by Hurricane Katrina)

[http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/p=170 History of the project] by PeopleFinder contributor [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ethanz Ethan Zuckerman]

[http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003437.html History of the project] on the Worldchanging blog

*[http://blog.deborah.elizabeth.finn.com/blog/_archives/2005/9/15/1230048.html Bringing It All Together for Disaster Preparedness], reflections on possible future collaborations by PeopleFinder contributor [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Deborah909 Deborah Elizabeth Finn]

[http://zesty.ca/pfif/ PFIF description] from zesty.ca (See also the [http://zesty.ca/pfif/1.1/ PFIF 1.1 spec])

*[http://katrinahelp.info/wiki/index.php/Contributors_Pages Volunteers participating in the Katrina PeopleFinder Project]

*[http://katrinahelp.info/wiki/index.php/Why_are_we_doing_this Why are we doing this] (Statement by Katrina PeopleFinder Project volunteerss)

*[http://katrinahelp.info/wiki/index.php/ShelterFinder ShelterFinder] (A related project)

*[http://www.katrinahelp.info/rdata/ RData] (A related project)