EBOLAWEB » preparedness | EBOLAWEB

IBM Launches Humanitarian Initiatives to Help Contain Ebola Outbreak in Africa

Nathanael Cretin — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 11:38:49 +0000

Taps data and citizen engagement against the spread of disease

FREETOWN, SIERRA LEONE; LAGOS, NIGERIA – 27 Oct 2014: IBM (NYSE: IBM) has launched several initiatives to help curb the spread of Ebola in West Africa.

They include a citizen engagement and analytics system in Sierra Leone that enables communities affected by Ebola to communicate their issues and concerns directly to the government; a donation of IBM Connections technology in Nigeria to strengthen the Lagos State government’s preparedness for future disease outbreaks; and a global platform for sharing Ebola-related open data.

The efforts combine expertise from IBM’s global network of research labs with the company’s years of experience in humanitarian disaster response by applying mobile technology, data analytics and cloud computing to help governments and relief agencies as they seek to contain the deadly disease.

The work benefits from contributions from a number of partners including Sierra Leone’s Open Government Initiative, Cambridge University’s Africa’s Voices project, Airtel and Kenya’s Echo Mobile.

Full article

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/45214.wss

Chronicle of a well-prepared disaster

Nathanael Cretin — Fri, 31 Oct 2014 11:35:35 +0000

By Guillaume Lachenal, in Somatosphere’s Ebola fieldnotes, October 31, 2014.

A French version of this piece was originally published in Libération on 18 September 2014.

“It is useless to laboriously interpret disaster movies in terms of their relation to an ‘objective’ social crisis or even to an ‘objective’ phantasm of disaster,” wrote Jean Baudrillard in 1981. “It is in another sense that (…) it is the social itself that, in contemporary discourse, is organised along the lines of a disaster-movie script.” In its Saturday, 13 September edition, the French daily Libération devoted several columns of its paper to the analysis of apocalyptic films, which reflect our anxiety in the face of pandemics. The Ebola virus epidemic which is raging in several western African countries calls for a more radical critique.

Full article

http://somatosphere.net/2014/10/chronicle-of-a-well-prepared-disaster.html

Chronique d’un film catastrophe bien preparé – Libération

Nathanael Cretin — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 08:55:58 +0000

Guillaume Lachenal a publié sur le site internet de Libération, en date du 18 septembre 2014, une très intéressante tribune traitant de l’épidémie actuelle du virus Ebola.

«Inutile d’interpréter laborieusement les films catastrophe dans leur rapport à une crise sociale “objective” ou même à un phantasme “objectif” de catastrophe», écrivait Jean Baudrillard en 1981. C’est dans l’autre sens qu’il faut dire que c’est «le social lui-même quis’organise selon un scénario de film de catastrophe». Il y a peu, Libération consacrait quelques colonnes à l’analyse de films d’apocalypse, miroirs de nos anxiétés face aux pandémies. L’épidémie de virus Ebola, qui ravage plusieurs pays d’Afrique de l’Ouest, exige une critique plus radicale. La crise actuelle n’est pas un cauchemar qui se réalise sous nos yeux, «comme dans les films catastrophe». Elle n’est pas une anomalie, ni un accident qui aurait pris de court les organisations sanitaires ; elle n’est pas, pour reprendre la langue de bois diplomatique, un «défi» organisationnel, financier et politique lancé à la communauté internationale et aux humanitaires. C’est dans l’autre sens qu’il faut le dire : la crise Ebola est le produit de deux décennies de choix et d’actions politiques.

EBOLAWEB » preparedness | EBOLAWEB

IBM Launches Humanitarian Initiatives to Help Contain Ebola Outbreak in Africa

Taps data and citizen engagement against the spread of disease

Full article

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/45214.wss

Chronicle of a well-prepared disaster

Full article

http://somatosphere.net/2014/10/chronicle-of-a-well-prepared-disaster.html

Chronique d’un film catastrophe bien preparé – Libération

Article complet : http://www.liberation.fr/monde/2014/09/18/chronique-d-un-film-catastrophe-bien-prepare_1103419