Public-Private Alliances to the Rescue

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This idea dates at least as far back as the earthquake in Iran in 2003, when a review showed that more aid would have been delivered if there had not been a bottleneck at smaller airports without experienced personnel and the proper equipment to handle the huge volume of relief shipments.

IBM Takes the Lead in Turkey

Other companies are also bringing tech expertise to global disasters. The IBM (IBM) Crisis Response Team has responded to more than 70 disasters worldwide since it was started in 1993. In 1999, after Turkey was rocked by a massive earthquake, the IBM team helped the Health Minister create a computerized logistics management system that could catalog over 10,000 drugs. In just a few days, IBM had the system running in Turkish and English. As IBM continued to respond to disasters, the team needed a disaster management system that could help track goods, manage personnel, reunite families, register volunteers, and manage resources. There was no global standard package, so IBM kept reinventing systems and customizing them.

Then it had a breakthrough, in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami in 2004. IBM Research's Sanjiva Weerawarana, who was instrumental in the formation of Sri Lanka's open source software community, began working with individuals, universities, and software companies to create the open-source disaster management software called Sahana, after the Sanskrit word for patience. Since then, Sahana has been used in many different disasters, including the Pakistan earthquake, the Peru earthquake, and most recently in Myanmar and China.

While many technology companies are generous with products and money in the wake of disasters, they are sometimes taken aback by the effort required to work within the humanitarian community. "In general, it takes companies a while to figure out how to do this right," says Jesse Robbins, who works with O'Reilly Media and as a volunteer firefighter was a first responder in Hurricane Katrina. Robbins says that tech companies new to the humanitarian sector sometimes come with forceful opinions about how things should be done, which doesn't always go over well with other organizations. He says Microsoft (MSFT) has taken pains to understand how people use its technology to solve problems. "Microsoft is the shining star of doing this right," he says.

A Chance Meeting Leads to Change

The same might be said of the Safeguard Iowa Partnership, a coalition that came about after a chance meeting in 2006 between then-Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack and BENS CEO Charles Boyd. At the invitation of Governor Vilsack, the organization spent about nine months during 2006 facilitating meetings between local businesses, public agencies, and universities. By the beginning of 2007, the Safeguard Iowa Partnership formed with the idea that the government cannot act alone in safeguarding national security. Businesses including Alliant Energy (LNT), Deere (DE), Pella, Rockwell Collins (COL), and Wellmark Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Iowa were founding members.

Just 17 months later, during the floods in Iowa, state officials asked the Safeguard Iowa Partnership to coordinate the donations that came through the Aidmatrix system. The whole idea of having the private sector engaged in disaster management is relatively new, says Kidder at BENS: "Even three years ago, before Hurricane Katrina, we'd talk to businesspeople who would say, 'Isn't this the government's job?'" Kidder doesn't get that response anymore. "The whole public-private collaboration piece has become imperative."

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King is a writer for BusinessWeek.com in San Francisco.