Jawad Yousufzai – Peshawar
Within days of the floods making headlines, the youth in Peshawar launched a website flood.pk to help flood affectees and relief teams across Pakistan.
The initiative of the the Enlight Lab, a nonprofit civil society organization aims to provide real-time crowdsourced data on relief camps in the latest flood regions
The portal provide relief needed, list volunteers & fundraisers, rivers flow, and other flood-related data to help flood affectees, relief teams in Pakistan.
Talking to the media, one of the founders of the website, Shafeeq Gigyani, said that the purpose of the portal to provide and store information about the flash flood across Pakistan.
He said that the first-of-its-kind website has a dashboard and tables of all flood-related data displayed on one platform, which is accessible to all internet users, Gigyani added
Talking about the features, he said that the website also connects people, government and other organizations, who are actively taking part in the management of flood relief activities.
The civil activist explain that the portal data would be used in upcoming relief campaigns and in the future to avoid and preparedness for such kind of disasters.
The co-founder of Enlight Lab said that the website also has brief sheets of fundraisers & volunteers who are providing relief to the flood affectees.
He further expresses that the portal also updated river flow data dataset was provided by the Performance Management & Reforms Unit, Gigyani added.
The civil activist sharing experience said that we are experiencing such situations after every five years, but unfortunately, we are not learning from the past.
He further concluded with comment that the initiative of making such portal is the step towards recording lessons learned, Gigyani added.
Last month, the country ravaged by the worst floods in its history, which one-third of Pakistan has been completely submerged by historic flooding
The devastating flash floods have washed away roads, homes and crops – leaving a trail of deadly havoc across Pakistan.
The youth utilized information and communication technologies, a modern solution in the response to these devastating floods
To know more about the modern solution to the traditional problems, on contacted Waleed Afridi, who has developed a portal for autunitic information regarding flood
Talking to the phone, he said that the innovative solution using technology to gather and showcase the data to address challenging and havoc situation caused by floods.
He said that in the disaster, everyone should utilize their skills for social good, and we believe that the technology can play a vital role in solving complex issues, Afridi added.
The software argued that the same crowdsourcing techniques are used in Kenya, Chile, Russia, and the US for solving disasters and mass mobilization.
He said that the aim of portal is to guide the humanitarian community and those involved in large-scale disaster response toward more efficient uses of technology, Afridi added.
He further elaborates that the portal is the solution to all the problem, like majority in the flood were of facing the issue regarding information in the flood relief activities.
The tech person urged people to use food.pk to avail all the data and information to reach out to the relief teams and effected people via this platform.
He hoped that such kind of steps will open window to the ongoing revolution in information management in such kind of crisis across Pakistan, Afridi concluded.
