Interview: Adam Papendieck, Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy

Adam Papendieck...is currently the Sr. Program Manager for Technology at the Payson Center for International Development at Tulane University, where his role is to leverage appropriate and innovative information technologies in support of research projects, funded Public Health capacity-building projects in East Africa, and crisis informatics activities with the Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy. 

He has worked on applied ICT activities such as the creation of a dynamic web mapping application for the World Vision US corporate information portal, the design and implementation of open source thin client computer labs in Rwanda, the creation of e-learning platforms at African institutions of higher education, various crisis mapping initiatives and disaster analytics activities for the Gulf Oil Spill, Hurricane Katrina and other events.

Interview Notes

I spoke with Adam today about the technologies we’ve encountered in this class, his views on some of them, and where he sees the future of the field going. Adam is particularly interested in crowdsourcing and has experience working with Ushahidi, both on the development/applied side for the Gulf Oil Spill last year, and on the evaluation side following the earthquake in Haiti. Here are some of Adam’s (paraphrased) comments on the field, the merits and pitfalls of some of these technologies, and his vision for the future...