Who Looks After Homebound San Francisco Residents in a Disaster?

Screen Shot 2016-05-24 at 8.52.38 AM

One thing we have learned from Katrina, Hurricane Sandy and the 2003 European heatwave is that we must do better safeguarding the wellbeing of our most vulnerable citizens. In all these disasters seniors and adults with disabilities perished simply because nobody knew they were there.

According to a 2012 San Francisco Department of Aging and Adult Services report, there may be more than 10,000 homebound residents in San Francisco. A list of vulnerable residents was defunded in 2008, leaving no real way to account for homebound residents in the event of a city wide disaster such as an earthquake.

So what happens to homebound residents during a major disaster? They may very well be left to fend for themselves, or appear far down on the responder priority list during a serious emergency.

Will the power grid fail disabling Wifi and internet communications? Will cell towers still be standing?

We don’t know.

OpenChannel (Resident Safety Network) is a two screen system that places a device in the home of each homebound resident which when enabled provides the location and status of vulnerable residents on a typical map screen. This is done in a low, power, low bandwidth way, without stressing existing communication systems and actually enhancing responder situational awareness.

OpenChannel Resident Safety Network got its start when the San Francisco Tech Council put out a request for proposals seeking ways to use technology to serve the citizens of San Francisco. Among those responding to the call was myself, DC Spensley, a San Francisco artist, technologist, and social entrepreneur.

As an artist / technologist, my daily practice is not mixing paints or carving stone, but pulling together teams of talented people to create works of art that require software and hardware to function. OpenChannel is a natural extension of a development approach that leverages existing technologies to benefit San Francisco’s most vulnerable citizens instead of an art audience.

Together with the guidance of the San Francisco Tech Council and the resources of industry partners like Microsoft, OpenChannel has used seed money intended simply to draft a plan, to instead produce a proof of concept or reference prototype as well as a UI/UX simulation on the software side.

Inspired by this timely development and coached by Microsoft’s Scott Mauvais, OpenChannel was able to leapfrog into the proof of concept prototype phase of development using just a tiny bit of seed funding. This cost effectiveness is due to lean development strategies used to develop software for new media artworks with very limited budgets.

In mid-June, OpenChannel Resident Safety Network unveils a hardware and software prototype that tells what we think is a fundable story, one that we hope will inspire partners who help us build out our engineering and management team with the goal to produce a design prototype by early 2017.

Screen Shot 2016-05-19 at 9.21.42 AM###

David “DC” Spensley is a contemporary artist, creator of telepresent theatrical productions, intriguing art games, social good technology projects and trans-media storytelling. San Francisco based artist DC Spensley investigates opportunities for participation, engagement and play as art experiences. His work has exhibited internationally at venues like Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Frye Museum in Seattle, Triton Museum in Santa Clara, Ars Electronica in Linz Austria, Dutch Electronic Arts Festival in the Netherlands, Boston’s Cyber Arts Festival, San Jose’s ZERO1 Biennial, and most recently at The LAST Festival at Stanford University.

“Simulated space becomes a real place when we experience it together.” – DC Spensley 2006