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Ask HN: Tech jobs addressing crises like Hurricane Ida/Afghanistan refugees?

Every week there is a new crisis: COVID-19, climate change, Afghanistan, and now Hurricane Ida. Are there any startups using tech to address these current problems? I'm specifically interested in problems like housing refugees from Afghanistan, or hurricane disaster relief in Louisiana (but there are of course, many other important problems).

Aliabid94 5y ago
OneConcern is a startup focused on preparing cities for climate change. Smart bunch of folks.
- disaster_relief 5y ago
  This looks very interesting. thank you! I expect work of this nature will become increasingly relevant as climate change causes more and more natural disasters.
reureu 5y ago
It's great that you're interested in applying tech to help solve humanitarian crises. I'd encourage you to considering going domain-first instead of tech-first into a problem, as I think you'll find yourself to be more impactful that way. Consider covid-19: Apple and Google rolled out these contact tracing apps in pretty record time. And yet, they had virtual no impact on the actual epidemic. However, there's still a ton of tech being used to fight it. It's just the tech being used isn't from large tech companies that swooped in, it's from people who have been doing this for years before the pandemic and will probably continue doing it for years after. None of this diminishes the need for tech people to help on these causes; you're probably going to be better able to have an impact working within the orgs doing the work, rather than a startup or tech company trying to sell to those orgs. Alternatively, consider looking up resources on "Effective Altruism" -- one direction that could take you is that your ability to improve the world may be to just make as much money as possible and to donate it directly to those most in need.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  As soon as the Australian contact tracing app was rolled out, the police admitted abusing it for non-tracing queries. When reporters asked how that happened, the police basically called them stupid for even asking. 2) I don't see how a tracing app would work in an area where half of the population is infected like US cities since it would just alert all day long.

Aliabid94 5y ago

OneConcern is a startup focused on preparing cities for climate change. Smart bunch of folks.

disaster_relief 5y ago
This looks very interesting. thank you! I expect work of this nature will become increasingly relevant as climate change causes more and more natural disasters.

reureu 5y ago

It's great that you're interested in applying tech to help solve humanitarian crises. I'd encourage you to considering going domain-first instead of tech-first into a problem, as I think you'll find yourself to be more impactful that way. Consider covid-19: Apple and Google rolled out these contact tracing apps in pretty record time. And yet, they had virtual no impact on the actual epidemic. However, there's still a ton of tech being used to fight it. It's just the tech being used isn't from large tech companies that swooped in, it's from people who have been doing this for years before the pandemic and will probably continue doing it for years after. None of this diminishes the need for tech people to help on these causes; you're probably going to be better able to have an impact working within the orgs doing the work, rather than a startup or tech company trying to sell to those orgs. Alternatively, consider looking up resources on "Effective Altruism" -- one direction that could take you is that your ability to improve the world may be to just make as much money as possible and to donate it directly to those most in need.

redis_mlc 5y ago
As soon as the Australian contact tracing app was rolled out, the police admitted abusing it for non-tracing queries. When reporters asked how that happened, the police basically called them stupid for even asking. 2) I don't see how a tracing app would work in an area where half of the population is infected like US cities since it would just alert all day long.