M

ore than 30 hackers and software engineers from throughout Indonesia are gathering with their laptop computers and sophisticated gadgets in a room with big screens on the 15th floor of one of Central Jakarta’s skyscrapers.

“No, of course we aren’t hacking top secret government information for WikiLeaks. We are part of an event called ‘The Jakarta-leg of Random Hacks of Kindness’,” Kristiono Setyadi said Saturday.

The web developer said he was a participant, and also last year’s winner, of the event that brought together hackers, software engineers and disaster management experts.

The event, also known as Hackathon, has twice been held in Jakarta.

Last year, Kristiono managed to create Android operating system-affiliated software that could be used by disaster management workers for obtaining data immediately after a disaster took place.

The participants of the event, which is supported by the Australian government through its Australia-Indonesia Facility for Disaster Reduction (AIFDR), the National Disaster Management Agency (BNPB), the World Bank and dailysocial.net, would create software solutions for improving responses to natural disasters.

The AIFDR was established based on an agreement between the prime minister of Australia and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Peru in November 2008. The Australian government donated A$67 million (US$65.6 million) to the establishment and management of the facility for a five-year period.

“We want these young people to ‘hack’ so that these programs can be developed and easily operated by mitigation managers throughout the country,” said AIFDR risk and vulnerability manager Trevor Du,

He cited software called the “red-in-box program” as an example of the challenges. The technicians should be able to modify and provide solutions for the application so that it can provide comprehensive data within minutes after a disaster. The data must be easy to read by other people with limited technology knowledge.

World Bank Global Facility For Disaster Reduction and Recovery manager Stuart P.D. Gill said the event was not only held in Jakarta, but also took place in 19 cities in the world, including Berlin and New York.

The software can be accessed and used for free at the website wiki.rhok.org. (rch)