Attempting a Knowledge Commons in the Field: the Response to the January 12th, 2010 Haitian Earthquake

This paper examines the response system that emerged in Haiti following the 2010 Earthquake in an operational context with no national disaster plan, but a very large presence of international aid organizations operating under the official framework of the United Nations. This analysis is based on data from UN OCHA situation reports that documented actions taken in response to needs generated by the earthquake and validated through semi-structured interviews with key managers in the system. These data are analyzed using UCINet and ORA software to compare the identified networks against the UN OCHA cluster framework for humanitarian assistance and across the period of the first three weeks following the earthquake. It is intended to document the details of communication breakdown during the response to support efforts to
improve future disaster response efforts.