By Dave Copeland
The Boston Globe

BOSTON — In 1998, a State Department official, Michael Gray, was forced to address a major humanitarian crisis: About 5 million people were on the verge of starvation in war-torn Serbia.

Three years later, his job as State Department adviser to the US Central Command took him to Afghanistan, where war displaced more than one million people.

The two scenarios were similar in an important way: There was a lack of accurate, updated information to help aid workers assess the needs and deploy resources.

In Afghanistan, US military officials didn't know where UNICEF workers were operating an immunization clinic. In Kosovo, the International Commission for the Red Cross's headquarters was bombed when faulty GPS coordinates were entered into weapons systems.

"All of this could have been easily corrected with off-the-shelf technology that was available at the time," Gray said. "Even then, you could have gone into Circuit City and bought a hand-held GPS unit that would have prevented all of those problems."

So in 2003, Gray took a sabbatical to research off-the-shelf technologies that could be adapted for humanitarian aid applications. More than four years later, the effort evolved into full-time job: Gray is now chief executive of Global Relief Technologies Inc., a four-year-old company in Portsmouth, N.H.

It makes a software system that runs on hand-held PDAs and allows aid workers to funnel information back to a command center. From there, officials can make decisions on how to use resources.

The software, called GRT, operates on devices ranging from cellphones to personal organizers. The company is adapting it to run on the Blackberry, as well. The system can be customized to collect specific information, such as water levels and damage estimates during a flood, or data about refugee camps with medical needs in a war zone.

While Gray initially set out to adapt products already commercially available, Global Relief Technologies ultimately built its own patented system.

The product replaces dated, paper-based emergency-data gathering systems like the one used by the American Red Cross. Typically, field workers take notes and call in their findings to a command center. But geographic coordinates often had to be estimated, leading to inaccurate data, and sometimes causing too few or too many relief workers to be dispatched. With a GRT-enabled device, much of the data collection is automated, and all of the information can be transmitted instantly.

"Now they're not just throwing darts in the dark, which is typically how these decisions are made," Gray said. "It's a radical departure from what we were doing in the past, when we had people calling in saying 'This is what I think is happening.' "

The product underwent a major test last month, when the Red Cross used it during flooding in Iowa that displaced 40,000 people. Small teams assessed the damage in particular areas and transmitted data over a satellite network, including photos, water levels, the extent of damage to specific homes, and geographic information about areas that were flooded and being evacuated.

It was overlaid on maps and satellite images, allowing the Red Cross to anticipate needs and strategically place personnel and supply points. The system even matched the names of displaced residents with damage estimates for their homes.

The Red Cross hasn't completely switched over to GRT software. In Iowa, GRT was deployed as a pilot program in the Cedar Rapids area, where the Cedar River crested at 31.1 feet - 19.1 feet above flood level.

Becky McCorry, manager of the disaster operations center at Red Cross headquarters in Washington, D.C., said the group hopes to test the program in future disasters, with hopes of making a complete switch to the GRT-built system in the future.

"Right now, it's all paper," McCorry said. "If we end that process and make this the standard, we can expedite the process of servicing our clients."

For the product to be effective, it has to be extremely simple to use, Gray said.

"If you put people - even if they're comfortable using hand-held technology - in a stressful situation, they can become overwhelmed. If that happens they're going to put it aside."

© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.