The San Jose Mercury News’ Dan Gillmor has an interesting piece on DARPA’s “Strong Angel II“, a program aimed at developing techniques for “critical information management within austere environments.” From the article:

KONA, HAWAII – They were soldiers and sailors, doctors and relief workers, technologists and managers. Over the course of a few days, they transformed a barren lava bed into a cutting-edge test bed of communications and collaboration.
Their overarching goal, in a project dubbed “Strong Angel II” (http://strongangel.telascience.org) was humanitarian: to help create a way for military and civilian disaster-relief people to deal more efficiently with each other — and with the people who need assistance — in the turmoil that follows catastrophes.

Read the rest here.