What We Do

AccessAgility is providing unique and effective support reducing risks within developing nations. Our focus is on information collection and hazard analysis in support of vulnerable populations, and we have a particular interest in slums.

Our strategy is to provide deep information layers about people and place, then add the necessary hazard and risk analysis for several levels of care providers: local people, academic institutions, Host nation, US, UN, and non-governmental relief agencies. We’ll then work with local populations and responsible agencies to improve understanding and to expand information management capabilities everywhere we see a gap.

At AccessAgility, we stress radical inclusion and actionable information. We advocate extensive partnerships, careful research into best practices, respectful relationships with our host governments and the populations they serve, and the greatest possible use of free and open-source tools and imagery. The goal is build a capacity for resilience within populations at risk from hazards that are not of their own making.

Our Goals

• To provide a vulnerable population in a high-risk area with a sustainable resilience framework that they can implement independently if they choose.
• To provide an expansion of structured and current disaster preparedness information available to local populations, national authorities and international response agencies. Our focus is on imagery, GIS data, modeling, mathematical analysis, and risk-reduction recommendations.
• To provide a reduction in anticipated response and relief costs compared to baseline analyses.
• To help others share freely a broader, more flexible, and more effective toolset for hazard assessment, risk mitigation, and community resilience. All tools for the community at risk will be free to that community to the greatest extent possible, and most will be open source, available for further local development.
• To provide a Best Practices repository for ongoing improvements in disaster resilience.
• To reduce the time required for an affected area to return to baseline-or-better functioning after a disaster.
• To create, with partners, global standards for data storage, sharing, and publication.
• To provide a tested and reproducible framework, ready for further implementation through partnerships elsewhere in the world.

Guiding Principles

At AccessAgility we care a great deal about reducing vulnerability.

We know that physical vulnerability is a condition created by an unfortunate combination of a lack of awareness and a lack of resources. We know that hazards, causing such vulnerability, are only risks until the human capacity for management is overwhelmed – then they become disasters. The capacity building we’ve designed into our work IS disaster risk reduction, increasing awareness, optimizing resources, and improving resilience.

We think that building resilience into systems is more efficient than increasing response capabilities for managing an event (though we recognize that’s often necessary, too).

We also think that information is a commodity best shared.

We think that image-based maps are living things. The picture they represent varies from day to day and year to year and updates are crucial. We think that crowdsourced information from those living within the area represented on the map is often the best method for keeping map information current.

We think that communities are complex adaptive systems that require appropriate analysis. Only through a comprehensive understanding of the eco-social system can sensible hazard mitigation strategies be implemented.

We think that engaging the community in preparedness considerations very early in the analysis is a critical aspect of disaster risk reduction. That requires respectful interaction across language, culture, ethnicity, economic, social, and academic boundaries. If there is to be any sustainability in the efforts we bring, the communities themselves need to have a strong voice in our work.

Our Strategy

Our strategic efforts focus on two closely related themes:
(1) Understanding methods for increasing local resilience within communities while…
(2) simultaneously protecting the most critical functions of the regional economy.
That reduces human and property los ses among those most vulnerable, while accelerating recovery of the structures necessary to regain income generation, capital investors, and economic partnerships.

To increase population resilience, we establish an inclusive and adaptive information-sharing loop that includes multi-source imagery, GIS layers of relevant indicators, and the provisioning of robust community communication tools. Information then flows from vulnerable communities, to regional academic centers, through expert assessments and reference mitigation strategies, to interested national structures and various social media, and finally back to the community itself.

Team

The Humanitarian Systems Team at AccessAgility is led by Dr. Eric Rasmussen and employs full and part-time staff, contractors, and experts drawn from a range of specialties. Our resources incorporate skills in imagery management, GIS, mathematics, sociology, linguistics, disaster management, educational development, social media, statistics, banking, municipal finance, urban planning and organizational psychology. Several of our staff are stellar international performers, well-recognized in their field, with extensive experience in the developing world. AccessAgility also uses very local teams specializing in the protection of their own communities, and local academic institutions furthering their understanding of the risks surrounding their students and staff.

Eric D. Rasmussen, MD, MDM, FACP
Vice President for Humanitarian Systems

Dr. Eric Rasmussen is a physician specializing in humanitarian response and currently serves as the Vice-President for Humanitarian Systems at Access Agility. In that role his efforts toward risk reduction and disaster mitigation span several countries in Latin America and Central Asia.

A Board-Certified Internal Medicine physician out of Stanford University, Dr. Rasmussen has an additional European Master’s in Disaster Medicine from WHO-CEMEC in Italy. He has led Disaster Response and Regional Assessment teams in multiple natural and post-conflict humanitarian crises including New Orleans immediately after Katrina, in Haiti immediately after the earthquake, in Banda Aceh after the tsunami, and has worked as a humanitarian-response physician in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia and elsewhere. As the director for all three Strong Angel International Disaster Response Demonstrations for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Department of Defense, he is globally known for fostering constructive relationships across difficult boundaries in challenging places.

Before arriving at AccessAgility Dr. Rasmussen served as founding President and Chief Executive Officer of InSTEDD, a Google-founded nonprofit specializing in humanitarian support through technology and education, focused in Southeast Asia.

Before selection as CEO of InSTEDD, Dr. Rasmussen had spent 25 years on active duty with the US Navy in a number of senior positions, including Fleet Surgeon for the US Navy’s Third Fleet. On his retirement from the Navy he was serving as Chairman of the Department of Medicine within Naval Hospital Bremerton near Seattle, Washington, and Special Advisor in Humanitarian Informatics for the US Office of the Secretary of Defense.