Our Video of the Week feature showcases a selected video each Friday that captures the essence of innovation, technology and new ideas happening in government today.

This week’s video and text courtesy of FEMA.

Description: This is a message issued this week from Deputy Administrator Rich Serino thanking the volunteers assisting with aerial imagery analysis in the Hurricane Sandy recovery effort.

In partnership with FEMA, the Civil Air Patrol, and the Readiness, Response, Recovery (R3) team from NGA that supports FEMA, volunteers are participating in a crowdsourcing project using open source software to identify areas in need of attention and to gather information that might assist FEMA down the road. The project is based on code from Jeffrey Warren of the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science called MapMill. It was modified by Kate Chapman and Schuyler Erle at the Camp Roberts/RELIEF field exploration in August 2012.

The project is an example of how innovative methods such as crowdsourcing, coupled with new technology can make a difference in how the federal government accomplishes various missions.