How the American Red Cross built an open source disaster-response application for and with volunteers

The American Red Cross built an open-source disaster-response application called Disaster Cycle Services Operations (DCSOps) in partnership with volunteer software developer John Laxson and a Red Cross staffer Michael Hersher. DCSOps was created to log disasters, dispatch volunteers, and track outcomes, and has reduced response times by 50 percent and enabled the organization to respond to nearly 100,000 disasters as of June 2020. The application started with a minimum viable product (MVP) approach, which allowed the team to iterate and add features based on user needs. DCSOps is open source, which has enabled transparency and security through community contributions. The Red Cross also leverages volunteer developers, project managers, and partnerships with tech companies like Twilio and Google for Nonprofits to build and scale their software applications.

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