Crisis control: How the Everest economy can make disaster response faster and leaner.
All economic systems are built on top of a foundation of an atomic layer of verifiable identity and stored value. It is the basis for assured value transfer, systems of credit, and the burden of trust that is required to send and receive value.
While stored value is a significant consideration, the role that identity plays in economic processes is often overlooked. If we use the backdrop of a natural disaster, you can see just how integral both of these pillars are to an entire nation’s potential economic efficiency.
In the aftermath of a disaster, the need for a fast and accurate way to verify people’s identity becomes more urgent than ever. Huge numbers of displaced people flood into systems that are ill-equipped to verify their identity. People require access to health care, financial aid, and housing and are unable to prove who they are in order to receive them.
Within emerging markets, often the constraints in existing logistics and infrastructure can lead to acute, disproportionate and long-term negative effects, particularly as it relates to large unverified populations.
Paper documentation can be destroyed or lost during the event. Medical help needs to be administered quickly and financial/ humanitarian aid needs to be deployed rapidly to those most at risk. Without identity and a means to store value, value transfer processes are hindered and value is eroded through the quagmire of identity verification, misallocation, and fraud.
How Device-free “biometric cloud wallets” and Digital Identity optimize aid distribution during natural disasters.
Biometric identity verification with a cloud wallet removes the need for documents or a device. Displaced or injured people can be identified instantly, onsite, and by different organizations.
Everest’s EverID self-sovereign solution stores identity records accumulated over time, creating a complete identity profile that can be instantly accessed and used across borders. This stops people from having to access multiple centralized authorities, like their government or banks during times of crisis. Decentralized, user-owned identity speeds up access to relief and medical care, which will ultimately save lives during disasters and allow people to start the process of rebuilding with a much faster timeline.
This solution works for both parties — beneficiaries and administrators. In addition to supporting the victims of natural disasters, allowing the right people access to administer aid requires verification. Aid workers will have a high proportion of international staff that has varying qualifications, forms of ID, and rights to access systems or organizations already involved in the aid effort.
‘’ In the chaos that accompanies disasters, there is a latent threat of doing more harm by admitting unauthenticated people to a vulnerable asset or scene. ‘’
How can you verify the qualifications of an international nurse or doctor at the scene of a crisis? Biometric identity scans will allow relief organizations to do just that. Information such as medical qualifications can be built into the data profile and accessed as part of the verification process. Refugees and displaced people will not face the issues of entering a new country without documentation. Missing people can be quickly reunited with their families. By removing a reliance on weakened and overloaded infrastructure, Everest will allow people to gain direct access to the services they need in a safe and secure manner.
After the initial challenge of identification comes the logistics of distribution.
Via Everest’s EverChain and EverWallet, value transfer and storage platforms, humanitarian assistance can be issued directly to those in need through a personal ‘biometric cloud wallet’. This shortens the supply chain between donor and recipient, eliminating the significant losses through leakage at times of crisis. The World Food Programme reports that over $10 million in yearly aid is unaccounted for. Per a report last year the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction:
“Contracts had been given to large contractors who subcontracted to smaller ones, who subcontracted to Afghan NGOs, who subcontracted to local firms. By the time the local firms got the money and paid off corrupt officials, too little was left to build a proper road or school.”
The supply chain is so long that value depletes to almost nothing. With Everest’s EverChain, a specific value such as food vouchers can be sent and stored digitally on the distributed ledger, making distribution universal and almost instant. Property and ownership can be verified by insurance companies to help people receive payments and short-term assistance without waiting weeks or months.
Whilst developing nations and emerging markets will always feel a greater impact from natural disasters, rich nations are not immune to fraud and misallocation. An independent congressional body conducted an audit into federal emergency relief for victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 and discovered that up to $1.4 billion of the $6 billion allocated was lost to fraud or improper use.
Everest’s identity and value transfer systems will make disaster response faster, more effective, and able to reach the most isolated communities. The blockchain ledger provides transparent, timely and comparable data that prevents loss and leakage through misallocation of funds.
Universal, biometric identity coupled with a scalable transaction system will save lives during natural disasters. It will help people locate their families, get access to aid, and start the rebuilding process faster. Accurate and fast value transfer makes the supply chain between donor and recipient as short as possible, cutting out leakage, fraud, and the misallocation of funds. Everest’s holistic approach to manage crisis situations will make government organizations, institutions, and NGOs more efficient in their responses and more effective with the resources they have.
