JIDA, or the Joint Improvised-threat Defense Agency, is a new group in the US Department of Defense tasked to think creatively about how all kinds of improvised threats–from online terror to IEDs–can be waylaid. To this end, JIDA plays a role in developing the workflows, insfrastructures, and mechanisms used for emergency prevention and humanitarian aid. Dr. Steve Chan, DuKode’s mentor and Chief Strategy Adviser as well as a Director of the IBM Center for Resiliency and Sustainability, organized this summit at MIT and Harvard to present ways that these institutions’ projects can support JIDA’s mission. Arlene led the group on a tour of MIT Media Lab, where she explained how MindRider could be used for “baselining” the aggregated mental experience of a city in preparation of emergency and disaster response.
