Help & frequently asked questions

A resource for everyone who cares about the gulf region's relief and rebuilding efforts.

We're a group of volunteers who have been supplying semi-trailers of supplies to the gulf. Click 'Main' in the upper-right to go the main CAT website, which has detailed information about CAT's mission and strategy.

Through our work delivering supplies to the gulf, we had been gathering information about who needed what. We often found that we had more information than the people that we were trying to help. It occurred to us that people in the gulf might like all of this information in one place. So we wanted to provide that information.

The database seemed a natural outgrowth of our supply efforts. We had been gathering information about supply chains and it occurred to us that if we were going to put up a site, we might as well include information that the residents could use as well...like where they can get meals and showers.

In a time of crisis, information needs to be organized and available in real-time. Putting it in a public place helps the people who need it most. The web is a public space that can reach a lot of people. Anyone that has information can use this site or other sites to distribute that information to workers and/or the public.

Like other web resources, this is a website that anyone can access. Unlike many other public web reources, this one provides sorting functions to allow you to go find exactly what you are looking for. Blogs and forums are good spaces to have conversations, but they do not provide for good sorting functionality. You have to look through long lists of threads to find information.

The CAT database solves this problem by having developed a structure for entering data which is specifically tailored to CAT's relief mission, and combining this with a web interface which allows users to quickly find the information they need. The CAT database is also undergoing continuous evolution, adding new features as new needs are discovered, rather than relying on overburdened systems designed for other purposes.

There are lots of sites that have information. To accomplish CAT's goals, we needed something more advanced than anything we could find out there, for our own use. Since we were going to create it anyway, we decided to make it available to the public, and we hope it will be useful.

If there's another online resource you think we should know about, we'd certainly appreciate hearing from you (click 'Contact' in the upper-right). We're always looking for others to team up with who share our mission.

Development of the database in its current form began on September 29th, and the database was opened to the public on October 17th, 2005.

Yes, we are totally committed service-oriented people. We are not going anywhere. The site is here for your use as long as you need it.

The database attempts to figure out the physical location of a facility based upon its address. However, not all addresses are known by the service used for this lookup, and if the address was not entered properly, the database may not be able to look it up.

For the address lookup to work, the address needs to be entered so that the first line looks like '123 Some St'. The town and state also need to be correct, of course.

If you see facilities without maps, double-check that their address is entered correctly. If you think a facility has a correct address, but it still doesn't show up with a map, E-mail us, and we'll see if it can be fixed.

If you find a facility without a proper address, and you know the correct one, please send it to us!

This is because all the dates are stored internally in UTC, so that we can handle differing timezones. Unfortunately, the dates aren't yet displayed in users' local timezones, so times and dates generated by the system may appear 'in the future', not accounting for their timezone. Dates/times which are displayed in UTC generally indicate this, e.g.:

Updated At: Fri Oct 07 20:27:13 UTC 2005

All *user entered* dates, such as on loads, are displayed without modification, and with no timezone indicator -- these are presumed to be in the local timezone of the relevant facility, e.g.:

Estimated Time of Arrival: Wed Oct 26 23:00:00 2005

If you think you've spotted a problem with date handling, where it doesn't obey these rules, definitely let us know about it.

Currently, only database administrators can delete facilities and items. If you spot a duplicate facility or item, please E-mail us. If you've accidentally entered a duplicate facility, you can change its name to 'DUPLICATE -- PLEASE DELETE'; but also still E-mail us to make sure we notice.

When E-mailing us about a duplicate facility, it's helpful if you click on the facility, then copy the URL from your address bar into the E-mail. That way we know exactly which one you're talking about. If you have trouble doing this, though, don't worry about it -- just send us an E-mail with the name and location of the facility.

It's normal for an item to be in multiple categories; for instance, Latex Gloves are in both Cleaning and Medical, because they're used for both purposes.

When entering needs or availabilities, you only need to select the item ONCE, and you can select it from EITHER category. Your entry will then automatically show up in all categories which that item belongs to.

If an item is listed more than once under the SAME category, it's an actual duplicate item. Please use ONLY the copy of the item which shows up FIRST in the list, and E-mail us about the duplicate so we can fix it.

If there are already some entries using the duplicate, don't worry about it -- we'll move those to the other copy when fixing it, they won't be deleted.

If you enter new items using the Quick Needs/Availability Creators, those items will initially be placed into the special category 'New/Unassigned'. Periodically, CAT members review the new items in 'New/Unassigned' and place them into appropriate categories. You don't need to worry about categorizing items yourself, although you're welcome to E-mail us with suggestions.

Periodically, items in 'New/Unassigned' are moved into more specific categories, or merged with existing items. If you were using an item in 'New/Unassigned' and it's vanished, look around for that item, or a similar one, in other categories.

One easy way to find an item if you know its name is to click on 'Items' at the top, then select 'View Alphabetically'. If you find the item and click on it, the item's page will tell you what categories it's in.

If you can't find your item, or think it's been placed in the wrong categories, please feel free to E-mail us.

When calculating the distance between two facilities, the database uses their latitude and longitude, if it was able to find them using the addresses, and figures out the distance between them "as the crow flies". This may be a lot shorter than the driving distance! Always look at a map to double-check locations and routes; the distance calculations are intended as a rough guide only.

Yes, and no. Anyone can sign on and post a bogus facility. We are betting that the benefits of allowing everyone to post will far outweigh the risk of having some jerk post something that is intentionally false. We rely heavily on faith, community, and the goodness of others, as without those principles this site could not exist.

That said, we're not naive, and have taken every reasonable precaution against vandalism. Except by specific request, users can only modify facilities they created -- so if you take the time to enter some data, somebody else can't come along and mess it up. Deletion of records other than need/availability data can only be performed by administrators, and the same goes for messing with categories and other structural things.

The security of the backend systems is well up to the standards of any private-sector corporation. If you want more information about security, please contact us and we will be happy to discuss the technical aspects of how we have designed the IT infrastructure to be secure.

We want you to use the site as if your own people designed and built it for you. Please tell us what you want. If it is feasible, we will change the site to accomodate your request.