1 Crowdsourcing for Rapid Damage Assessment: The Global Earth Observation Catastrophe Assessment Network (GEO-CAN) Shubharoop Ghosh, a) Charles K. Huyck, a) Marjorie Greene, b) Stuart P. Gill, c) John Bevington, d) Walter Svekla, a) Reginald DesRoches, e) and Ronald T. Eguchi a) ABSTRACT This paper provides an account of how the Global Earth Observation Catastrophe Assessment Network (GEO-CAN) was formed to facilitate a rapid damage assessment after the January 12, 2010 Haiti earthquake. GEO-CAN emerged from the theory of crowdsourcing and remote sensing-based damage interpretation and represents a new paradigm in post-disaster damage assessment. The GEO-CAN community, working with the World Bank (WB), the United Nation Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT) and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) led the way for a rapid Post Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) utilizing remote-sensing based analysis as the primary source of information for building damage. The results of the GEO-CAN damage assessment were incorporated into the final PDNA framework developed by the WB-UNOSAT-JRC and adopted by the Haitian government. The GEO-CAN initiative provides valuable lessons on multi-agency collaboration, rapid and implementable damage assessment protocols under extreme situations for the disaster management profession, developmental organizations, and society. a) ImageCat, Inc., 400 Oceangate, Suite 1050, Long Beach, CA 90802 b) Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, 499 14th St., Oakland, CA 94612-1934 c) Disaster Risk Management LABS, Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), The World Bank Group, 1818 H Street, NW, Washington DC 20433 d) ImageCat Ltd, Communications House, 63 Woodfield Lane, Ashtead, Surrey KT21 2BT, U.K. e) Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering,790 Atlantic Dr. Atlanta, GA 30332-0355