Disaster Relief Distribution Points: Share Exact Sites

After a flood, storm or earthquake, the places people used to navigate by may have changed or vanished. A school that was the obvious meeting point is now a shelter, a bridge is closed, a lane is under water. Relief organisations need to tell thousands of people where food, water or shelter kits will be handed out. A UPCS code does this precisely: it takes anyone who opens it to the exact spot that was picked, a 3 m x 3 m square.

The location problem in relief work

Distribution sites are chosen quickly and change often. Messages are spread over radio, text messages and word of mouth, where long descriptions get garbled. Drivers from outside the region carry stock to places they have never seen, and trucks stuck at the wrong junction waste fuel and time. Volunteers arriving from other areas have no local landmarks to rely on.

Using a code

The coordinator picks the site on the UPCS map and gets a code. That single short string can be:

• read out on a radio bulletin;
• sent by text message with the share link;
• written on the delivery manifest, so the driver opens it and gets directions;
• written on the board at the previous distribution point.

The code takes anyone to the same spot, whether it is a family on foot or a driver coming from a warehouse in another city.

Setting it up

1. Before an event: pre-pick likely sites such as schools, grounds and community halls, and keep a list of codes with the site name.
2. During response: pick the new point, share the code, and mark the date and time next to it in your own sheet.
3. For logistics software: use POST /v1/upcs/generate to assign codes to sites and GET /v1/upcs/lookup/{code} to read them back, with a partner key kept on the server. See the documentation.
4. For a public page: embed the map to let field staff pick a point and see the code immediately.

Practical tips

• Pick the gate where vehicles enter and, if different, the point where people queue.
• Use separate codes for the stock drop-off and the people-facing counter when they differ.
• Re-confirm a code by opening it yourself before broadcasting it.
• Write the code in capitals with the hyphens, so it reads clearly.

Relief work involves many partners and official coordination bodies. UPCS is not an emergency or rescue system. It is only a shared way to say exactly where a point is, and it does not claim any integration with government or humanitarian systems. See NGOs and humanitarian work and emergency response for related uses.