ANIMAL EMERGENCY RESPONSE NETWORK FAQ

• What is AERN?
  
  • How did AERN begin?
  • Technical Features of AERN
  • How does information get into and out of AERN?
  • AERN - Katrina/Rita overview
  • What are the next steps for AERN?
  • Who owns AERN?
• How do I find my pet?
  • Why is the data for some pets so sparse?
  • Why can't I search by ...?
  • I see my pet but I'm not sure who to contact or where it currently is.
  • What do I do if my pet is not in this database?
  • Will my pet be adopted to someone else?
  • I've heard rumors of missing or lost pets from Lamar Dixon. Are they true?
  • I've heard rumors of "Rogue Rescuers". What does this mean?
  • If my pet was rescued by a "rogue", group what does that mean?
  • Why is some of the information in AERN unavailable to the public?
  • Are there other websites that do the same thing?
• How do I let someone know my pet needs rescuing, fostering or help?
  • Who will answer my request?
  • Will I know if my request as been addressed?
  • Can I change the information on my request?
• How can I foster or volunteer to help?
  • I registered to help but no one has contacted me. Don't they need help?
  • What can I expect if I volunteer?
  • I want to foster but only certain breeds for a few weeks. Can I still help?
• What is Petfinder.com and the Petfinder.com Foundation?

The Animal Emergency Response Network, powered by Maddie’s Fund and Petfinder.com, is the first ever comprehensive database designed to centralize and organize information about pets in disaster areas who are in need of help or who have been rescued and are waiting to be reunited with their families.

AERN was originally created by the Petfinder.com staff in response to the looming tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. The day before Katrina moved ashore, as the devastating effects were being predicted and the animal welfare response was being crafted, the need for a single centralized data system became evident. Petfinder and Petfinder.com Foundation set to work to create a comprehensive solution to fill this need. On Day 1 of Katrina, Petfinder.com received calls from HSUS, Maddie’s Fund, and the ASPCA to determine what resources Petfinder.com might offer to this end. The Petfinder.com staff shared that it was already in the process of building a universal database and would be delighted to have input from such experienced agencies. As a result, the AERN database expanded to become the broad-reaching universal system that it is today.

Within days, Petfinder.com’s programmers, working 20-hour shifts, had the system up and organizing data from hundreds of sources, and AERN was held up as an example of multi-agency cooperation. It continued to grow and evolve as the weeks past, with vital input from its co-funder, Maddie’s Fund, and its original collaborators including HSUS, ASPCA, AHA, Pets911, Best Friends Animal Society, LSU School of Veterinary Medicine, United Animal Nations (EARS), and hundreds of individuals who have come together to achieve a common goal of saving pets. The Dish Network launched and installed the Katrina Information Network in over 200 human shelters and partnered with Petfinder.com to develop daily two-hour slideshows of “found” pets housed in the temporary shelters along the Gulf.

Early collaborators agreed that for rescuers and pet owners alike, there should be one unilateral call to action. On Day 1 of Katrina, Petfinder.com engaged a leading NYC public relations company to blanket the television networks with information relating to this collaborative effort in which all participating agencies received credit in hundreds of media appearances daily. Heads of non-profit organizations, affected shelters, pet-industry leaders and media institutions went on record throughout the response period with a simple message: If you want to offer help or if you need to find your pet, go to disaster.petfinder.com. This cooperation, combined with the reach of the Petfinder.com online community of 10,000 shelter and placement groups and over a half million visitors each day, became the one best destination for victims of disasters to go for their pet related needs and information.

As AERN grew, both Petfinder.com and HSUS recognized the need for call centers to help those without Internet access report lost pets, make offers to help, find a temporary foster home, or search for a displaced pet. Several 24/7 call centers were developed by HSUS and Petfinder.com to provide this service. Petfinder.com staff communicated directly with AERN visitors trying to relocate pets at the Lamar-Dixon shelter by responding to over 800 email messages daily and directing eight brand-new AERN staffers, unded by the Glaser Progress Foundation and thePetfinder.com Foundation. Their task was to help maintain data integrity and make reunions, a challenge when data enters the system from hundreds of disparate and inconsistent sources.

• Accept rescue requests from members of the public and geo-code their locations so that the database can be searched and sorted by trained rescue personnel with authorized access.
  
• Track a single pet’s “experience” from rescue report to rescue to shelter intake to emergency shelter to foster and eventually back home. Because it is a transparent system, pets won’t be lost to their owners, the rescuers, or the temporary shelters along the way.
  
• Manage animal populations in emergency shelters as they are cared for and moved to other holding facilities.
• Accept reports of lost and found pets.
• Sort and organize volunteer offers by interest and certification.
• Coordinate foster home matching for evacuees before they leave their homes, significantly reducing the need for temporary sheltering.

• three levels of password access
• limited and expanded public search capabilities
• transparency
• advanced search capabilities for rescuers and call centers
• data import
• data export
• report generation for authorized rescue personnel
• mapping for strategic planning of rescue efforts
• maps for rescuers
• evergreen communication tracking throughout the experience of the pet (all email messages sent regarding a pet are logged into the pet’s history)

AERN "found" pet description decpicting the same pet as viewed by the public (left) and the rescue worker (right). Rescue workers view much greater detail including notes, location histories, and message histories.

Information is collected from a wide variety of sources. This is the most challenging facet of the initiative. In the midst of a disaster, data integrity and collection can be difficult but is obviously critical and must be done in a timely fashion. A large portion of data is entered directly into the system, but a substantial amount of that is imported from a disparate array of spreadsheets, databases and information systems.

There are several levels of AERN security. Members of the public can enter lost pet information, foster offers, or found pet information though a secure password system that will allow them to come back at any time and edit their postings. Rescue workers can enter individual records or sets of records, all identified though a sophisticated login system.

• Public data entry and direct entry by rescue workers
• Direct, machine-driven, automatic import from external databases
• Manual import of spreadsheets, miscellaneous lists, and call center entered data

Some "found" pets enter the system with little more than a photo and an ID number. Others have full descriptions, identification numbers, good breed information, and a street address where the pet was rescued. Navigating public searches with such inconsistent data is one of AERN's largest challenges, since allowing people to limit their search to a particular breed only works if their pet's breed was entered into AERN. One of the most common questions AERN received during Katrina was "why can't I search by street?" The early answer was "because very few pets have a street in their data set and searching by street would likely cause you to miss finding your pet."

How rescuers get data from AERN

• Rescuing agencies receive a super-user password that allows them to designate and create authorized rescue passwords for their own agency personnel.
• Data can be retrieved in a variety of ways and can be sorted, searched, and filtered so that the most relevant information is available to the rescuer.
• Rescue workers can generate pre- formatted reports of rescue requests, volunteer offers, and found pets.
• Rescue workers can download entire data sets to manipulate in their own databases or spreadsheets.
• Rescuers can apply data to maps for strategic planning or dispatch.

Widespread use of AERN during the Katrina/Rita response period provides us with the ability to see its potential for future disasters. Here is some data from October 2005.

• Over 17,000 found/temporarily sheltered pets were posted. Almost sixty percent went through Lamar-Dixon or LSU Vet School. Twenty percent were posted by small groups and individuals posting less than five found pets each. Six percent were entered by Best Friends Animal Welfare Society.
• Many pets that weren't entered into AERN at Lamar-Dixon or other temporary shelters were subsequently posted by receiving shelters, many of whom were members of Petfinder.com.
• Over 22,000 rescue requests were entered by individuals.
• Over 20,000 offers to volunteer or to foster were entered.
• During the Rita evacuation, up to 50 people a day called the AERN Foster Match hotline to make their own preparations for their displaced pets.
• At times, AERN was covered in hundreds of newspapers and spotlighted almost daily on major TV networks. AERN was the single call-to-action for displaced families hoping to reunite with their pets.

To make AERN even more successful, certain on-the-ground resources must be present and remain uncompromised. Although it is helpful, it is not critical for there to be Internet access in the disaster region for AERN to work. AERN will dispatch trained volunteers to gather data and transfer it in and out of the affected region so long as there is interagency cooperation so that this can be done consistently. Those that operate rescue efforts and temporary shelters for displaced pets must commit to tracking each and every pet that they rescue and updating pet records when a pet's status changes or it is reunited with its family. For instance, when rescuers follow up on a request for rescue they should update the pet status in AERN as quickly as possible so that other rescuers don't expend energy attempting to rescue the same pet.

The re-launch of the disaster site will focus on an increase in usability and enhancement of in-shelter pet tracking. This will take place over the next six months with input from stakeholders such as national organizations, receiving shelters, state animal response teams, and state veterinarians.

AERN is being incorporated into national emergency management training programs.

AERN is a public service. The site was created and is hosted as a donation from Petfinder.com, but it operates as an independent initiative that falls under the operations of the Petfinder.com Foundation, a 501(c)3 public charity. The Web site is free of advertising for ease of navigating as well as to encourage organizations to frame it into their own sites, thus spreading the reach of the Network. The database and the information contained within is available to organizations wishing to help displaced pets reunite with their families. At Petfinder.com we consider it our mission to help pets in need anytime and anywhere we can.

In the face of widespread devastation from Katrina, Petfinder.com was unique in its ability to respond to the emergency of missing family members with universal expertise, speed and reach.

During 2005, AERN received financial support from Maddie's Fund, The Glaser Progress Foundation, Petfinder.com, and the Petfinder.com Foundation. AERN received operational support during hurricane Katrina from Petfinder.com, The Petfinder.com Foundation, HSUS, ASPCA, AHA, and countless volunteers whose gift of themselves was truly inspiring.

If you would like to directly support the AERN initiative, you may do so by donating to the Petfinder.com Foundation disaster relief fund.