OSM- Ushahidi. Errol Barnett (ErrolCNN) Etan Horowitz (etanowitz) Interview Patrick Meier Ushahidi. How does Haiti communicate after the earthquake? Minutes after the earthquake, as phone lines collapsed, Haitians tried to discover the fate of relatives and friends by using the web and social networks. "I don't know how, but most of the network infrastructure survived," said Reynold Guerrier, a network engineer at the Haitian Association for the Development of Information and Communication Technology (AHTIC). Mr Guerrier said they still needed diesel to run their data centre, and he has been using the web to ask aid organisations for help.
But as many were e-mailing, Twittering and checking Facebook, thousands of volunteers joined forces to build a tool to help those in need - a combination of web and mobile phone technologies, traditional media and the voices of people on the ground. Project Ushahidi maps reports sent by people in Haiti. They can use mobile phones and the web to inform about structural risks, lack of water and food, and missing persons. Crowdsourcing effort This is not the first crisis in which Ushahidi has operated. CrowdSourced SMS texts aid. IFRC: For crowdsourced emergency... Ushahidi RT@Carol_Waters: from FEM... Citizen Reporting and the Haitian Relief Effort : Disc. Working on Ushahidi’s Haiti Response. Last Wednesday started out pretty normal for me. Then it stopped. The US-based members of the Ushahidi team informed me of the earthquake in Haiti, and then the madness began… 6 days later, what’s happened?
Ushahidi is heavily involved in mapping and integrating crowdsourced information from Haiti into an aggregated map that is being used by both people on the ground who need help and those who can provide relief. Teams of volunteers in Kenya, Uganda and the US have been working to solidify the platform and make this effort work. Keep up-to-date in our Situation Room and our blog. Though it’s not a completely accurate description of what we’re doing, it’s close: We’re running what’s basically the 911 system for Haiti through a local shortcode on the Digicel network 4636. More on the 4636 number and campaign. How you can help Pass this message on, try to get it to people, media and organizations IN Haiti: “In Haiti? Other links you should know about Thanks for your support, and for your help. Preventing the "Disaster After the Disaster" | Touch Points by S. News from Port-au-Prince It’s been a week since the Port-au-Prince earthquake and images streaming in are helping us to grasp the region’s boundless misery and desperation.
Hundreds of thousands have perished, and despite our best efforts, more will die and suffer for myriad reasons including the inability to deliver relief where it’s needed. Despite the gut-wrenching news, it’s heartening to learn that determined, inventive people are finding ways to alleviate the suffering and, in some cases, save lives. One of the more interesting stories is about an open-source project called Ushahidi which takes its name from the Swahili word for “testimony”. During its initial deployment in Kenya, Ushahidi was used to record hundreds of incidents of violence that might have otherwise gone undetected. But the application met its most demanding test after the earthquake in Haiti when the country’s mobile networks were down.
With a little help from our friends Want more info about Ushahidi? Tufts Daily - Tufts community mobilizes to aid victims of disast. Geeks For Haiti Work To Restore Communications | In This Issue | As news about the devastation caused by the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake in Haiti fades from front pages nationwide, teams of telecommunications engineers, wireless network architects, application developers, equipment vendors and others are working furiously to restore communications and provide mobile and wireless tools to agencies involved in relief and recovery.
There are many ways you can volunteer your skills to help. Projects include: Rebuilding core cellular telecommunications structures Deploying satellite and solar power to restore broadband communications Creating mobile applications that can be used by relief agencies Aggregating SMS calls for help from people in need so that aid organizations on the ground in Haiti can respond. These and other efforts exemplify an astonishing level of cooperation among telecommunications and technology vendors, application developers, government and non-government organizations (NGOs), relief agencies and many others. Techies Unite. Techies Put Their Laptops to Work for Haiti. @patrickmeier on @crisismapping response. Haiti and the Power of Crowdsourcing « iRevolution. It’s been two weeks since I called David Kobia to launch Ushahidi’s crisis mapping platform in Haiti. I could probably write 100 blog posts on the high’s and low’s of the past 14 days.
Perhaps there will more time be next month to recount the first two weeks of the disaster response. For now, I wanted to share an astounding example of crowdsourcing that took place 10 days ago. Boston, January 17, 8pm Picture a snowy Boston evening and the following “Situation Room” a.k.a. my living room at Blakeley Hall, part of The Fletcher School. My fellow PhD colleague Anna Schulz, who has rapidly become an expert in satellite imagery analysis and geolocation, receives an urgent request via Skype from InSTEDD‘s Eric Rasmussen pictured below with Nico di Tada. That tent is pitched right next to the runway of Port-au-Prince’s international airport, some 1,600 miles south of Boston.
The urgent request? Boston, January 17, 8.30pm Boston, January 17, 9.41pm Boston, January 17, 10.26pm Patrick Philippe Meier. RWW: Disaster Response From The Cloud. Relief agencies, companies and volunteers came together and built a global network of systems and people to coordinate emergency aid operations for the Haiti earthquake victims. This piecing together of a jigsaw of different organizations and technologies with one common goal serves as a testament to what is possible using cloud computing and may serve as a template for disaster relief operations in the future. SMS and Radio Whilst SMS is low tech in comparison to mobile services like 3G and Wi-Fi, its simplicity is its success.
Repairing or erecting temporary cell towers is a far more efficient way to reach people than fixing wire-line infrastructure. As SMS is a basic feature supported by all handsets, it is widespread and popular in Haiti. A short-code weather service (4636) was commandeered and setup on the Digicel and Comcel networks to serve as a gateway for anyone who could access a mobile phone. Translation and Classification The Big Picture The Future? Image credit: visualpanic. DailyNation Kenyian mapping tool. By GEOFFREY KAMADI An online crisis mapping tool initiated and operated by Kenyans has been assisting families and friends locate missing persons, following the horrendous earthquake that hit the Haitian capital three weeks ago.
The online mapping tool — www.ushahidi.com — is also being used by international organisations to mobilise assistance for the Caribbean nation. These organisations include the United Nations Foundation, Plan International, Charity Water and the International Red Cross Society. Other groups using the site include the Clinton Foundation, International Medical Corps, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the United States Agency for International Development. Working with the US State Department, the site’s developer’s introduced an SMS short code for subscribers on a Haitian network, to send text messages for free. In this way, eye witness accounts on the ground were easily reported. Ushahidi Haiti. Ushahidi - Africa’s Gift to Silicon Valley - How to Track a Cris. Photograph by Ruth Fremson/The New York Times Imagine if any Pakistani could send an anonymous text message to the authorities suggesting where to look. Each location could be plotted on a map. The dots would be scattered widely, perhaps, with promising leads indistinguishable from rubbish.
But on a given day, a surge of dots might point to the same village, in what could not be coincidence. Troops could be ordered in. This kind of everyone-as-informant mapping is shaking up the world, bringing the revolution to the work of humanitarians and soldiers who parachute into places with little good information. After ’s disputed election in 2007, violence erupted. The site collected user-generated cellphone reports of riots, stranded refugees, rapes and deaths and plotted them on a map, using the locations given by informants. When the Haitian earthquake struck, Ushahidi went again into action. A lot of things could go wrong with this model. Think about that. O' Reilly + Panel Twitter’s Developer Conf: