Ushahidi geo-locating service for Haiti Earthquake response
Ushahidi means witness in Swahili. In 2008, software designers built this open-source product to track elections in Africa and protect civilians by allowing volunteers to report areas of violence so that the population could avoid these areas.
In January 12, 2010 the Earthquake in Haiti brought a whole new use to this product. People were trapped and needed a way to ask for help. In increasing numbers, they turned to their cell phones. Text messages, Twitter Blogs, Facebook posts….social networks were exploding with requests for help and reports of people in need. But who would see these messages? Who would get this information to the rescuers on the ground? How do you put all this data together?
Patrick, a Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy PhD student who was involved with the Ushahidi project immediately saw an opporunity to combine the power of the Internet and the the powerful mapping and geo-locating ability of Ushahidi. The US Government had just declasified and released Global Hawk images that were immediately combined with maps. 10-year old mapping data, Lonely Planet Guide books, OpenStreetMaps (OSM) and Google Images were combined with information from hundreds of student volunteers who scoured the internet for social media and reports. The Haiti diaspora volunteered thousands to help translate Kreole messages into English and provide local knowledge of the land and localisms. People came together to add software solutions to combine with the human brain power that became the network that was critical in deciphering the bits and pieces of information as people tried to get help to their loved ones. The Ushahidi Platform system relied heavily on all this information. Crowd sourcing helped drive reliable twitter reporters to limit the false alarms. The US Government and other aid agencies then began to rely on the pooled information that Ushahidi was providing. Several partners on the ground set up a 4636 text number that could gather the messages. The damage was done in Haiti. The power of volunteers fought to save lives.
Through volunteers combing the Internet in a basement cell at Fletcher School, and others spread across the world, information was correlated, confirmed, and then delivered to the rescuers to save lives. This was the first time this tool was used in this manner. And the timing was critical. The UN was completely wiped out, hundreds stationed in Haiti died when one building collapsed. The experts who would have been relied upon to provide the critical knowledge needed to expedite the relief effort were the ones who needed relief and were not able to help.
Thanks to Fletcher volunteers, many of those lives were saved.
(c) Dylan Monaghan
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