We’ve launched Haiti.Ushahidi.com
The past 20 hours have been sad, exhausting and inspiring. Sad for obvious reasons. Exhausting because many of us have been working straight through with no sleep. But inspiring because of the incredible community of Crisis Mappers.
Here’s what been happening in the community:
- Ushahidi launched a Haiti deployment
- Mikel Maron at OpenStreetMap launched this Wiki
- Andrew Turner at GeoCommons is updating CrisisCommons
- Our friends at Sahana have set up a Development Team
- Sahana has also set up a Wiki here
- Our InSTEDD friends set up a GeoChat instance
- Our friends at MapAction have deployed a team
- Einar Bjorgo at UNOSAT is keeping us posted on imagery
InSTEDD is also working on getting +46 numbers for GeoChat, the Emergency Information Service (EIS) and Ushahidi. InSTEDD is also in Santo Domingo deploying EIS. Sahana is exploring the possibility of integrating GeoChat based on some work they did at Camp Roberts a few months ago. InSTEDD is also looking to start testing a Sahana/Mesh4X sync. There are several dozen other ongoing efforts but hard to keep track.
http://www.google.com/relief/haitiearthquake/index.html
http://haiti.ushahidi.com/help
http://crisiscommons.org/wiki/index.php?title=Haiti/2010_Earthquake#Data
I first heard about the major earthquake around 7:30pm (Boston time) last night and immediately called David Kobia to get an Ushahidi deployment out. I have five close friends from The Fletcher School who have been in Haiti over the past two weeks and it wasn’t until midnight that I finally got word that they were alive.
What happened between 7:30pmm and midnight was inspiring. We went live with a basic deployment within half an hour. I called Chris Blow and got in touch with Brian Herbert. They both worked with David to continue the customization.
I then reached out to our colleagues with the International Network of Crisis Mappers (CM*Net), and their response has been superb. We’ve had over 50 emails back and forth, sharing data, maps, local contact info with regular updates.
Our colleagues from UN OCHA/Colombia were invaluable in helping us identify the appropriate indicators as were many others on CM*Net. OCHA had just carried out an earthquake simulation exercise using their own customized version of Ushahidi so were fully ready to go. They worked directly on the admin side to help us push forward. So many thanks to Jeffrey Villaveces and Luis Aguilar.
At around 3am, our Nairobi team took over with customization and we had an 8am all team meeting to assess the current deployment and evolving situation in Haiti. We now have an international number up for SMS and are working with our colleagues at InSTEDD and at CM*Net to set up a local number as well.
On a personal note, it’s just been remarkable to see so many of the organizations who participated in the International Conference on Crisis Mapping (ICCM) collaborate so pro-actively together. It was also somewhat surreal when someone from Haiti signed up to CM*Net and in their bio wrote:
“I’m in Baudin, Haiti right now ( 18.307606° -72.709935°) so won’t have cell phone service until it comes back but can be reached then at 509-3-823-6859 or michael.ritter2@gmail.com.”
I quickly added Michael to the CrisisMappers Google Group and he has been providing is some valuable information since.
Reports
Note, we’re getting a fair number of Twitter messages, but not all of them are useful reports at this time. Mobile networks are down, so the SMS reports are almost nothing. Web-based reports that are coming in seem to be of good quality, as are the few email reports we’re getting.
Special Thanks
We’re getting slammed by a bunch of traffic on the site. A big thanks goes out to Jonathan and his team at Cartika Hosting who have helped us stay up all along, have migrated servers for us and spent hours on the phone. Thanks guys!
Organizations helping to get the word out about the Haiti site:
Wall Street Journal
Google Relief
Clinton Foundation
UNDP
Cartika forums
Washington Post
Global Voices
ReliefWeb
The Guardian
New York Times Lede blog
42 Responses
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i linked you, good work! keep it on
Great work on this guys, I know your efforts will make a difference.
Disasters like this are the greatest opportunity to show what online collaboration can achieve in the real world. These visualisations are great. There are updated interactive maps here for Haiti earthquake and the international response.
I’m glad that the media is covering all the diasters of the world to make people aware of the needs of many people of Haiti and the need of support any way. I’m glad that people are stepping up and giving a hand to another human being. It is sad that it took a natural diaster to get people pour their hearts and money to country of Haiti. Where were these people 6 months ago or even a year ago to help the people of Haiti and i hope it will continue after the media goes away from this natural diaster.
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