This week several members of our team attended the 3rd International Conference of Crisis Mappers (ICCM) that was held in Geneva, Switzerland and we were blown away by the turn out (Follow #ICCM on Twitter). This community has grown substantially over the last 3 years – when we attended the first conference held in Cleveland, Ohio back in 2009 there were about 100 attendees. Now there are more than 400 gathered here discussing crisis mapping and the challenges they face. There are really 3 main things that we keep hearing as it relates to GIS and mapping:

• How to collect and organize data from the crowd around the globe as it relates to crisis
• How to enable action from this data
• How to build, collect, and maintain reference data for crisis

Collecting and Organizing Data from the Crowd

As for the first topic, collecting and organizing data from the crowd, there is a good tool developed by our partner Ushahidi. Ushahidi is a platform that takes crowd sourced information like SMS messages, categorizes them, and displays them on the map as a point or cluster of points showing relevant location. The result of this effort is a point map that begins to illustrate where individuals are vocalizing need or disseminating information.

Enabling Action

While points are a good start, we have been working with Ushahidi and a focus group comprised of both GIS and Crisis Mappers to define requirements for new tools that will support analysis of this data. We have heard the need for spatial and temporal analysis tools within the Ushahidi platform as well as the need for tools to bring Ushahidi data into ArcGIS where analyses can be run.

We are very excited to announce that we have made the first tool available to support these requirements-the ArcGIS add-in for Ushahidi which can be downloaded and quickly added to ArcMap. This add-in allows you to connect to a Ushahidi instance with the API enabled, convert text between languages, and download the Ushahidi data into a geodatabase. This opens up the feed of data being captured in Ushahidi to the rich spatial and temporal analysis tools within ArcGIS allowing users to empower action and inform decision makers using a sound scientific approach. Curious how this might work? At the bottom of this blog is a good write-up of using this tool to analyze information coming in from the current Thailand flooding.

Reference Data

Having this information and resulting analysis is great, but without good reference/basemap data as a backdrop, it is hard to understand the context of any situation. A common theme discussed here in Geneva is the isolated and rural nature of many locations and the lack of base data. While there may be global vector and raster datasets available, they are often either severely dated or at a scale that does not support local action.

One data set that supports crowdsourcing of basemap data is OpenStreetMap (OSM). OSM is constructed and edited for all types of use by a global user community, and yes you can join! Crowdsourced basemap data is particularly valuable during a crisis response where current and often high resolution data needs are compounded.

In support of this open source effort, Esri offers a desktop tool for ArcGIS that allows you to join the crowd by editing and publishing to OSM from within ArcMap. This tool also allows you to download OSM data over your area of interest directly into ArcGIS for use in a disconnected and offline environment common in response. You can download the ArcGIS Editor for OSM.

Esri is committed to supporting the crisis response community thru our Esri Disaster Response Program as well as thru the continued evolution of ArcGIS to support the collection, management, analysis, and visualization of data in a collaborative environment. While these tools don’t solve all of the problems we face as crisis mappers, we hope you will find them valuable in your arsenal and as a starting point to a dialogue around enhancements to and construction of additional tools or data. We are already looking forward to ICCM 2012 in Washington, DC!

ArcGIS Add-in for Ushahidi

Getting Started

To get started, first download the Esri Add-in for Ushahidi. Once you’ve installed the Add-in you’re ready to add it to ArcMap. Go to the Customize menu | Toolbars | Customize… located at the very bottom of the list.

In the Customize dialog, click the Commands tab| type Ushahidi in the Show commands containing: text box. You will see the Ushahidi2ArcGIS Add-In listed in the Commands pane.

Drag the Ushahidi2ArcGIS command to any existing toolbar in your ArcMap window. You must drag this command onto an existing toolbar, not just onto the map. You will see a new button with a blue circle icon show up on your toolbar.

Connecting to a Ushahidi Instance

To connect to an Ushahidi instance click on the Download Ushahidi Reports to ArcGIS button and enter the parameters.

The key parameter to enter is the API Endpoint. This is the main URL to the Ushahidi instance, such as Thailand Flood Crisis Information Map or Bushfire Connect. You also have the option to translate the data (using Bing Translator) for either just the categories or all the incident data. Note that the more you have to translate and the more records you have the longer the time it will take to download and create the data.

Once the data is downloaded it is added to a layer. The tool automatically sets the data to render on Unique Values in the Category Title field and uses the default colors from the Ushahidi instance.

Additionally the HTML Popup set and the description of the layer has been populated to reflect the source, date and time the data was downloaded. This is critical temporal information for Crisis Mappers.

Perform Further Analysis

Now that the Ushahidi data is downloaded you’re ready to perform further analysis. You can look at data over time, limit your focus on specific categories, or do more in depth spatial analysis.

For example if we wanted to get a better understanding of the reports of flooding around Bangkok we can focus on those reports (i.e. just one category of the incidents).

We can then visualize the data as a “heat-map” (by using the Kernel Density tool).

To get more detailed information on the data and to further determine significance of the reports we can use spatial statistics to determine if there are non-random spatial patterns and statistically significant hot or cold spots in the data. To do this we can use the Spatial Autocorrelation and Hot-Spot Analysis tools. The basic workflow is shown here in ModelBuilder:

The results of this analysis are highlighted in blue on the map as areas (1 km^2 ) that have statistically significant clusters of flood reports (in this case 8 to 27 per km2 ). These are the high priority areas that should be focused on first. Then we focus on questions like why are there so many reports in this area? Is there a single authoritative source of SMS feeds on the ground or is there a large group of people that need help?

This is just one type of analysis that can be run in ArcGIS Desktop from Ushahidi data. We are interested in learning more from you in the type of analysis that you’ve run using this tool. Please use the comments section of the tool and let us know how the tool works and what needs to be improved.

*****

Thanks to the ESRI team for creating this valuable plug-in.

World Bank Managing Director Caroline Anstey recently announced a new partnership with Google that will apparently empower citizen cartographers in 150 countries worldwide. This has provoked some concern among open source enthusiasts. Under this new agreement, the Bank, UN agencies and developing country governments will be able to “access Google Map Maker’s global mapping platform, allowing the collection, viewing, search and free access to data of geoinformation in over 150 countries and 60 languages.”

So what’s the catch? Google’s licensing agreement for Google Map Maker stipulates the following: Users are not allowed to access Google Map Maker data via any platform other than those designated by Google. Users are not allowed to make any copies of the data, nor can they translate the data, modify it or create a derivative of the data. In addition, users cannot publicly display any Map Maker data for commercial purposes. Finally, users cannot use Map Maker data to create a service that is similar to any already provided by Google.

There’s a saying in the tech world that goes like this: “If the product is free, then you are the product.” I fear this may be the case with the Google-Bank partnership. I worry that Google will organize more crowdsourced mapping projects (like the one they did for Sudan last year), and use people with local knowledge to improve Map Maker data, which will carry all the licensing restrictions described above. Does this really empower citizen cartographers?

Or is this about using citizen cartographers (as free labor?) for commercial purposes? Will Google push Map Maker data to Google Maps & Google Earth products, i.e., expanding market share & commercial interests? Contrast this with the World Bank’s Open Data for Resilience Initiative (OpenDRI), which uses open source software and open data to empower local communities and disaster risk managers. Also, the Google-Bank partnership is specifically with UN agencies and governments, not exactly citizens or NGOs.

Caroline Anstey concludes her announcement with the following:

“In the 17th century, imperial cartographers had an advantage over local communities. They could see the big picture. In the 21st century, the tables have turned: local communities can make the biggest on the ground difference. Crowdsourced citizen cartographers can help make it happen.”

Here’s another version:

“In the 21st century, for-profit companies like Google Inc have an advantage over local communities. They can use big license restrictions. With the Google-Bank partnership, Google can use local communities to collect information for free and make the biggest profit. Crowdsourced citizen cartographers can help make it happen.”

The Google-Bank partnership points to another important issue being ignored in this debate. Let’s not pretend that technology alone determines whether participatory mapping truly empowers local communities. I recently learned of an absolutely disastrous open source “community” mapping project in Africa which should one day should be written up in a blog post entitled “Open Source Community Mapping #FAIL”.

So software developers (whether from the open source or proprietary side) who want to get involved in community mapping and have zero experience in participatory GIS, local development and capacity building should think twice: the “do no harm” principle also applies to them. This is equally true of Google Inc. The entire open source mapping community will be watching every move they make on this new World Bank partnership.

I do hope Google eventually realizes just how much of an opportunity they have to do good with this partnership. I am keeping my fingers crossed that they will draft a separate licensing agreement for the World Bank partnership. In fact, I hope they openly invite the participatory GIS and open source mapping communities to co-draft an elevated licensing agreement that will truly empower citizen cartographers. Google would still get publicity—and more importantly positive publicity—as a result. They’d still get the data and have their brand affiliated with said data. But instead of locking up the Map Maker data behind bars and financially profiting from local communities, they’d allow citizens themselves to use the data in whatever platform they so choose to improve citizen feedback in project planning, implementation and monitoring & evaluation. Now wouldn’t that be empowering?

]]> http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2012/01/25/google-inc-world-bank-empowering-citizen-cartographers/feed/ 4 http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2012/01/23/syria/ http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2012/01/23/syria/#comments Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:46:07 +0000 patrick http://blog.ushahidi.com/?p=6699 [Guest blog post by Syrian activist, author identity withheld for security reasons]

Syria Tracker was launched on April 23, 2011 and has been able to log aggregate or individual reports since March 18, 2011 [accessed January 9, 2012], including 550 reports for the category “Killed (قُتِل)” and 356 reports for the category “Missing-مفقود or Detained-مُعتقل”. A total of 6,317 individuals killed over 286 days (March 18, 2011 thru January 8, 2012) were documented and verified. Killing ranged from 1-210 killings per day (median of 17.5 (95% CI: 14-19)), in 463 cities, affecting all age groups (median age of 36 years old (95% CI: 27-45)) with 427 individuals (~7%) less than or equal to 18 years old, and 289 individuals were female (~5%) and 6,028 were male (~95%).

Syria Tracker is collaborating with the following crowdsourced efforts to further validate, corroborate, and disseminate the information: Middle East Voices (Voice of America), Syrian Martyrs شهداء الثورة السورية, Silmya, and Syrian Youth Movement. Syria Tracker also incorporates complementary situation-awareness information (news, blogs, Facebook posts, etc.) from the HealthMap system, an information system that uses unofficial reports of disease—e.g., from clinicians or web-based health-related information from news media or blogs—to track disease outbreaks. HealthMap was tailored, referred to as “HealthMap Crisis”, to mine crisis information in English for evidence of killing, torture or arrest. HealthMap Crisis is provided as a news stream that is available to the public on the Syria Tracker’s website. Reports were primarily verified by a group of volunteers from the Crisis Mappers, Standby Volunteer Task Force (SBTF) in addition to cross-validating information against other sources or online posts. Please find Google Earth layer here.

Cross-posted from iRevolution.net

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? GPS coordinates for 7 key locations across Port-au-Prince where many Haitians were known to be trapped under rubble. They needed to communicate this information to the Search and Rescue (SAR) teams before 0600. Anna immediately got to work.

Boston, January 17, 8.30pm

An hour later, Anna had found the GPS coordinates for all but one of the locations for the rescue operations.

Boston, January 17, 9.41pm

Boston, January 17, 10.26pm

Some time later, the same urgent request originally sent by Eric and Nico appears on the CrisisMappers Google Group:

Boston, January 17, ~11.00pm

At Anna’s request, I send out the following Tweet on Ushahidi.

Boston, January 18, ~1.00am

The following report is submitted to the Ushahidi-Haiti platform by someone from the Twittersphere:

Boston, January 18, 1.20am

My colleague Jaroslav in The Fletcher Situation room Skypes back to Anna:

Courtesy of high-resolution satellite imagery on Google Earth:

Boston, January 18, ~2.00am

It’s getting late but the ALL CAPS in this Tweet to Ushahidi catches my eye:

My colleague Jaroslav and I decide to try the number. Low and behold, we get Marc on the phone after just one ring. With a mixture of English and French, we find out that he was indeed a former employee of Au Bon Prix which happens to be a book store just off “Au Champs de Mars” near the Palace. We immediately Skype this information back to Eric and Nico at Port-au-Prince airport.

Boston, January 18, ~2.15am

Boston, January 18, ~4.30am

It’s still snowing in Boston. Time to get a few hours of sleep. We hand over operations to the Ushahidi Team in Africa.

Patrick Philippe Meier

At the beginning of March 2011, OCHA HQ activated the Standby Volunteer Task Force (SBTF), a self-organized group of structured volunteers, to create the Libya Crisis Map (LCM) early in March of this year to help provide better situational awareness of the unfolding situation on-the-ground. This site and the data were made available to responding organizations with the intention to them improve their operational planning. The site was extended beyond the first month largely based on efforts from OCHA Colombia, volunteers sourced from the UNV online volunteer service, and SBTF members who choose to stay on beyond the official SBTF deployment.

But Why the Collaboration?

The LCM data was being incorporated into the traditional Who-is-doing-What-Where products and info-graphics which were being created remotely by OCHA IMOs [Colombia, DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya, Pakistan, South Africa, and South Sudan]. These products were then being printed and shared inside the emergency arena. So, what impact did those printed products have? We rarely try to measure their impact on decision makers but recognize they are necessary in every emergency. So, if the LCM data augmented these products, what measurable impact can we say it had?

The challenge in quantifying the impact of information products in situations such as the Libya crisis is they tend to be incomparable to other situations and may yield very skewed outcomes. For OCHA, the impact the volunteers had on the efficiency of the operations and quality of decisions being made is perhaps more interesting. This impact can be more easily quantified by assessing the effectiveness of the decision makers using the maps as input and compared to their workload in other crisis before the SBTF was put into action. This quantifying research is currently being conducted, but on our preliminary qualitative input we can already see that the SBTF has a significant impact on OCHA’s way of working.

The unexpected impact? How we now work differently.

There are three core areas in this collaboration that have influenced OCHA’s work:

1) Speed: as noted in my blog post on UN Dispatch at the end of March, I outlined how much faster we could produce standard IM products in the early phases of an emergency when working with remote volunteers and/or staff. It was quite stark and significant.

2) Connection / Communication: The information management team in OCHA HQ was quite impressed with how well the always-open, tiered Skype chats worked in collaborating with the self-organized task-team based volunteers. The team has taken this approach and opened our own group for OCHA Information Management Officers [which has really made our internal IM Community of Practice flourish and provide support to each other]. We have leveraged the same approach to help incorporate field-based staff into the development of standard tools and software – something we were rather poor at in the past. As well, when we had one IMO responding to floods in Cambodia, we asked for OCHA IM volunteers and placed them in a dedicated Skype group. We ended up with IMOs from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Cote D’Ivoire, Liberia and Haiti helping out with the efforts.  The OCHA IM team is really learning how we can leverage remote support and are incorporating these concepts into traditional mechanisms.

3) Collaboration Platforms: to collaborate with the external volunteers, we had no choice but to accept the use of non-UN standard software [e.g. Skype and Google Docs]. However, the abilities that these modern tools unlocked helped some of our traditionally skeptical staff members realize there are better ways of working.  It has started a culture change [even if slow].

So, you can easily deduce that OCHA is adopting concepts from the SBTF work style. How much of an impact is that?  Perhaps not quantitatively measurable, but could be qualitatively described a “big”.

But, what challenges arose from the use of new technology and the volunteers?

The challenges can be summarized into three categories:

1. Zoom Level. The volunteers tend to want to work at the highest possible zoom [i.e. close to the affected] and we can understand that desire. However, large responding agencies are dealing with multi-million dollar programme spanning across millions of people in countless locations.  Although they are concerned for the individuals, they need information at a different ‘zoom level’ in order to assess, plan and respond. Thus, we need to ensure that there is a way to aggregate the detailed data appropriately for people or organizations working at different zoom levels.

2. Always On. One major benefit of the volunteers, enabled by modern technology, is that they are dispersed around the world resulting in almost 24 hour support. However, the flip-side of that benefit is that the liaison person from the requesting entity can be faced with questions/issues around the clock if structures, messaging and requirements are not defined early. With the task-team structure used by the volunteers in place, we know that OCHA was sheltered from a large number of questions. Still, in the early days, there were a significant number of topics that arose which needed to be addressed. It meant that we had to be connected all the times – from checking Skype over breakfast, to responding to emails while on the bus, to skipping dinner in the evening to review a risk management strategy.

3. Questions. The volunteers are not necessarily experts – and do not pretend to be when they are not. The challenge for the requesting entity is that someone needs to be available to answer hard questions in a very timely manner. In the Libya context, defining appropriate report categories was one of the first and most challenging questions for OCHA to answer and has reconfirmed that standards are needed.

Did ethical questions arise for the UN?

Of course ethical questions arose during the LCM deployment. They were not specific to the UN. In the Libya context, we dealt with three specific issues:

1. Identify. We did not want any information provided in the LCM that could be used to identify the individual who reported.

2. Location. To avoid anyone from being able to pinpoint anyone reporting, the data was generally anonymized to the centroid of the city it was reported from.

3. Do No Harm. Given the situation in Libya was conflict-based, we needed to ensure that whatever we did minimized the chance of causing anyone harm.

Early in the deployment, OCHA made a decision to run two separate websites. The private site would hold all original data and only be accessible to approved agencies. The public site would show no identifiable information and the data would be delayed by 24 hours. Some have argued that two sites were not necessary [e.g. everything private or only have the anonymized public site], but all we can say is that “It worked”.

What is OCHA doing now?

In June, OCHA held a lessons learned workshop with several of the V&TC entities with whom we collaborated with either for Libya or Japan. That workshop pointed towards 9 thematic Communities of Interest (COIs) to be developed to ensure future collaboration can be maximized [see the final report]. OCHA has been pushing these forward in an attempt to get them started and hosted a one-day meeting with the COI leaders prior to ICCM 2011. [Note: originally a Humanitarian Standby Task Force was suggested, but it has morphed to a 'network-of-networks' concept - which will likely be called the Digital Humanitarians - and be designed to receive requests for virtual support and then find the appropriate entities to support those requests]. In the Libya and Japan crisis, OCHA received support from several V&TCs which resulted in some (positive) unexpected impact and we want to continue to explore and understand the possibilities through the COIs mechanism to help maximize the benefit and effectiveness of V&TC engagements with the traditional humanitarian entities.

This collaboration, amongst others recently, has helped to show OCHA’s IM team that we need to open up our work, our data, and our ideas to external parties very much in accordance with the principles Dan Tapscott outlined in Macrowikinomics: Collaboration, Openness, Sharing, Integrity and Interdependence. We are no longer in an era where good ideas only come from inside our own organization, but rather in a time where we have to be open and ready to receive them from outside.

Participants in November 2011 COI Leadership meeting included: Crisis Commons, Crisis Mappers, Geeks without Bounds, GISCorp, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, HOT (OSM), ICT4Peace, Internews, ISCRAM (Tilburg University), MapAction, Missing Persons Community, MIT Humanitarian Response Lab, NetHope, SBTF, UN Foundation, UNHCR, UN-OCHA, UN-SPIDER, University of Munser, UNOSAT, Ushahidi, US State Department (HIU),  Woodrow Wilson Center, World Vision

]]> http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2012/01/09/the-unexpected-impact-of-the-libya-crisis-map-and-the-standby-volunteer-task-force/feed/ 1 http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2011/12/12/peacetxt-kenya/ http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2011/12/12/peacetxt-kenya/#comments Mon, 12 Dec 2011 08:40:52 +0000 patrick http://blog.ushahidi.com/?p=6428 One of the main reasons I’m in Nairobi this month is to launch PeaceTXT International with PopTech, Ushahidi, Praekelt Foundation, Sisi ni Amani, CeaseFire Chicago and Medic:Mobile. PeaceTXT International builds on the original PeaceTXT project that several of us began working on with CeaseFire Chicago last year. I began thinking about the many possible international applications of the PeaceTXT project during our very first meeting, which is why I am thrilled and honored to be spearheading the first PeaceTXT International pilot project.

The purpose of PeaceTXT is to leverage mobile messaging to catalyze behavior change around peace and conflict issues. In the context of Chicago, the joint project with CeaseFire aims to leverage SMS reminders to interrupt gun violence in marginalized neighborhoods. Several studies in other fields of public health have already shown the massive impact that SMS reminders can have on behavior change, e.g., improving drug adherence behavior among AIDS and TB patients in Africa, Asia and South America.

Our mobile messaging campaign in Kenya builds on the very successful interruption and behavior change work performed by CeaseFire in Chicago. Note that CeaseFire has been directly credited for significantly reducing the number of gun-related killings in Chicago over the past 10 years. In other words, they have a successful and proven methodology; one being applied to several other cities and countries worldwide. PeaceTXT International simply seeks to scale this success by introducing SMS.

PeaceTXT Chicago builds another successful campaign in the US: “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drink and Drive.” Inspired by this approach, the PeaceTXT Team in Chicago is looking to launch a friends-don’t-let-friends-get-killed campaign. Focus groups recently conducted with high-risk individuals have resulted in rich content for several dozen reminder messages (see below) that could be disseminated via SMS.

These messages are user-generated in that the content was developed by high-risk individuals themselves—i.e., those most likely to get involved in gun violence. The messages are not limited to reminders. Some also prompt the community to get engaged by responding to various questions. Indeed, the project seeks to crowdsource community solutions to gun violence and thus greater participation. When high-risk individuals were asked how they’d feel if they were to receive these messages on their phones, they had the following to share: “makes me feel like no one is forgetting about me”; “message me once a day to make a difference.”

Given that both forwarding and saving text messages is very common among the population that CeaseFire works with, the team hopes that the text messages will circulate and recycle widely. Note that the project is still in prototype phase but going into implementation mode as of 2012. So we’ll have to wait and see how the project fares and what the initial impact looks like.

In the meantime, PeaceTXT is partnering with Sisi ni Amani (We are Peace) to launch its first international pilot project. Rachel Brown, who spearheads the initiative, first got in touch with me back in the Fall of 2009 whilst finishing her undergraduate studies at Tufts. Rachel was interested in crowdsourcing a peace map of Kenya, which I blogged about here shortly after our first conversation. Since then, Rachel and her team have set up the Kenyan NGO Sisi ni Amani Kenya (SnA-K) to leverage mobile technology for awareness raising and civic engagement with the aim of preventing possible violence during next year’s Presidential Elections.

SnA-K currently manages a ~10,000 member SMS subscriber list in Baba Dogo and Korogocho, Kamukunji and Narok. SnA-K’s SMS campaigns focus on voter education, community cohesion and rumor prevention. What SnA-K needs, how-ever, is the scalable SMS broadcasting technology, the type of focus that PeaceTXT brought to CeaseFire Chicago and the unique response methodology developed by the CeaseFire team. So I reached out to Rachel early on during the work in Chicago to let her know about PeaceTXT and to gain insights from her projects in Kenya. We set up regular conference calls throughout the year to keep each other informed of our respective progress and findings.

Soon enough, PopTech’s delightful Leetha Filderman asked me to put together a pitch for international applications of PeaceTXT’s work, an initiative I have “code-named” PeaceTXT International. I was absolutely thrilled when she shared the good news at PopTech 2011 that our donor, the Rita Allen Foundation, had provided us with additional funding, some of which could go towards an international pilot project. Naturally, Sisi ni Amani was a perfect fit.

So we organized a half-day brainstorming session at the iHub last week to chart the way forward on PeaceTXT Kenya. For example, what is the key behavioral change variable (like friendship in the PeaceTXT Chicago project) that is most likely to succeed in Kenya? As for interrupting violence, how can the CeaseFire methodology be customized for the SnA-K context? Finally, what kind of SMS broadcasting technology do we need to have in place to provide maximum flexibility and scalability earlier rather than later? Answering these questions and implementing scalable solutions essentially forms the basis of the partnership between SnA-K and PeaceTXT (which also includes Revolution Messaging). We have some exciting leads on next steps and will be sure to blog about them as we move forward to get feedback from the wider community.

Conflicts are often grounded in the stories and narratives that people tell themselves and the emotions that these stories generate. Narratives shape identity and the social construct of reality—we interpret our lives through stories. These have the power to transform relationships and communities. We believe the PeaceTXT model can be applied to catalyze behavior  change vis-a-vis peace and conflict issues at the community level by amplifying new narratives via SMS. There is considerable potential here and still much to learn, which is why I’m thrilled to be working with SnA, PopTech & partners on launching our first international pilot project: PeaceTXT Kenya.

The joint project combines the efforts of multiple partners including Al-Jazeera, Ushahidi, Souktel, Crowdflower, the African Diaspora Institute and the wider Somali Diaspora. The basis of my pitch to Al-jazeera was to let ordinary Somalis speak for themselves by using SMS to crowdsource their opinions on the unfolding crisis. My colleagues at Al-jazeera liked the idea and their editorial team proposed the following question:

Al Jazeera wants to know: how has the conflict of the last few months affected your life? Please include the name of your hometown in your response. Thank you!

So I reached out to my good friend Jacob Korenblum at Souktel. He and I had been discussing different ways we might combine our respective technologies to help in Somalia. Souktel has been working in Somalia and providing various SMS based solutions to several organizations. Jacob had previously mentioned that his team had a 50,000+ member SMS subscriber list. This proved to be key. Earlier this week, the Souktel team sent out the above question in Somali to about 5,000 of their subscribers. An effort was made to try and select geographically disbursed areas.

We’ve since received well over 2,000 text message replies and counting. In order to translate and geolocate these messages, I got in touch my colleagues Vaughn Hester and Lukas Biewald at Crowdflower in San Francisco. Crowdflower uses micro-tasking solutions to process and structure data flows. They were very keen to help and thanks to their support my Ushahidi colleagues Rob Baker and Linda Kamau were able to customize this Crowdflower plugin to translate, categorize and geo-locate incoming text messages:

They also wrote additional software so that text messages from Souktel could be automatically forwarded to the Crowdflower plugin which would then automatically push the processed SMS’s to a live Ushahidi map hosted by Al-jazeera. While the software development was moving forward, I connected  with colleagues from the Somali American Student Association who expressed an interest in supporting this project. Thanks to them and other members of the Somali Diaspora, hundreds of Somali voices were translated and shared on Al-jazeera’s public Ushahidi map of Somalia within days. But we still need lots of help. So if you speak Somali and English, then simply follow this link.

I wanted this project to serve as a two-way conversation, however, not just a one-way information flow from Somalia to the world. Every report  that gets mapped on an Ushahidi platform is linked to public discussion forum where readers can respond and share their views on said report. So I suggested that Al-jazeera invite their viewers/readers to comment on the text messages directly. The next step will be for Al-jazeera’s editorial team to select some of the most compelling and interesting comments and to text these back to the senders of the original text messages in Somalia. This two-way flow of information can be iterated and scaled given that the technologies and workflows are already in place.

In sum, the purpose of this project is to catalyze global media attention on Somalia by letting Somali voices take center stage—voices that are otherwise not heard in the international, mainstream media. If journalists are not going to speak about Somalia, then this project  invites Somalis speak to the world themselves. The project highlights  these voices on a live, public map for the world to bear witness and engage in a global conversation with people of Somalia, a conversation in which Somalis and the Diaspora are themselves at the centerfold. It is my sincere hope that advocacy and lobby group will be able to leverage the content generated by this project to redouble their efforts in response to the escalating crisis in Somalia.

I very much hope to see this type of approach used again in Somalia and elsewhere. It is fully inline with the motivations that inspired the launch of the first Ushahidi platform almost 4 years ago today: collective witnessing. Indeed, I am often reminded of what my friend Anand Giridharadas of the New York Times wrote last year vis-a-vis Ushahidi. To paraphrase:

They used to say that history is written by the victors. But today, before the victors win, if they win, there is a chance to scream out with a text message, a text message that will not vanish, a text message that will remain immortalized on a map for the world to bear witness. What would we know about what passed between Turks and Armenians, Germans and Jews, Hutus and Tutsis, if every one of them had had the chance, before the darkness, to declare for all time:

“I was here, and this is what happened to me”?

Use #SomaliaSpeaks to witness the project on Twitter.

I want to specifically thank the following individuals who put an incredible amount of time and effort (most pro bono) to make this project happen: Robert Baker, Linda Kamau, Michael Moszczynski, Katie Highet, Jacob Korenblum, Vaughn Hester, Mohammed Dini, Hamza Haadoow, Andrew Jawitz and of course the excellent Al Jazeera team in Doha. Thank you all for going above and beyond to make this happen.

]]> http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2011/12/08/somalia-speaks/feed/ 29 http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2011/11/03/crowdmapping-the-van-earthquake-in-turkey-with-al-jazeera/ http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2011/11/03/crowdmapping-the-van-earthquake-in-turkey-with-al-jazeera/#comments Thu, 03 Nov 2011 16:25:57 +0000 patrick http://blog.ushahidi.com/?p=6098 Our colleagues at Al Jazeera launched this Crowdmap within hours of the earthquake that struck eastern Turkey on October, 23, 2011. The crisis map includes information on needs, help facilities and salvage work. Most of the information mapped on the Al Jazeera deployment was sourced from this wordpress blog. As is becoming standard practice, a disclaimer in the green message area just above the map notes that Al Jazeera cannot guarantee the accuracy of all the information provided on the map, which means that users/viewers of the information should make their own assessment regarding the validity of the reports and use the contact numbers  and links provided to investigate the information themselves.

Right after launching their Crowdmap, Al Jazeera reached out to us for support, but less on the technical side than the volunteer side. So I sent out a call for volunteers to the Standby Volunteer Task Force (SBTF) and received dozens of replies within minutes. At last count, there were 42 volunteers on the dedicated Al Jazeera Crowdmap Skype chat. Volunteers included included Suha Ulgen, Assistant to the UN’s Chief Information and Technology Officer for the Secretary-General, and students currently taking a crisis mapping course taught by CrisisMappers.net co-founder Dr. Jen Ziemke at JCU. The SBTF is a global network of some 700 volunteers in 70 countries who join the Task Force to train in live crisis mapping and support organizations around the world like the UN when they request help. If you’d like to join, please follow this link.

In the meantime, we’re continuing to support the Al Jazeera team and are already looking at next steps for future deployments of the Ushahidi ecosystem.

Ushahidi and the ICT4Peace Foundation have agreed to jointly develop an enhanced ICT4Peace Crisis Information Management Platform Demonstrator (CIMD), based on Ushahidi’s existing platform and as deployed e.g. in Libya including further upgrades such as the ‘Luanda’ version of the Ushahidi platform and based of specifications provided by ICT4Peace.

The new generation of crowd sourced crisis information management tools have made extraordinary progress in proving valuable information to decision makers in crisis, it is generally recognized, that further developments are needed to provide the necessary tools to validate information through assessing the reliability of the source and the probability of the occurrence. Several stakeholders have different ways of dealing with incoming data relating to a crisis and there is a need for ‘bounded’ crowdsourcing and ‘unbounded’ crowdsourcing. Bounded crowdsourcing entails the reporting of information from vetted sources and for that information to be available only to view by the ‘bound. The proposed ICT4Peace enhanced CIMD tool will feature the updated ‘Luanda’ Ushahidi platform with all its built in features and two key plugins.

The Matrix Analysis plugin as outlined on ICT4peace website and as provided on Ushahidi plugin repository.

For instance, multiple groups plugin for several separate “bound” and “non bound”-reporting reporting communities on the same platform. This keeps data centralized while allowing each of the groups to keep reports and messages private until they decide to make them public. This can allow for collaboration of different agencies that have varying levels of comfort with sharing data publicly.

Just a few short weeks ago, Amnesty International celebrated its 50^th anniversary. Over the course of 50 years, Amnesty International as a brand and a non-governmental organization has become an important actor in the international space—not only as a global grassroots movement agitating for the universal respect of human rights, but as a supplier of credible and accurate information on human rights abuses.

Perpetrators of human rights abuses have little recourse when confronted with Amnesty’s reporting of human rights failings. While other actors in the international sphere may be faulted for having mixed motives, or politically expedient reporting, the rigor of documentation in Amnesty reporting—like many other, younger human rights NGOs—defies the standard methods of denial and minimization perpetrators may pursue. This authority and credibility is strongly protected. Amnesty researchers are always on guard for how perpetrators might attempt to undermine or question research, and as such, take great steps to ensure rigorous verification of their research findings and evidence. The fall-out from botched research might be quite dramatic—see the recent “Gay Girl In Damascus” fiasco—not the least for future victims who will definitely not profit from a damaged reputation of human rights watch dogs.

Bridging Divides and the Empowerment of New Agents

Over the past few years, there has been a dramatic increase in the numbers of people with access to digital communications—including internet access and mobile phone service—especially in the Global South. This trend has empowered more people to connect with others, and further to become voracious consumers of information. Importantly for human rights watchdogs and advocates, however, relatively new users of digital tools are using them to communicate their experiences outwardly. Across the globe—and without any organizing or mobilization by NGOs or watchdogs—people confronted with threats to their rights are communicating out those experiences, in effect reasserting agency over their own rights protection. Faced with a deluge of such self-reporting made possible through social networking tools, and platforms such as crowdmap, Amnesty and other grassroots human rights organizations must address the question as to how to integrate these self-reported experiences and testimonies into their traditional methods of research and analysis, especially given the importance of reporting credibility in the ability of advocates to effect policy change.

Amnesty International’s use of crowd sourcing in a campaigning project on Kenya, in which nearly 50,000 people participated

While AI has played a leadership role in the use of new technologies for human rights monitoring—such as the use of geospatial technologies such as satellite imagery, crowd sourcing does not yet count as a standard methodology or data source in the work of human rights watchdogs. However, that might slowly change. Amnesty previously used crowd sourcing the context of activism and mobilization. For example, as part of the launch of its new flagship campaign to fight poverty, the organization created a platform to amplify the voices from Kenyans, who were describing their understanding of “Dignity”.

Saudi Arabia Crowdmap

The Arab Spring, with its massive popular uprisings and use of social media tools to organize, provides further urgency to test and expand the use of crowd sourcing, including gathering human rights related events information. Of all the countries in the Middle East and North Africa Amnesty chose Saudi Arabia to deploy its first crowdmap–a strategic—yet challenging—choice. The country has not received a lot of attention in the wake of the Arab Spring, and remains extremely closed and restricted, with little information outflow. We know, however, human rights violations are widespread and widely underreported. This is largely related to a prevailing culture of secrecy, no matter if in regards to the justice system or the specific conditions of (political) prisoners. Women face widespread discrimination and violence.

Screenshot of Amnesty International’s Crowdmap of Saudi Arabia

Freedom of expression is highly restricted, making Saudi Arabia in fact one of the most repressive governments in regards to freedom of expression online. While many social media sites are accessible and popular, specific content is subject to censorship, which is strictly enforced. For example, in August 2009 the government blocked the Twitter account of two human rights activists and authorities do not hesitate to detain critical bloggers.

However, Saudi online users used online tools successfully for crisis response in the past. During major floods in 2009, Saudis used YouTube to pressure authorities to investigate the inadequate response (check out Freedom House for a detailed overview of online freedom in Saudi Arabia).

Thus, Saudi Arabia was definitely an interesting test case. Another objective was to mainly target Arabic speaking communities, and in geographic areas in which Amnesty does not yet have a strong presence. The idea was to ideally receive reports from within country, using the usual channels (Twitter, SMS, email, online reports). While there was obviously interest to track any potential or emerging protests similar to other countries in the region, a look at the various categories on the crowdmap shows very clearly the strong focus on specific violations of human rights. The 12 categories included torture or other ill-treatment, deaths in custody or cruel or inhuman punishment (such as flogging), which are reflective of Amnesty’s long standing human rights concerns in the country.

Moderate Response

The project was initially planned for one month only (Mid April to Mid May). However, especially because of the recent developments and attention on the driving ban for women in Saudi Arabia, the test phase was extended for another month until mid of June. The response was moderate, with several hundred visitors to the site who contributed 54 reports in almost all categories over a two months period. The majority of the visitors came from the United States, followed by users from Saudi Arabia. However, what is interesting to note is that the majority of the reports were in Arabic, indicating that the limited but targeted outreach payed off. Additionally, the project gathered significant interest within Amnesty International, so that we are optimistic that we will see an increased use of crowd sourcing for advocacy and campaigning in the future, to complement Amnesty’s rigorous research methodologies. (Justified?) Skepticism definitely remains—you might notice that all reports on the Saudi Arabia crowdmap are clearly marked “unverified”.

Technology Is Bringing Us Closer – In All Aspects

Amnesty International is not simply a human rights NGO. It is a network of millions of people who have pledged in action and deed to the notion that all people must enjoy the rights established in the Universal Declaration. That is, Amnesty International is a crowd. And though technology has taken us far from the cafes, university classrooms, and community centers that had traditionally been the meeting place of those who would seek to defend the right of others they had never met, usually thousands of miles away—the technology is bringing us closer to the core of the Amnesty mission: to defend a global movement to ensure that all people—regardless of their circumstance or position—are empowered as agents to secure their rights, freedom, and dignity.