The purpose of this blog post is to share some early lessons learned on this project. These come directly from my involvement in the project and hence reflect the actions I took over the past 48 hours. Please do add your own lessons learned and observations in the comments section below if you were involved in the Recovery Map. I’d like to categorize these lessons into two areas: Strategy and Technology. Since I personally focused more on the strategy side of the project, I’ll invite my technology colleagues to share their lessons on the tech side in the comments section.

On the strategy side, one important point worth noting is the URL or domain name chosen for the deployment. If the domain name is tied to an existing company or organization, this can make it more difficult to partner with another organization and in particular a media company. The URL necessarily brands the site so the more neutral the title the better. This is why we switched to Irene Recovery Map.

You’ll want to put together a media and outreach strategy earlier rather than later. So recruit colleagues who have strong links with the media and ask them to reach out to their contacts to help publicize the map. Create a Google Doc where these colleagues can draft a short introductory text that they can each use when reaching out. This keeps the messaging consistent. Obviously, make as much use of social media as possible to get your message out.

Another piece of advice on the strategy side is to really think through the purpose of the live map and to find a niche. A generic or vague description is simply not compelling. Think through the comparative advantage that you and your partners have in launching a live map. We didn’t have any partnerships with official responders, for example. So I decided to “rebrand” our efforts and added a new tag line: “For Ordinary People Helping Ordinary People” and added a “Clean Up Efforts” category. In addition, I added a succinct rationale for the project in the text box above the map: “Disaster responders cannot be everywhere at the same time. The purpose of this site is to help ordinary people help themselves.”

On a related note, provide a very simple way for people to understand how they can use the map. We borrowed the graphic below from an earlier deployment (Snowmageddon NY) and added it to the Recovery Map. The point here is not to assume that new users of the map will necessarily know how to leverage the information displayed. Don’t make them have to figure it out. Make it easy and intuitive.

Next, promote the use of smart phone apps as early as possible in the launch of your live map. Publicize these on the home page and provide the necessary links to download the apps as well as a Google Doc like this one on how to make best use of these apps when reporting information to the map.

Finally, make sure you have an “About Us” section. If would-be users have no idea who is behind the initiative, they are far more likely to hesitate in using the site. Be sure to list all the organizations in your broad coalition of partners working on the initiative. This not only recognizes individuals who are working around the clock, it also helps to increase the credibility and trustworthiness of the project.

On the technology side, Ushahidi needs to make an embed map function directly available on every Ushahidi deployment. This is important because having other websites embed the map (particularly media websites) helps to spread the word and extend the credibility of the efforts. Ushahidi also needs to make a wide range of standard icons directly available from the backend of the platform. The shape of the map on the home page should also be modifiable from the backend. In terms of the smart phone apps, Ushahidi should have a feature that displays the download links directly on the home page.

There were at least 3 other live maps (powered by Ushahidi) that were launched in response to Hurricane Irene. One of these is particularly noteworthy given that it was launched by the Office of Emergency Management of New York City. The NYC Severe Weather Map above is thus definitely a first in this respect. We’ve worked with the NYC team over the past few days to make modifications to their Crowdmap and look forward the team’s feedback after the recovery efforts.

Update: We’ve connected the Office of Emergency Management  with Mobile Commons who have set up an SMS number for the map which WNYC and The New York Times are starting to promote. Text IRENE to 877877.

As I have noted in this blog post and this one, the launch of this crisis map for Libya has been a very different experience on the use of the Ushahidi platform in Haiti. But there are at least three other important points worth noting from the perspective of Ushahidi.

First, the Ushahidi team did not need to provide any technical support to the Task Force. Contrast this with the Haiti deployment where virtually all of Ushahidi’s software developers were literally working around the clock for four weeks straight to keep the platform afloat because a considerable amount of customization was required on the fly. This time around, a larger technical community was available to play an instrumental role as the Task Force’s Tech Team: George Chamales, Chris Roblee, John Etherton, Aaron Huslage, Rob Munro and Brian Hogg, for example. The platform was also a lot more robust this time around.

Second, the customizations for Haiti had to be done from scratch. But thanks to the new version of the Ushahidi platform released just a few months ago, the Task Force’s Tech Team was able to use a number of plugins (or apps) like the “Big Map” plugin developed by the Ushahidi-Liberia Team in Monrovia. It turns out that our colleagues at OCHA are using the Big Map interface almost exclusively because it provides the functionalities they need to carry out some comparative analysis of the data, which simply can’t be done from the main map. At this point, a total of seven different plugins have been added to the map, more may be coming in the coming days.

Third, Ushahidi the company did not get confused for a humanitarian or human rights organization, which happened in Haiti. We made it very clear that this was not an Ushahidi Inc project, as the tweet below attests. Remember, the Ushahidi platform can be used to map all kinds of events and infrastructure, not just conflict. Check out this Burger Map of the US if you don’t believe me.

If you’d like to help out with the crisis mapping efforts in Libya or future crisis mapping efforts, please follow this link. The Task Force is composed of skilled professionals, including humanitarian professionals who are new to crisis mapping. If you have no experience, you will get hands on training from the most experienced volunteers. This is a great way to learn new marketable skills and help the world at the same time.

Finally, it is worth noting that the success of this deployment has a lot to do with the fact that the Task Force already had trained volunteers on standby and clear processes as well as workflows. In other words, the Task Force has worked hard on getting the non-technical requirements addressed rather than focusing exclusively on the technology. As Chris Blow, a long time friend of Ushahidi’s put it in a previous post, the Ushahidi platform is only 10% of the solution.

I can definitely say that the field of crisis mapping has come a long way since the Haiti deployment. Why? Because we are focusing on people and processes first (all the other stuff) and technology second. As the technology gets easier and easier to use, the success of an Ushahidi deployment will fall increasingly on how well groups fare with all the other stuff they need to do to make their project successful.

As director of crisis mapping at Ushahidi, I catalyze crisis mapping efforts, share best practices and lessons learned, catalyze volunteer technical communities like the Standby Task Force, and interface with the humanitarian, human rights and media communities. This experience is particularly insightful for Ushahidi, we get important feedback on what works and doesn’t work, both on the technical and non-technical side. The lessons we learn from these deployments allow us to provide even better services to organizations we formally partner with. This is becoming increasingly important given our stated strategic goals for 2011.

Uchaguzi TZ is a joint project of Ushahidi and Sodnet from Kenya, as well as TACCEO, which is comprised of a number of local Tanzanian organizations and led by the Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC) from Tanzania.

How You Can Get Involved

We are relying on volunteers from Tanzania, Kenya, and globally to help us map the incoming reports, and because of the large volume of messages we expect to receive, we are currently in need of volunteers – in Tanzania, Kenya, and remotely – with basic tech knowledge or with previous with Ushahidi to help us map and respond to reports. If you are interested and able to volunteer with us on election day, October 31st, sign up using this Google Spreadsheet!

While we’ve had a wonderful media team working to spread the word about Uchaguzi TZ in Tanzania, we can also use your help in letting your friends and family know to text 15540 with any information about the Tanzanian elections.

The Haiti Ushahidi site - a heatmap

There are a number of takeaways from the heatmap. Right off the bat we had a couple, though we’ll likely have a lot more when we have a few minutes to actually study it:

• It further solidifies our drive to get a “fullscreen” feature up and running, most of the action is on the map and we can do a lot to give it more prominence.
• We used the stats to make the decision to take off the “Share This” button, which gave us room to add “Total Reports: xxx
• People seem to like hitting the “Play” button to see the action take place over time. We’ll need to refine that feature so that it plays a lot smoother.

What do you see here that we should be aware of? How would you adjust the site?

sms2geo was created to parse location, using people and machines, out of text messages. Right now, anyone in Haiti can text a message to +46-737-494-537 text like

‘ we need the location of Ecole professional casini ave maglanbloise a carrefour feuilles’

From this you get the reply.

The reply is first based on queries to the constantly updated Nominatim and OpenStreetMap tool, and also to Google’s nameservers. Regardless of whether the SMS message was able to be geolocated automatically, it still has to go through verification by a person in order to be trusted as accurate enough to respond upon. This is done through crowdsourcing of local knowledge, where people who know the city and country work to find the actual spot on the map.

On the web side, this looks very simple, and it works brilliantly:

sms2geo - web interface

If you know Haiti, you can help by processing SMS messages that need geolocation through the web queue interface.

Being a developer on Ushahidi has meant that I’ve spent most of my time behind the computer, writing and perfecting new code. It was great to have the opportunity to engage with the people who are involving Ushahidi in their projects. Organizations as big as the UN and the World Bank and as small as an activist group in Phoenix, AZ have seen the value that Ushahidi can provide. Without performing a scientific survey, I came to the conclusion that roughly half of the participants at the conference are either looking at or have already implemented Ushahidi as an integral part of their projects.

In a traditional non-profit, fundraisers will fundraise, marketers will market and developers will develop. While it’s difficult to break down these roles entirely (a fundraiser may not be able to write software), Ushahidi does its best to give core staff and volunteers a wide range of responsibilities. For instance, we are encouraged to engage the public through our blog, IRC chat and forums, regardless of our position. Beyond virtual conversation, we are also given opportunities to interact face-to-face with the people who will ultimately be operating with our software in the field through conferences like ICCM. These interactions with our customers help to give us software developers a better understanding of how our software will be used in the field.

“Leveraging mobile platforms, computational linguistics, geospatial technologies, and visual analytics to power effective early warning for rapid response to complex humanitarian emergencies.”

Patrick Meier, along with Jen Ziemke, has put together the first CrisisMapping Conference, which will run this October 16-18, 2009 in Cleveland, Ohio.

Of course, here at Ushahidi we’re so deep into this space that we’re planning on having David, Juliana and Brian be there. AndChris Blow, who has been a part of the community since the beginning, is also going to be in attendance. Not to mention the fact that Patrick Meier, the event’s co-curator, is a long-time adviser to our team. (Ory and I will both be at Pop!Tech that week, so we can’t make it)

If you can make it, sign up now, as I’m told that they’re beginning to run out of space.

Instructions from Riyaad on the Al Jazeera team:
“If you’re anywhere in the world and an event is taking place to do with #gaza #israel send a text to: +45609910303 – Start it with GAZA.” You can also, SMS 37191 / +45609910303 – Twitter: @ajgaza

Al Jazeera is estimated to be the second largest international news/media house, reaching 100 million households. That kind of organization testing Ushahidi gives us a lot of insight into what we need to do in the future for enterprise-level deployments. This is our first Arabic language deployment, which the Al Jazeera new media team has been working on in the last week – more to come on that soon.

Benjamin Doherty has also played a role in helping get the site up. He also brought up an interesting point that he’s helping us figure out how to work into the system. How do you deal with synonymous names of locations? That’s an especially good question to ask in Gaza, as there are multiple names for the same place used by different groups.

Lastly, this is also the first time that Google Maps was not chosen as the default map, but Microsoft Virtual Earth Maps were instead. We can already see some areas there where we need to fine tune the clustering at the higher elevation levels (as you drill down closer you see that the reports are in the right spot on the map).

So, a big thanks to Riyaad at Al Jazeera New Media Labs for giving it a try. We’ve already learned a great deal from just one week on this, and we’re looking forward to seeing what they do in the future.

A video from Al Jazeera TV:

Today saw organizations and individuals from the mapping and crisis space descend upon Orlando for a meeting. The CrisisMappers group is focused on the use of mapping in crisis situations. It came about as those of us involved in some of the newer applications in this area realized that we needed to keep our communications open. It’s about keeping us as people talking, but also ensuring that our applications can share data.

Andrew Turner started us off with a “state of the map” talk, discussing tools, resources and trends in the neogeography area. Patrick Meier then started going through how mapping is currently being used in humanitarian and disaster recovery situations currently, and what the opportunities are.

Most of the day was spent running through everyone’s applications. Whether it was the Development Seed team taking us through their amazingly well designed sites, InSTEDD talking about Mesh4x and SMS GeoChat, or hearing about Emergencity, it was a great time to see what others are doing as they use location-based data for emergency situations.

Conversations touched on:

• Open data vs helping Google/Yahoo/MS get more data
• Mobile Crisis Mapping (p2p – without towers) messaging connectivity
• Beyond just mapping… What do you do with providing community space (social space) and collaboration space (wiki)?
• When is it appropriate to build web-focused vs client-focused tool
• Offline interaction with our tools (mobile and web)
• More requirements – how do we better engage the non-techs in the humanitarian space to gather requirements for use in these applications?
• Interactive design – make maps understandable for end users (cartographic norms/rules)

It was a good first time meeting for many of us who had never met in person before. I, personally, am looking forward to the added interaction that this meeting will catalyze.

Finally, we’re all extremely grateful to MindComet (one of Florida’s top web agencies) for allowing us to use their amazing facility. It was sort of like sitting in the cockpit of a Star Wars ship – perfect for a bunch of visual mapping organizations.

Read about the methodology and find the report here.

Yellow icon = mainstream news reports;
Blue icon = citizen journalism blogs;
Green icon = Ushahidi reports.