Web Tool Ushahidi comes in handy in times of war

Al Jazeera and the DR Congo currently use it to visualize incidences of violence in their respective countries.

Ushahidi, which means witness in Swahili, is a free and open source platform created to trace and report issues of crime, crisis and violence to the general public. It was developed specifically during the post-election breakout in Kenya in 2008.

Ushahidi is a Google Maps mash-up that allows users to report information via SMS, emails or web form.  Users from all parts of the world can fill in a simple form with an exact description of what happened, where it took place and assign a category to it.  Some of the categories include looting, riots, crime and sexual assault each represented by different colored dots easily detectable on a map.

For the DR Congo, NGO’s are currently helping with the gathering of information to keep locals alert. When clicking on a particular dot, a report is generated in both English and French, plus it will identify exactly where the incident is happening on the map of the DR Congo.

As expressed by the creators of the platform, ‘our goal is to create the simplest way of aggregating information from the public for use in crisis response. ‘

Hats off to Ushahidi’s developers, Erik Hersman, Ory Okolloh and David Kobaya for creating such a useful tool that lays out a bold vision for the integration of existing technologies with the purpose of ending war, fighting crime and restoring peace in areas of conflict.

Please pass the word around, we can only profit from tools such as these that use technology as a medium to help others with no self-interest. Ushahidi is present on Facebook and Twitter. For more info, check out their Blog.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2009 at 6:33 pm and is filed under Social Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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