The recent emergence of collaborative new media efforts, such as mapping for crisis response, demands full civil society participation. Patrick Meier’s non-profit, Kenya-based organization, Ushahidi [7], uses the innovative tools to achieve the localized movement necessary for internal, effective participation.
Meier described how Ushahidi, or “witness” in Swahili, is being used around the world to respond to community needs and engage citizens. Ushahidi uses mapping to supplement the news that mainstream media is not reporting. It also acts as a first response system to assist in crises where there is limited coverage on the ground. From issues to human rights abuses in Kenya, to crime in Atlanta, to the blizzard of 2010 in D.C., Ushahidi allows for crowd-sourced media to document events through use of mobile phones, email, and the internet. Ushahidi has also been used to monitor daily and ongoing happenings, such as the swine flu outbreak, the effects of the oil spill in Louisiana, and the Sudanese elections.
One recent example of how communities have mobilized around mapping tools for crisis response is the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti. One hour after the earthquake, Meier and his colleagues at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University began to map remotely, from Meier’s living room in Boston, to assist onsite help. The students then connected to active Twitter feeds in country, following individuals such as RamHaiti, and in two weeks they were monitoring 40 to 50 feeds from Haiti—aggregating the data into useful information for responders.
Although there was very little information uncovered during the first 24-hours of the disaster, due to lack of access, by the second day Meier’s small team could provide useful resources. Here, the importance of civic engagement comes into play: over one-hundred Tufts undergraduates volunteers, along with students from Columbia University, the London School of Economics, and institutions in Geneva monitored the events from locations across the world. The team of student volunteers used methods that ranged from scouring United Nations situational reports to chatting live with search and rescue teams at Port-au-Prince. With over 35% of Haitians owning mobile phones, the user-generated information allowed for those in country, as well as the diaspora, to take an active role in the disaster response.
This model proved invaluable when the Cost Guard contacted Ushahidi to locate victims, and the Marine Corps sent choppers to a location based on a text message emphasizing, “Whatever you are doing, don’t stop mapping. You are saving lives.” Meier noted, however, that Ushahidi is only 10% of the solution, as voluntary and continual civic engagement is what drives the successes. Sustainability, in this regard, depends on localizing the movement. Chile—like Haiti, post-earthquake—is now incorporating the Ushahidi model into an NGO consortium to demand accountability and transparency during reconstruction phases.
This is also where programs such as Swift River enter into the strategy. By triangulating user-generated information, it’s possible to develop a “veracity score” suggesting the authenticity of reported events. Meier posed the question: “Will the triangulated map be regarded as the new draft of history?” One thing is certain: the faster you get information from the ground, the faster you help people.
