Building community resilience with citizen media Canadian Risks and Hazards Conference October 18, 2011 Presented by Heather Leson, Director of Community Engagement, Ushahidi

1. Volunteer Mappers:
The New Age Ham Radio Operators
Building Community Resilience
Canadian Risks and Hazards
Heather Leson
Conference
@heatherleson
CRHnet.ca
hleson@ushahidi.com
October 19, 2011

3. What is Ushahidi?
Open source software for information collection, visualization
and interactive mapping.
We build tools for democratizing information, increasing
transparency and lowering the barriers for individuals to share
their stories.
Platform Community Movement
ushahidi.com

4. History
"Ushahidi", which means "testimony" in Swahili, was a website that was initially
developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after post-election fallout at the
beginning of 2008.
legacy.ushahidi.com

5. Citizen Media
December 2010 - 319 reports, 156,859 views April 2011 - a lot reports
Help bring awareness to sexual harassment in Egypt Engaging citizens to help design a better New York City
harassmap.com bit.ly/ushahidi_pps

6. Election Monitoring
May 2009 - 202 reports, 20,000 views August 2010 - 1525 reports, 20,000 views
Allow citizen reporting during election in India Monitor Kenya referendum election
votereport.in uchaguzi.co.ke

7. Disaster Response
March 2011 - 8,000+ reports, 144,974 views January 2011 - 99,772 reports, 469,744 views
Monitor fallout of tsunami and nuclear crisis in Japan Monitor the flooding in Australia
sinsai.info/ushahidi queenslandfloods.crowdmap.com

8. Citizens are Responders
(Photos of the Kenyan Railway Museum)

9. Who? Organizations, non-profits, media, private sector, informal networks, citizens

10. HOW?

11. Plan
Design
Communicate
Collect
Verify
Analyze
Visualize
Evaluate
Iterate

12. Crowdmap
Crowdmap allows you to set up your own deployment of
Ushahidi ‘in the cloud’ without having to install it on your own
web server.
crowdmap.com

13. Ushahidi
or
Crowdmap
So much Information

14. Data Types Output Methods
Input Methods
Citizen
Generated Map
SMS
News Media Email
Web Form Timeline
API
Ushahidi
NGO data Short Code SMS Alerts
or
Layers
Crowdmap
RSS
Government Mobile Apps RSS
Twitter
Facebook
Public APIs Email
MASAS
Flickr
YouTube
Twitter
So much Information

15. Use all the Channels
Data can be imported and exported. Layers can be added.
Yes we have an API. All of this data can flow to MASAS.

16. iPhone / iPad
Ushahidi mobile application for the iPhone and iPad
bit.ly/ushahidi_ios_app

17. SMSSync
SMSSync is a simple SMS to HTTP sync utility, that turns any Android phone into a
local SMS gateway that sends incoming messages to any Ushahidi deployment.
smssync.ushahidi.com

18. Checkins (CI)
Quick location update which can include an optional photo and
description, sharing “I am here”.
bit.ly/checkins_purpose

22. Stand-By Task Force (SBTF)
“We are the people who map for three hours at night instead of watching TV.
We are the people who wake up early before work,
log into Skype and add a few reports to the map.”
- Heather Leson, SBTF volunteer
standbytaskforce.com

23. http://eq.org.nz

24. sinsai.info

25. Libya Crisis
The Libya Crisis Map deployed by request of
UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
libyacrisismap.net

26. http://vtirene.crowdmap.com

27. http://epic.cs.colorado.edu/?pag_id=11

28. skfloods.ca

29. skfloods.ca

31. Communities and Cities
(photo by Frank Lemire)

34. chicagosnow.crowdmap.com

36. fixyourstreet.ie

37. huduma.info

38. Mapping Mukuru by Ground Truth using OpenStreetMap
http://mapkibera.org/

40. Lessons
• Use all the available communication
channels. Your citizens will.
• Build capacity in advance. Train. Exercise.
• Learn from the global models.
• Trust your citizens, your staff.
• You have advocates in your community.
• The Internet is not going away: APIs and
layers are your friends.

41. Questions?
ushahidi.com crowdmap.com

42. Resources
• http://community.ushahidi.com/research/
• http://irevolution.net/
• http://www.undispatch.com/disaster-relief-2-0-what-the-un-could-not-hav-done-without-the-volunteer-
technical-community
• http://hub.nethope.org/2011/09/what-ict%E2%80%99s-role-in-the-pakistan-floods-means-for-
emergency-preparedness/
• http://www.scribd.com/doc/69178713/HurricaneIrenesocialmediaAAR-v2
• http://epic.cs.colorado.edu/?pag_id=11
• http://crisismappers.net/
• http://members.standbytaskforce.com/
• http://gwob.org/
• http://crisiscommons.org/
• http://www.rhok.org/
• http://mapkibera.org/

43. Thank you!