Technology & Computing
Ushahidi crisis mapping
The problem
During Kenya's post-election violence in early 2008, reports of attacks were scattered across blogs, phone calls and text messages with no way to see the whole picture.
The innovation
An open-source platform that collects reports by SMS, email and web and places them on a map in near real time — crowdsourced situational awareness.
How it worked
Incoming reports are geolocated, categorised and verified where possible, producing a live map that anyone can read.
Why it mattered
Deployed afterwards for the Haiti and Chile earthquakes, election monitoring, disease response and disaster relief worldwide.
The legacy
Crisis mapping as a discipline largely dates from this deployment; the software remains open source.
Sources
Ushahidi platform history and deployment records
Institutional recordStudies of crowdsourced crisis mapping
Institutional record
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