Mapping Crises*
Marc Ellison
Felicia Pacentrilli
Heather Yundt
*Downloadable from http://www.marcellison.com/blog/?p=270
Introduction
 What is Ushahidi?
 Some misconceptions
 Components of a Ushahidi instance
 Case studies: elections, wars and disasters
 Other applications of Ushahidi
 Current developments
 Conclusion – a success or a work in progress?
What is Ushahidi?
 Originated from electoral violence in Kenya in 2008
 Kept Kenyans current on crisis and provided assistance to relief
workers
 Swahili for “witness” or “testimony”
 A crisis mapping tool and/or an early warning system
 Global citizen journalism: allows people around the world to tell
their story during a disaster or emergency situation
 Free, easy to use, deployable worldwide
What is Ushahidi?
 Not the first of its kind
o http://map.opennet.net/
o http://www.ipisresearch.be/maps/CaMi/web/ind
ex.html
o http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/worldmap/
cida/cidaworldmap.aspx
What is Ushahidi?
 Jargon Explained 1: “crowdsourcing”
 Anyone can contribute reports, photos and video via email, SMS, tweets, or
an online form
 Reports are posted in “near real-time”
 Jargon Explained 2: “open source” application
 You can tailor the code to better suit your needs
 You can deploy it yourself to suit your community’s needs
 Over 4,000 downloads
 Jargon Explained 3: “Crowdmap”
 Allows anyone to set up an Ushahidi site in 5 minutes – it’s as easy as
opening a Gmail account or activating a Wordpress blog
Some misconceptions
 Ushahidi manages deployments– NO – they primarily develop,
and offer limited support
 Crowdsourced information is statistically representative – NO –
the implementation and data collection methods are up to you
 Crowdsourced information cannot be validated – NO – it can
be, albeit more time-consuming, and it also allows you to
gather data from previously untapped sources
Ushahidi components
 An example: tracking the H1N1 virus
 The map itself i.e. density bubbles, zoom, satellite view
 Categories i.e. police action, aid distribution, infrastructure,
logistics, violence, hate speech, positive events, campaign
promises, results
 Interactive timeline graph
 Twitter feed
 Report submission via SMS, email, tweet or online form
 Alerts for your area
ELECTIONS
 ‘Verification’ guides and electoral procedures
 Is Africa Ushahidi-ready?
 Case studies: Kenya 2008, Tanzania 2010, Cote
d’Ivoire 2010
 Electoral overview
‘Verification’ guides and
electoral procedures
 A number of guides are posted on the Ushahidi
community page. Deals with:
o how to verify reports
o considering your audience
o how the project can be made sustainable
o how to address privacy and protection issues
o considering how to respond to report submissions
Linda Kamau,
software developer,
on election
procedures and time
Is Africa Ushahidi-ready?
 Increase in mobile phone use
– a common denominator
 Total African mobile
subscriber base is roughly
280.7 million people (30% of
total)
 Total African mobile
subscriber base is expected
to reach 561 million (53.5%) by
2012 .
 Increasing access to highspeed internet
 Increase in usage of social
media: Facebook, Twitter and
blogs
Example: Kenya 2008
 27th December 2007: election
 30th December 2007: govt issued publication ban
 Observers noticed electoral irregularities
 1st January 2008: incumbent president Mwai
Kibaki announced as winner
 Triggered tribal- and politically-motivated attacks
 Impact of bloggers
 Joshua Goldstein/ Juliana Rotich (2008)
 Evolution of the ‘hate medium’: radio in Rwanda,
SMS in Kenya
Kenya: sample SMSs
 By 2007, Kenya boasted over 11 million mobile phone subscriptions: roughly 30
per cent of its population
 SMSs intercepted by protestors:
o “Fellow Kenyans, the Kikuyu’s have stolen our children’s future...we must deal
with them in a way they understand...violence.”
o “No more innocent Kikuyu blood will be shed. We will slaughter them right here
in the capital city. For justice, compile a list of Luo’s you know...we will give you
numbers to text this information.”
 SMSs sent to Ushahidi:
o "Police battled youths who set fire to roadblocks; the police shot indiscriminately,
“targeting anyone on sight”; one man was shot in the stomach as he stood in
front of his house.”
o "A 13-year old boy was laid to rest next to his uncle´s house; the burial was
attended by hundreds of residents who wailed and lit up bonfires."
Kenya 2008 (cont.)
 9th January 2008: violence escalating in the
Kibera slums in Nairobi and the towns of
Kisumu, Kakamega, Eldoret, and Naivasha in
the Rift Valley
 “For the reconciliation process to occur at
the local level the truth of what happened
will first have to come out. Guys looking to do
something - any techies out there willing to
do a mashup of where the violence and
destruction is occurring using Google Maps?”
– Ory Okolloh’s blog, 2008
 Ushahidi is born: created by Kenyans and US
developers in one week
 By 28th January, the death toll was
approximately 800
Kenya 2008 - screenshot
Kenya 2008 – data analysis
 465 reports on Ushahidi
 Who filed reports to Ushahidi?
 Verification: not all reports were accurate, but were subsequently
adjusted in a few hours
 Some reports were simple transcripts of paper’s lead paragraphs
 Some linked to YouTube videos
 Ushahidi documented cases of violence not covered by
mainstream media
 Provided a digital archive or "memorial" of sorts for the events that
happened in Kenya
Example: Tanzania 2010
 Incumbent Jakaya Kikwete came to power in
2005
Linda Kamau on
advertising
 Came to power on anti-corruption ticket
 In 2005, Some 97% of Tanzanians say they can
access a mobile phone
 2,000 regional monitors have been trained and
are sending in consistent information from the
polling stations
 15,000 NGO members
 31st October 2010: election
Linda Kamau on
election monitors
Tanzania - screenshot
Tanzania – data analysis
 1st November 2010: 4,000 reports submitted to Ushahidi
team
 By 6th November 2010: only 1,634 reports verified
 1 report took at least 20 minutes to corroborate
 Verification issues: one blogger complained of how a
report they submitted was mere hearsay – states the
report he submitted was never changed from verified
 5th November 2010: Kikwete wins 61% of the vote
 Ushahidi reports appear to corroborate BBC reports
that result has been widely accepted
Linda Kamau
on backlog
Example: Cote d’Ivoire 2010
 Recent unstable political history
 Election due since 2005, postponed 6
times
 With all the ballots counted from Sunday's
first round, incumbent Gbagbo won 38%
and opposition leader Alassane Ouattara
32%
 A second round of votes will be held on
28th November 2010
 80% turn out
 Low number of Ushahidi reports – why?
Cote d’Ivoire - screenshot
Cote d’Ivoire – data analysis
 60 reports as of 6th November 2010
 SMS service suspended
 Co-founder Erik Hersman stated this would not affect Ushahidi –
as “Ushahidi supports multiple ways of sending information in.”
 Army has closed all land borders until today, reinforcing sea
ports and airports with strict security measures.
 Accusations of vote rigging
 No violence as of 6th November 2010
Electoral overview
 Technological constraints
 Verification process
 Huge amount of manpower required to verify data
 Framing of an election – no social or historical context
 Goldstein/Rotich – summarised digital tools allow for increase in citizen
activism/journalism, but also predatory ethnic-based mob violence and hate
speech
 Elements for Kenya’s success: free press, active blogosphere and good internet
connectivity
 Co-founder Erik Hersman stated Ushahidi “has made organizations realize the
need for including bottom-up information…it’s no longer top-down information
from government and the media… The people's voice, their ability to know
what's going on around them and using that in a more holistic understanding of
a situation are now possible ”
DISASTERS
 Haiti earthquake 2010
 Pakistan flood 2010
 Disaster overview
Example: Haiti
earthquake 2010
 On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti
 More than 230,000 people died, some of Haiti’s most populous
areas suffered mass destruction and 1.5 million people were left
homeless
 The traditional response system lacked the ability to prioritize
data that came from outside sources
 Ushahidi provided a way to capture, organize, and share critical
information coming directly from Haitians through social media
and text messages
Haiti: earthquake in pictures
Haiti: data analysis
 Ushahidi was deployed in the first two hours following the earthquake
 Within four days of the earthquake, 100,000 reports from the ground
had been received
 Approximately 85% of Haitian households had access to mobile phones
at the time of the earthquake
 Although 70% of the cell phone towers in Port-au-Prince had been
destroyed in the disaster, they were back online before Ushahidi
became operational
 4636 project volunteers translated 25,186 SMS messages and numerous
e-mail, Web, and social media communications, resulting in 3,596
reports that were actionable
Haiti earthquake screenshot
Haiti: local deployment
 A Haitian ICT company called Solutions pooled its resources to
create an interactive crisis and needs-mapping platform called
“Noula” or “we’re here” in Creole
 The concept is simple: Haitians call into a call center for free that
is staffed by trained operators, and communicate critical pieces
of information on their situation or request information
 Info is sorted, categorized, geolocated and placed on noula.ht
 Noula has teamed with the Haitian government and agencies
to coordinate mapping cholera reports using SMS text alerts
linked to their computer platform for GPS visual mapping and
tracking of cholera
Example: Pakistan flood
2010
 The flooding started in the north in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
province (KPK) in July 2010 and quickly spread to other
provinces
 Heavy monsoon rains have caused the worst floods in living
memory in Pakistan
 More than 1,700 people are thought to have died, with almost
21 million people affected
 Throughout the country, nearly 5 million people are without
shelter. An estimated 8 million people require immediate
assistance to meet their basic food needs
Pakistan: in pictures
Pakistan: local deployment
 “As a technology and social entrepreneur, I have read
hundreds of case studies and talks that a SMS is a ray
of hope and decided to setup SMS based incident
reporting.”
 “I want to bring first line of incident reporting live for
millions of people in Pakistan. This requires technology,
spreading the right word to millions, building team,
logistics, resources and coordinating all the incident
reporting. The last week was spent on the technology
front. So, after sleepless nights, power shortages, worst
news written on faces everywhere, the effort continued.
With the help of few friends, I got access to short code
3441 in Pakistan. Next the Crowdmap was launched
at http://pakrelief.crowdmap.com. Then, the short
code integration was done. And the technology
milestone is achieved. “
 “Team building is on way and spreading the message
to millions of flood affected people is next big
challenge. Remember, the mission is to save one hope
by one SMS message at 3441.”
Faisal Chohan
Ushahidi Pakistan
Founder
Pakistan flood - screenshot
Pakistan: data analysis &
what now?
 1130 reports: majority related to issues of food, water and
sanitation, health and shelter
 The situation in Pakistan is still dire: 10 dollars (US) can buy 1200
SMS alerts to journalists and workers on the ground. 25 dollars
can ensure that 3000 flood-affected individuals can send a text
to 3441 and report their observations
 The first Crowdmap deployments were for reporting incidents of
flooding in Pakistan
 “Unlike Haiti, by the time flooding in Pakistan took its tool,
Ushahidi would be plug-and-play. In August, Ushahidi launched
Crowdmap, a hosted “in the cloud” service.” --Ory Okollah,
Ushahidi co-founder
 More than 1,500 deployments of Crowdmap were realized in the
first week of it going live
Disaster overview
 Filling the information gap in the very early emergency period
 Providing critical information about the needs of individuals
and communities that may be lacking in rapid needs
assessments
 Providing reports on sentinel events as well as reports that are
time sensitive (such as outbreaks of diseases etc)
 Providing critical information from areas that are inaccessible
either for logistical constraints or security threats
 Providing up-to-date situational awareness that can be very
useful for teams on the ground
 Providing a source of data for cross reference
WARS
 “Getting tweets from a warzone is so 2008. The latest social
media advance combined tools like Twitter, text messaging,
and online mapping to gather up first-hand reports...” – Wired
magazine, January 2009
 DRC 2008
 Gaza 2008
Example: DRC 2008
 Long, complex history of war
 Just under 2 million internally displaced people as of 2010
(OCHA)
 Over 17,000 sexual violence attacks in 2009 (U.N. Population
Fund)
 5,249,667 mobile subscribers (African Mobile Factbook 2008) =
about 7.4% of population
 About 5% of the population has access to electricity (SNEL)
DRC: Ushahidi deployment
 Deployed in November 2008 – March 2009
 Ushahidi managed the deployment
 Ran on Ushahidi’s servers
 Worked with FrontlineSMS
 Used local groups like HEAL Africa to report and
verify
DRC 2008 - screenshot
DRC: data analysis
 233 reports in total (compared with 4,000 reports
in Tanzania in one day)
 Most common report categories: internally
displaced people, armed groups, humanitarian
actions
 Most reports were made in and around Goma
 The vast majority of reports were made at the
beginning of November. The numbers drop
quickly afterwards.
DRC: “This isn’t Kenya”
 Language
 Awareness
 Verification
 Infrastructure
DRC: why didn’t it work?
 Local support?
 Crisis fatigue?
 Unclear benefits?
Example: Gaza 2008
 December 27 2008 – January 18 2009
 Media blackout
 Al Jazeera English was the only English language
media outlet on the ground
 Ayman Mohyeldin and Sherine Tadros
Gaza: Ushahidi deployment
 Al Jazeera was the first major media outlet to
utilize Ushahidi
 Riyaad Minty links up with Erik Hersman
 4 ways to report: website; SMS; Twitter and email
Gaza 2008 - screenshot
Gaza: in retrospect
 Majority of reports focused
on aid, air strikes, rocket
attacks and Palestinian
casualties
 Verification
 Damage to infrastructure
 Responsibility of the media
Other applications of
Ushahidi
 Atlanta crime map
 Wildlife tracking in Kenya
 H1N1/swine flu monitoring
 African medical stockout tracker
 Snowmaggedon
 Zombie Apocalypse
Current developments
 Ushahidi 2.0 – out in a few weeks
 Plugins being developed for Facebook and YouTube
 Canadian Dale Zak working on smart phone apps
 Swift River: separating the message from the noise, wheat from
the chaff
 Cloudvox: voice reporting
 FrontlineSMS: turns computer and a mobile into a 2-way group
messaging hub. It works anywhere there’s a mobile signal, doesn’t
need the Internet, a major advantage for many grassroots NGOs.
You can send messages to wide groups of people, and collect
responses to any questions/surveys you might want to run, all via
text message.
Conclusion – a success
or a work in progress?
 Another tool in the journalist’s social media arsenal
 Crowdsourcing and the ‘veil of ignorance’
 Determining the veracity of reports
 Reliance on technological infrastructure
 ‘Wag the dog’ – Ushahidi and “information vandalism”
 Framing and journalist as cartographer
 No silver bullet
 Reliance on local advocacy, advertising and NGOs
Ushahidi: 10% of the solution
A final thought…
 “It’s a tool. It’s a tool we need to use to tell a story. Very often
we get caught up in the hype, and we jump on the
bandwagon, and we go out there and report on the here and
now. And we forget what really makes us journalists, what we
are here to do. It’s up to us to be there to tell the truth.
Whatever it is. Because that’s the fundamental reason that all
of us got into this business. The business models will come, but if
you are not standing out there putting the information into
context, providing depth and understanding to situations and
conflicts around the world, then we are failing in our jobs.
Because we need to go beyond that, even if it’s only 140
characters at a time.”
– Riyaad Minty, head of social media at Al Jazeera.