crisis

4Oct

Help Hack Open Source Software for Social Good

Geeks without Bounds is running a hack-a-thon on October 9/10, 2010.

geeks-without-bounds
I met up with Geeks without Bounds‘ Johnny Diggz at the International Conference of Crisis Mapping. We talked about his event and I promptly introduced him to some of the attending Open Source communities: Sahana, OpenStreetMap, Ushahidi/Crowdmap, Swift River, and Frontline SMS. These open source software tools can be used for Humanitarian and Crisis management. Some of the software can also be used for a wide range of social good /community activities.

Ushahidi and Sahana are confirmed participants in the 10.10.10 day activities. The GWB event includes amazing prizes. But to win, you need to:Register and participate.

Thanks Johnny and good luck with the event!

Help Volunteer Technical Communities:
Not available on 10.10.10? Each of these open source teams could use a geeky hand.

How you can help these communities:
Each of these open source communities have mailing lists, forums, and wikis. All their documentation and training materials are available online too. Can you help them?

Sahana:
*Sahana is a free open source disaster management system.
*It’s a web based collaboration tool that includes modules for crisis response including finding missing people, managing aid, managing volunteers and much more.
*How to help?: needs volunteer help with specifications, code, donations and standards

OpenStreetMap:
*OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world. It is made by people like you.
*How to help?: anyone can map, code, bring your expertise, translate, create user manuals, contribute and collect data using walking-papers.org. Go ahead and add missing information to the map.

Ushahidi/Crowdmap
Ushahidi builds tools for democratizing information, increasing transparency and lowering the barriers for individuals to share their stories. The tools use three main criteria: information collection, visualization, & interactive mapping.

They need:
1. Experienced Web Developers – there’s a list of awesome things to do
2. Trained teams of people ready to be activated to help
3. Ushahidi is building a community site to help and engage

Swift River
*SwiftRiver is an open source platform that helps users manage real-time data.
*How to help: Need developers who create but also document.

Frontline SMS
*FrontlineSMS allows to you to text message with large groups of people anywhere there is a mobile signal.
*How to Help: beta testing of the tools, field testing by NGOs, and most of all spread the word about Frontline.

Brief update about ICCM10
The International Conference on Crisis Mapping was a great event. Meeting fellow volunteer technical communities, NGOs, students and folks from the World Bank and UN was inspiring. I attended as a volunteer, but participated in training and was able to hear most of the Ignite presentations. It was a bit of a reunion of other dedicated volunteers whom I’ve met via my work with CrisisCommons.org.

There was even a small meet-up about Exercise24.org participants to talk over lunch about collaborating across volunteer technical communities. I was happy to give my view on this event and how our communities might participate in the future.

For more about ICCM10, see some posts from Kim Stephens and Gisli Olafsson (a number of great posts).

22Aug

Help Crowdsource SMS Reports for the Pakistan Floods

Cross-posted from the Crisiscommons.org blog.

SMS (Text messages) Reports + Your Brain + a search engine + google translate + basic map (long and lat coordinates)

Mobile phones are used in Pakistan. There is a text message (SMS) short code created to help people in Pakistan send reports. The SMS reports link to a tool called Crowdflower. Volunteers review and submit tasks which get mapped on Ushahidi. There is a virtual team of folks reviewing the reports for any urgent matters and appropriately redirecting to the NGOs on the ground. The Pakreport Ushahidi map tells a map story of what is needed and what is happening in the affected flood regions of Pakistan.

So far 100 reports have been filed. The short code may be communicated more throughout Pakistan. They are expecting an increase of reports in the coming days. We need your help.

Ushahidi is an open source tool that allows anyone to gather distributed data via SMS, email or web and visualize it on a map or timeline. Their goal is to create the simplest way of aggregating crowdsourced information from the public for use in crisis response. Crowdflower is a tool that helps people do quick, crowdsource tasks.

19Aug

World Humanitarian Day

Today is World Humanitarian Day. They honour us and the world with their self-less efforts to make the world a better place.

There are 9 main NGOs clusters that work in places of crisis. These groups are designated by the United Nations via Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). I’ve met some amazing volunteers and staff who work on the various teams.

First, clusters dealing with service provision:
a) Logistics, chaired by the World Food Programme (WFP); and
b) Emergency Telecommunications, chaired by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) as process owner, with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) as the common data communications service provider and WFP as the common security telecommunications service provider.

Second, clusters dealing with relief and assistance to beneficiaries:

c) Emergency Shelter, chaired by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (for conflict-generated IDPs)
d) Health, chaired by the World Health Organisation (WHO);
e) Nutrition, chaired by UNICEF
f) Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene, chaired by UNICEF. (WASH)

Third, clusters covering cross-cutting issues:

g) Early Recovery, chaired by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP);
h) Camp Coordination and Camp Management, chaired by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) (for conflict-generated Internally Displaced Persons [IDPs]) and by the International Organization for Migration (for natural disasters); and
i) Protection, chaired by UNHCR (for conflict-generated IDPs).

(Details from the OCHA website: Learn more.)

Thank you for being so inspiring.

17Aug

Crowdsourcing Communities attempt to aid Pakistan

Crowdsourcing during a Crisis is evolving. Here are some of the amazing activities that you can volunteer your knowledge and technical skills to help manage information, maps, and development. We may not save people and the geopolitical situation is very uncertain, however, using our skills may make a difference. If not today, then someday.

Reading articles about the plight in Pakistan from the Telegraph (UK) really provide some context. The UN and World Bank are also providing great communications about their activities.

Think of these activities as modeling: ASCII art evolved to HD Games. Each layer of knowledge, development and information that we collaborate and crowdsource can build a new future of aid. Maybe, just, maybe we might be able to help someone now. This motivates us all to try.

Crowdsourcing with tools to CrisisCamp, Map, Wiki, Tweet, Sahana, Google and more

Join a virtual CrisisCamp

CrisisCommons is a global network of volunteers who help people in times and places of crisis. If you can use the Internet, a word processor, a cell phone or any other kind of technology, you can help. Right now virtually online or during one of our many CrisisCamps around the world!

CrisisCamp Cambridge and CrisisCamp London had their first CrisisCamp last weekend. They continue to spearhead efforts. There are talks about France and Australia. Folks from Canada and the US have been supporting our UK friends. CrisisCamp Calgary and CrisisCamp Montreal have also been fully engaged for the past two weeks.

CrisisCamp – Pakistan 2010 Floods

Map

Mappers are waiting for Hi-res satellite maps of the affected regions. Folks are using existing maps, SMS notifications and amazing innovation.

Crowdmap

Ushahidi wrote a great blog post on how to crowdmap and the situation in Pakistan.

If you want to learn more, join the CrisisMappers googleggroups or OpenStreetMap Forums. (OpenStreetMap’s Humanitarian OSM Team investigating a response). The mailing lists are very noisy, but the discussions about open source, humanitarian aid, “do no harm”, collaboration and more are very engaging.

Wiki

Two great efforts to manage information with wiki:

(There is some talk about merging CrisisWiki and Pakistan.wikia.)

The Twitter hashtag is #pkfloods. Search #pkfloods and you will find a wealth of information and calls to action. Many of the organizations mentioned in this post are using twitter for volunteer outreach, education, and mapping reports.

NEW: CrisisCamp Paris set up a live tweet/liveblog for #PKfloods:

Live Tweet/Liveblog from Canalblog
Ch16.org combines tweets, blogs etc
Tweak the Tweet from University of Colorado focuses on refining the signal to noise ratio with veracity during crisis response. They are an amazing group.

Learn how to use Twitter to help manage crisisdata.

Sahana

Sahana is a open source disaster management system. It is a web based collaboration tool that addresses the common coordination problems during a disaster from finding missing people, managing aid, managing volunteers, tracking camps effectively between Government groups, the civil society (NGOs) and the victims themselves.

They have set up an instance
A new SitRep module has been built to manage:
* Flood Reports
* Assessments from World Food Program
* School Reports

Sahana is looking for data entry and Python help.

Google

Google’s Crisis Response Team has released Person Finder and Resource Finder to provide help.

And more Social Media and Information Volunteering

Videos

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a YouTube channel dedicated Pakistan? It would be amazing if there was a channel dedicated to the humanitarian groups and their story to help. What about the diaspora in Canada, US, UK, and around the world?

Add any video links to the Crisis Commons wiki and please tweet them out with the #pkfloods tag.

Learn

Understanding Pakistan, her history and her people is really paramount. Knowledge is power.. I am looking for the best links on Pakistan to share with all the communities. Help us learn.

Add these to the Crisis Commons wiki and please tweet them out with the #pkfloods tag.

Please blog, tweet, map and wiki to collaborate. Every voice and action can count. Every volunteer can help with a computer. Maybe you will inspire someone else to volunteer.

My inbox is full and I am so proud to be engaged with such bright people. Unfortunately, I’m focused on a personal project and don’t have the bandwidth to create a CrisisCamp Pakistan right now. I would spend every waking hour doing all of the above. I can however blog and spread the word.

Change the world: You can too!

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