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

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

“If it works in Africa,

it can work anywhere”

- Erik Hersman, co-founder of Ushahidi

whiteafrican.com

Election Monitoring

May 2009 - 202 reports, 20,000 viewsAllow citizen reporting during election

August 2010 - 1525 reports, 20,000 viewsMonitor Kenya referendum election

votereport.in uchaguzi.co.ke

Citizen Journalism

May 2010 - 3397 reports, 406,715 viewsDocument human and ecological impact of the oil spill

December 2010 - 319 reports, 156,859 viewsHelp bring awareness to sexual harassment in Egypt

harassmap.com oillspill.labucketbrigade.org

Disaster Response

March 2011 - 4,000+ reports, 144,974 viewsMonitor fallout of tsunami and nuclear crisis

January 2010 - 3,584 reports, 500,000 viewsAllowed Haitians to report location and needs

sinsai.info/ushahidi haiti.ushahidi.com

Post Haiti“The 2010 Haiti earthquake response will be remembered as the moment

when the level of access to mobile and online communication enabled a kind of collective intelligence to emerge.”

- Disaster Relief 2.0, the United Nations

“Haiti showed everyone that it is going to be crucial to adopt and use these technologies to make humanitarian

work better, faster and more efficient.”- Adele Waugaman, senior director of technology for United

Nations and Vodafone

bit.ly/disaster_20

CrowdmapCrowdmap 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

Plugins

apps.ushahidi.com

Flexible plugin architecture allowing custom functionality to be developed independently from the core application.

SMSSyncSMSSync 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

Checkins (CI)Quick location update which can include an optional

photo and description, sharing “I am here”.

bit.ly/checkins_purpose

iPhone / iPadUshahidi mobile application for the iPhone and iPad

bit.ly/ushahidi_ios_app

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. We are the people who may drop everything to map for four days. We are communications and friends.”

- Heather Leson, SBTF volunteer

standbytaskforce.com

Egyptian Revolution

u-shahid.org

“The use of social media and Facebook in particular is increasingly enabling the youth to engage in a political scene that normally opts for the

physical elimination of the opposition. Blogs and Facebook groups are clearly taking the place made empty by the lack of a real political debate in Egypt, and are more increasingly emerging as an alternative political scene

where a discussion on democracy and human rights is still possible.”- Development and Institutionalization Support Center (DISC)

Egypt Election Map

u-shahid.org/live

“To monitor the elections by allowing people to send SMS, Twitter messages, Facebook comments, voice mail, e-mail and web-submission to the U-Shahid (Anta Shahid –

“You witness” in Arabic) and by creating a combined system of bounded and

unbounded crowdsourcing.”- Development and Institutionalization

Support Center (DISC)#u_shahid

Civil Resistance Map

u-shahid.org/cr

“They say that history is written by the victors. But now, before the

victors win, there is a fresh chance to scream out, with a text message that will not vanish. What we would know about what passed between

Turks and Armenians, between Germans and Jews — and indeed would it have happened at all — if each of them had had a chance to

declare and be heard saying: ʻI was here, and this is what

happened to me?ʼ”- Anand Giridharadas, New York Times

journalist#jan25

Constitutional Amendments Map

u-shahid.org/19mar

#19mar

Other Egypt Maps

Libya Crisis

libyacrisismap.net

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

Libya Information Flow

libyacrisismap.net

Lessons

slidesha.re/ushahidi_lessons

“A map is only as useful as the process and people to make

it happen.”-George Chamales, Rogue Genius

Crowdsourcing platform must be easy to deploy, intuitive to use,

simple to localize and customize

Deployments

Volunteer

Translators Mappers

TestersDevelopers

ushahidi.com/contact-us

Team

Quote“We are undergoing a major technology paradigm shift.

Citizens that were once only passive recipients of information, are now contributors to the story.

In the case of crisis mapping, it's the people on the ground that best know the local situation.

Enabling a two-way conversation between affected communities and support groups can allow a faster,

more effective response.

The key point is that affected groups have a voice, we only need to listen.”

-Dale Zak, Ushahidi mobile developer

Questions?

ushahidi.com crowdmap.com