Ushahidi

Ushahidi

The Ushahidi platform is built on the Kohana web framework, a fork of the CodeIgniter framework. It includes support for Nexmo wholesale SMS API and Clickatell SMS Gateway. Furthermore, the official Ushahidi-hosted websites use the commercial service. Ushahidi provides the option of using OpenStreetMap maps in its user interface, but requires the Google Maps API for geocoding. Ushahidi is often set up using a local SMS gateway created by a local FrontlineSMS set-up.

Releases and codenames

Crowdmap

Crowdmap is designed and built by the team behind Ushahidi, a platform that was originally built to crowdsource crisis information. As the platform evolved, so did its users. Crowdmap now allows users to set up their own deployments of Ushahidi without having to install it on a web server. Since its release in 2010, prominent deployments of Crowdmap have documented the global Occupy movement and the 2011 London anti-cuts protest.

On 31 December 2010, the Ushahidi team announced Crowdmap: Checkins, a geosocial add-on to Crowdmap that allows users to create a white-label alternative to sites like Foursquare and Gowalla. Rather than filling out submission forms online, checkins allow Crowdmap users to expedite data entry to their deployment, focussing first on location and adding more detailed information later. Ushahidi describes the effort as "checkins with a purpose".

SwiftRiver (discontinued)

SwiftRiver was designed as a suite of intelligence and real-time data gathering products that complement Ushahidi's mapping and visualization products. Often referred to as the SwiftRiver Initiative the goal of the project was "to democratize access to the tools for making sense of information". The project attracted a lot of interest from newsrooms.

In December 2014, Ushahidi announced that it would stop development and support and reallocate the resources.

SwiftRiver was a free and open-source platform that helped people make sense of a lot of information in a short amount of time. It was born out of the need to understand and act upon a wave of massive amounts of crisis data that tends to overwhelm in the first 24 hours of a disaster. There had been a great deal of interest in Swift for other industries such as newsrooms, political analysts and marketers as an open-source alternative to more expensive, proprietary intelligence software platforms. The SwiftRiver platform offered applications which combine natural language/artificial intelligence process, data-mining for SMS and Twitter, and verification algorithms for different sources of information.

Beginnings in Kenya

Ushahidi (Swahili for "testimony" or "witness") is a website created in the aftermath of Kenya's disputed 2007 presidential election (see 2007–2008 Kenyan crisis) that collected eyewitness reports of violence sent in by email and text-message and placed them on a Google map. It is also the name of the open source software developed for that site, which has since been improved, released freely, and used for a number of similar projects around the globe.

The Kenyan site was developed and run by several bloggers and software developers, all current or former residents of Kenya. They include Erik Hersman, Juliana Rotich, Ory Okolloh, and David Kobia. The site was initially proposed by Okolloh, developed cheaply, and put online within a few days. International media, government sources, NGOs, and Kenyan journalists and bloggers were used to verify eyewitness testimony. The site was later also used to facilitate donations from abroad.

An analysis by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government found that Ushahidi was better overall at reporting acts of violence as they began. The data collected by Ushahidi was superior to that reported by the mainstream media in Kenya at the time. The service was also better at reporting non-fatal violence as well as information coming in from rural areas.

On 23 December 2010, Ushahidi Co-founder and Executive Director Ory Okolloh announced that she was stepping down from her role to become Manager of Policy for Africa at Google.

Post-Kenya crisis uses

Soon after its initial use in Kenya, the Ushahidi software was used to create a similar site to track anti-immigrant violence in South Africa, in May 2008. The software has since been used to map violence in eastern Congo, beginning in November 2008. Ushahidi is used in Kenya, Malawi, Uganda, and Zambia in June 2009 to track pharmacy stockouts in several Southeast African countries. Finally, it was used to monitor elections in Mexico and India, among other projects. It was also used by Al Jazeera to collect eyewitness reports during the 2008–09 Gaza War.

The post election violence in Kenya was the subject of a Harvard Humanitarian Institute study and mentioned in a Berkman Center report.

Haiti

In 2010, due to the earthquake in Haiti, Patrick Meier launched a joint effort between Ushahidi, The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University, UN OCHA/Colombia and the International Network of Crisis Mappers (CM*Net) to start the Haiti implementation. A few hours later many humanitarian/tech workers joined this initiative. Nearly 40,000 independent reports were sent to the Ushahidi Haiti Project of which nearly 4,000 distinct events were plotted.

Chile

Only a month after the Haiti earthquake, the 2010 earthquake in Chile prompted Patrick Meier to launch Ushahidi-Chile within hours of the initial quake. The Chile site is co-managed with the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University in the United States, supported by Chilean Americans.

Louisiana, U.S.

On 20 April 2010 BP’s offshore Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded killing eleven workers and precipitating the largest accidental offshore oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. On 3 May the Louisiana Bucket Brigade (LABB) publicly released the Oil Spill Crisis Map, the first application of the Ushahidi platform in a humanitarian response in the United States.

In the years since the BP oil spill, LABB continues to use the map (now the iWitness Pollution Map) as a repository of eyewitness reports and photos documenting the impacts of petrochemical pollution on human health and the environment. Reports to the map come from cities all over Louisiana, including Baton Rouge, St. Rose, and Chalmette. Since 2010 LABB has collected over 14,000 reports, making it the largest and longest-running deployment of an Ushahidi instance.

Washington, D.C.

In the wake of winter storms, the Washington Post and the web development company PICnet used the software to create a site mapping blocked roads and other information.

Italy

Starts the localization of the platform, due to Elena Rapisardi, first step to its knowledge and diffusion in Italy, and then in Europe. Rapisardi, together with Giovanni Lotto, launched the first Italian crowdmap Open Foreste Italiane in order to list and map information to prevent and manage forest fires; the meaning of this project has been reported on the Ushahidi blog. Though OpenForeste did not completely achieve his goals, it showed importance for two reasons: (1) unlike previous instances, the platform was utilized in absence of an acting crisis or emergency to collect, map, share and spread information in order to manage future and potential emergencies, thus joining the awareness of the possibilities of Web 2.0 and a different approach to natural risk prevention; (2) it brought to Italy the knowledge and potential of Ushahidi, crowdmapping and social use of crowdsourcing, which was then used in following years in several instances, both private and public, especially from local Civil Protection structures and based on the new approach to the Ushahidi platform (see here a non-complete crowdmap of Italian Crowdsourcing Projects).

Russia

Ushahidi was used in Russia to set up a "map of help" for voluntary workers needed after the 2010 Russian wildfires.

2011

Using Ushahidi, the Christchurch Recovery Map website was launched less than 24 hours after the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand. The site maps locations of services such as food, water, toilets, fuel, ATMs, and medical care. Information was gathered via Twitter using the #eqnz hashtag, SMS messages, and email. The site was founded by a group of web professionals, and maintained by volunteers.

This software allowed pro-democracy demonstrators across the Middle East to organise and communicate what was happening around them in early 2011. On 2 March, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) requested that the Standby Volunteer Task Force be activated for Libya. The Task Force's Tech Team set up a password protected Ushahidi platform almost immediately and several days later launched a public version at OCHA's request. This allowed users to contribute relevant information about ground conditions as they occurred.

In July 2011, Giuseppe CALAMITA had created the first crowdmap to monitor a WIMAX/LTE Internet Service Provider to answer the issues not due to the ISP (jammer, etc.)

India Citizen Reports has been using Ushahidi since 2011 to collect and disseminate reports in various categories like civic problems, crimes and corruption. TelecomMap.com uses Ushahidi to map 3G network quality and Wi-Fi hotspots.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation used Ushahidi to map the Queensland floods in January.

The MightyMoRiver Project used Ushahidi's hosted service Crowdmap to track the Missouri River floods of 2011.

Transparency Watch Project is using the Ushahidi platform to track corruption reported cases in the Republic of Macedonia. PrijaviKorupcija is a joint project by Transparency International and the Center for International Relations allowing citizens to report cases of corruption via ONE by sending SMS from their mobile phones, sending an email, using the web form, the hashtag #korupcijaMK on Twitter or by reporting via phone call.

2012

Al Jazeera Balkans deployed Ushahidi crisis mapping platform on 5 February 2012 to track the snow/cold emergency in the Balkans.

2014

Kenya

Ushahidi announced Ping in response to the attacks on Westgate Mall in Nairobi. The software was used to map out all the blood drive center locations in Nairobi and let users quickly identify places to donate, see which blood types were in demand, and identify whether equipment or volunteers were needed at any locations. Among the goals of this map was to help ensure that when the Kenyan population came out to donate blood, they would know which donation centers needed their blood type the most.

Awards

Ushahidi has received several awards in recognition to its effectiveness and creativity, latest being The MacArthur Award. The awards received by Ushahidi so far include the following: True