Interact with the Mapping of Crisis and Response

Wow. Alright, I admit that I can be one of those grouchy back-to-nature, back to parchment paper, cherry wood library and quills kind of guys. But some of the new humanitarian technology -- largely developed for humanitarian goals -- is cautioning my technoclasty. Check this out. if you're new to aid work, this may blow your mind.

For some time, we aid workers had been learning about humanitarian mapping, but most of us simply leave it to the UN's ReliefWeb or the UNDP map services in national capitals to keep the libraries. We approach them when we need to:

"Hey Frank, Got a map of migration in Jonglei and Blue Nile?" "Hmm, how about one of returnee settlements and origins?" "Cool, see ya." And that was it.

But crisis mapping is getting more and more interactive, and it goes way beyond Google maps. Many aid workers are catching on, while others are being left in the dust. Take for example this satellite aided map of damage from Israel's bombing of Gaza, and a close-up. That's just the beginning. Now check out this map of earthquake damage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Again, primarily satellite technology.

Now comes the more recent wave. Patrick Meier and the team at Ushahidi are using crowd source technology to map out trouble spots.

For example, if a herder is tending cattle in northern Kenya and another group sweeps in to raid the cattle, that herder could theoretically text a message about what's happening to a collection center, which would triangulate it with other reports to rate its confirmability, then lay it on a map online for the government or aid agencies to track. The technology seems to have worked best in real time Haiti and even during the recent Washington, D.C. snowstorm.

Although one challenge is confirming reports, similar to the challenge of Wiki sites like Wikipedia, the bigger challenge today is mainstreaming the technical know-how. Despite the blogosphere, there are still many technoclasts and A.D.D.-types like myself that have trouble focusing on the computer screen long enough to figure this stuff out. Of course, rural communities that can really use this are getting crash courses from agencies like UNICEF. But would many of them prefer to have irrigation or shoes before a course on crowd-sourcing technology? We'll see how it grows. Definitely something to run and keep up with.

Photo credit: UNDP