Location Based Mobile Alerts for Disaster Response in Haiti

Using demand-side and supply-side economics as an analogy for the use of communication and information technology (ICT) in disaster response may yield some interesting insights. Demand-side economics (a.k.a. Keynesian economics) argues that government policies should seek to “increase aggregate demand, thus increasing economic activity and reducing unemployment.” Supply-side economics, in contrast, argues that “overall economic [...]

Using Mechanical Turk to Crowdsource Humanitarian Response

I’m increasingly intrigued by the idea of applying Mechanical Turk services to humanitarian response. Mechanical Turk was first developed by Amazon to crowdsource and pay for simple tasks.
An excellent example of a Mechanical Turk service in the field of ICT for Development (ICT4D) is txteagle, a platform that enables mobile phone subscribers in developing countries [...]

The Role of Live Skype Chats in the Disaster Response to Haiti

Live Skype chats played an invaluable role in the disaster response to Haiti but this has gone largely unnoticed by both mainstream and citizen media. I have a Word document with over 2,000 pages worth of Skype chat messages exchanged  in various groups during the first 2.5 weeks after the earthquake. I have no doubt [...]

From Clinton to Ushahidi-Haiti to Digital Repression and Back

I’m grateful to the State Department for having invited me to attend Secretary Hillary Clinton’s recent speech in DC on Net Freedom. Little did I know before the event that Secretary Clinton was about to tie my main professional and scholarly interests in one speech. As my Fletcher colleague put it:
Before starting her important speech [...]

Haiti and the Power of Crowdsourcing

It’s been two weeks since I called David Kobia to launch Ushahidi’s crisis mapping platform in Haiti. I could probably write 100 blog posts on the high’s and low’s of the past 14 days. Perhaps there will more time be next month to recount the first two weeks of the disaster response. For now, I [...]

Top 10 Posts on iRevolution in 2009

Here are the top 10 most popular posts on iRevolution in 2009:

How To Communicate Securely in Repressive Environments
A Brief History of Crisis Mapping
Crisis Mapping Kenya’s Election Violence
Video Introduction to Crisis Mapping
Impact of ICTs on Repressive Regimes
Proposing the Field of Crisis Mapping
Mobile Banking for the Bottom of the Pyramid
Digital Resistance: Between Digital Activism and Civil Resistance
Moving [...]

Crisis Information and The End of Crowdsourcing

When Wired journalist Jeff Howe coined the term crowdsourcing back in 2006, he did so in contradistinction to the term outsourcing and defined crowdsourcing as tapping the talent of the crowd. The tag line of his article was: “Remember outsourcing? Sending jobs to India and China is so 2003. The new pool of cheap labor: [...]

Three Common Misconceptions About Ushahidi

Cross posted on Ushahidi

Here are three interesting misconceptions about Ushahidi and crowdsourcing in general:

Ushahidi takes the lead in deploying the Ushahidi platform
Crowdsourced information is statistically representative
Crowdsourced information cannot be validated

Lets start with the first. We do not take the lead in deploying Ushahidi platforms. In fact, we often learn about new deployments second-hand via Twitter. [...]

New Tech in Emergencies and Conflicts: Role of Information and Social Networks

I had the distinct pleasure of co-authoring this major new United Nations Foundation & Vodafone Foundation Technology Report with my distinguished colleague Diane Coyle. The report looks at innovation in the use of technology along the time line of crisis response, from emergency preparedness and alerts to recovery and rebuilding.

“It profiles organizations whose work [...]

From Baselines to Basemaps: Crisis Mapping for Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E)

I was just in Berlin for meetings with Transparency International and the topic of mapping for Monitoring & Evaluation came up yet again. Earlier this year, Mercy Corps and UNDP Sudan both expressed an interest in exploring the application of crisis mapping platforms for M&E. Problem is, the field of M&E—particularly with regards to peacebuilding [...]