PDA

Bekijk Volledige Versie : Ushahidi.com



mark61
09-12-08, 18:55
Geweldig initiatief :duim:

Introduction and History
Ushahidi, which means ''testimony'' in Swahili, is a website that was developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi's roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis.

The new Ushahidi Engine is being created to use the lessons learned from Kenya to create a platform that allows anyone around the world to set up their own way to gather reports by mobile phone, email and the web - and map them. It is being built so that it can grow with the changing environment of the web, and to work with other websites and online tools.

Our goal is to create a platform that any person or organization can use to set up their own way to collect and visualize information. The core platform will allow for plug-in and extensions so that it can be customized for different locales and needs. This tool will be tested and made available as an open source application that others can download, implement and use to bring awareness to crises in their own region. Organizations can also use the tool for internal monitoring purposes.

The core engine is built on the premise that gathering crisis information from the general public provides new insights into events happening in near real-time. It is being developed by a group of volunteer developers and designers, hailing primarily from Africa. So far there are representatives from Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, Malawi, Ghana, Netherlands and the US.

The private alpha of the redesigned Ushahidi Engine was released in October 2008, and is currently undergoing testing in pilot projects including Peace Heroes, the DR Congo crisis and 4 others.

Ushahidi plans to make the Ushahidi mapping tool available globally for free. After initial testing with NGO's the tool will be distributed to interested parties and organizations, and the Ushahidi team will provide technical customizations and support as needed.

OUR WORK

Ushahidi in the Field
Ushahidi was a simple website mashup, using user-generated reports and Google Maps, created to gather citizen generated crisis information after the post-election violence in Kenya. Below are some of the countries and projects that are using the first generation of the Ushahidi Engine:

Peace Heroes (http://peaceheroes.ushahidi.com/): Unsung Peace Heroes is a campaign developed by Butterfly Works and Media Focus on Africa Foundation. The goal is to nominate people who helped do positive things during and after the post-election violence in Kenya. Kenyan heroes are ordinary people who did extraordinary things for their fellow citizens or their country.

Congo (DRC): (http://drc.ushahidi.com/) Deployment to the DRC Congo happened on Nov 7, 2008 - the week after our initial release of the alpha version of the new Ushahidi Engine software.

Kenya: (http://legacy.ushahidi.com/) The initial mashup, used to track reports of incidents of violence around Kenya.

South Africa: (http://www.unitedforafrica.co.za/) Used to map xenophobic attacks perpetrated against non-South Africans.