Iran protests, 2009 [http://www.mibazaar.com/irantweets.html]
For example, the Extreme Ice Survey6 mashup (see pp. 10-11) presents the physical geographic changes of various glaciers by displaying timelapse videos of the glacial retreat on Google Earth over a multi-year period. In contrast, the Sea Level Rise on Coastal Cities in the U.S. mashup7 annotates a Google Map with projections of sea-level rise images from a coastal impact study report by a non-partisan, non-profit climate change study group. Given this ability of mashups to represent the potential futures, it is worth considering how map mashups can be used to engender a more long-term perspective around crisis response. ushahidi-chile When the 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck Chile on February 27, 2010,
Anahi Ayala Iacucci, along with facilitate the distributed coordination others, launched the Ushahidi- efforts for Ushahidi-Chile. Multiple Google Groups were set up Chile Situation Room Project at Columbia University’s School to broadcast instructions to the volunof International and Public teers and coordinate mapping activiAffairs (SIPA). Students from ties. Also, multiple Google Docs and SIPA’s New Media Task Force Spreadsheets were created to capture partnered in the project with and map geographically distributed a group of students who had information gleaned from media monibeen researching the Ushahidi8 toring. The Media Monitoring List for Ushaplatform (http://www.ushahidi. com) for a separate interna- hidi-Chile contained over 250 links to official governmental Twitter feeds tional development project. The Ushahidi-Chile mashup from Chile, Twitter users, Twitter lists, was set up by Patrick Meier, the Twitter Spanish-speaking experts, Director of Crisis Mapping and Spanish and English news sites, blogs, Strategic Partnerships at Ush- Facebook groups, and other relevant ahidi, a couple of hours after links that provided live updates on the the earthquake erupted and was Chile earthquake. Google Docs and Spreadsheets initially managed from the Situation Room at Tufts University. became an invaluable collaboration Within 48 hours, however, Ush- tool, facilitating ad-hoc data updatahidi-Chile9 became the respon- ing in real time. Skype Public Chats made possible instant communication sibility of the SIPA students. Assisted by more than 60 among the distributed Ushahidi volSIPA student volunteers trained unteer network. Through Skype, the to monitor social and traditional volunteers also had access to a tranmedia reports from Chile, Anahi scribed digital trace of their previous started working on the mashup communications. Facebook Groups and Events were on March 1, 2010. The students manually used to mobilize volunteers and inform mapped over 100 incidents—all during midterms week. Within two days, Usha- them of crisis mapping training and hidi-Chile had over 150 volunteers and other related activities. Later, a wiki in three days, they mapped 700 reports. was created to provide real-time To date, more than 1,200 Ushahidi-Chile updates of new projects and lessons learned, thus serving as a more comreports have been mapped. Several factors contributed to the plete instruction guide for old and new success of Ushahidi-Chile. The media volunteers. This wiki was also used monitoring and crisis mapping activi- to aggregate useful information about ties on Ushahidi-Chile were modeled on managing the platform and organizthose used for the Ushahidi-Haiti (http:// ing the workflow around an Ushahidi haiti.ushahidi.com/) instance developed instance. The “mash-mapping” of the Chile barely a month before. A trusted volunteer network was mobilized using pre- earthquake was a two-step process. existing social ties among students. Free The first step involved monitoring the cloud computing tools (i.e., Google media for relevant crisis reports from Groups, Google Docs and Forms, and the crowd. Then the volunteer stuSkype Public Chat) were used along dents identified the GPS coordinates with Facebook Groups and Events to for each report and geo-tagged the
http://www.extremeicesurvey.org. 7 http://www.mibazaar.com/nationundersiege/. 8 In the next issue of the ACSM Bulletin, we will take a closer look at this platform as a crisis mapping management tool. 9 http://chile.ushahidi.com/. 6
june 2010 ACSM BULLETIN 13