s, volunteers around the world are sorting through text messages, tweets and emergency response information to create real-time maps that can be used to push emergency aid to places where it is most urgently needed. Those maps are also available to local people with internet access.”
(3.) Biosurveillance map was created by Dr. James Wilson of the Haiti Epidemic Advisory System (HEAS), find his blog at Biosurveillance. They boldly state: “While the UN OCHA maps and official MSPP reporting tends to focus on Artibonite and points north, there are other areas routinely not included on the OCHA maps that have reported cholera. We opt on the side of “cholera until proven otherwise” or when political sensitivity is such that full disclosure and transparency allows.” Collaborators for Biosurveillance include: CrisisMappers, HealthMap, InSTEDD, ProMED, Society of Critical Care Medicine, Ushahidi, Vethnography, Wildlife Conservation Society.
I find this map very hard to interpret, however. There is simply a symbol representing cases on a Google map. There is no other information available by clicking on the icon. For better information, skip the map and go instead to their blog which has some useful statistics regarding total cases and fatalities by region.
(4.) Reports culled from tweeted messages are curated by hand and placed on a Google Map by the Project EPIC team. From their website:
Our team and an ever-growing group of collaborators involved in Crisis Camps have developed, evolved, deployed, and technologically leveraged a hashtag-based syntax to help direct Twitter communications for more efficient data extraction for those communicating about the Haiti earthquake disaster. Use requires modifications of Tweet messages to make information pieces that refer to #location, #status, #needs, #damage and several other elements of emergency communications more machine readable.
Color-coded icons represent different categories of data, typical of maps with overlays of information on one platform. For example, orange icons represent cholera treatment centers and by selecting one icon the user sees a pop-up window containing the following information: the author of the report, time of tweet, report type, geo-location including lat./long if possible, and the actual tweet. The following is an actual tweet from the field after it has been “tweaked”:
#haiti #cholera #loc Hospital Grande Riviere du Nord (latitude and longitude are given) #need all cholera supplies & nurses. (Note: the tweets read a bit strangely because they have been put into a machine-readable format).
The user can also mouse over to a list all of the individual tweets in spreadsheet format. I’m not really sure who is using this map in-country, that information is not listed and the UN also has a map of treatment facilities. However, the level of detail and the fact that someone in the hospital “tweeted” their needs leaves the reader with hope that someone with the ability to help is viewing all of this aggregated information. One critic of this type of crowdsourcing even asked the question directly “Is crowdsourcing raising expectations that cannot be met?”
(5.) Noula.ht is an organization in Haiti created after the earthquake. They also have a map. However, since it is in Creole its difficult for most westerners to discern. From the CNN piece, the founder of Noula states: “We wanted to provide a platform and have it available to reinforce our local capacity to face disasters.” Green circles with numbers inside them represent the location and concentration of cholera cases.
I think I could have found 10 more maps but decided to stop at five. I wish I could report on the impact these efforts are having on the ground, but that information is not yet available. When I find it, I will happily pass it along. While I do not expect anyone to achieve a quantitative measure of success, a qualitative measure would be interesting.
An important document that addresses some of these concerns, especially regarding developing a common operating picture, is from the ICT for peace fou