Ten months ago, War & Health discussed a little known, but promising, project called Ushahidi. Born from the 2007/2008 electoral violence in Kenya, Ushahidi is a new way to report and gain low-level, real-time intelligence in crisis zones. Today, Ushahidi, in partnership with some NGOs, took a big step forward and deployed their system in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In a nutshell, Ushahidi allows individuals to report instances of violence, looting, and other incidents via local SMS messages. The report is then displayed on a web-based map using the Ushahidi engine. A more detailed explanation is offered in the diagram below:
I am a strong supporter of Ushahidi and I believe it will become a standard part of any humanitarian’s toolkit. That said, the project still has work to do. Presently, while the project is an innovative technological tool, it has yet to be connected with the interests of the policy folks. How well Ushahidi’s crowdsourcing methods mesh with the operations of NGOs? Of international peacekeepers? Does the project offer a value-added service to existing local health information networks? What is the potential for armed groups to exploit Ushahidi’s crowdsourced design? How best can the raw information collected be converted into reliable and actionable intelligence? In the coming weeks, War & Health will publish a series of articles looking at Ushahidi from a political science / policy perspective. Stay tuned.
Christopher Albon is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in armed conflict, public health, human security, and health diplomacy.
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Great questions. I have worked a teensy tiny bit on the project and feel strongly that Ushahidi is an incredible platform. Part of the joy of being involved for me is that the completely open source approach of the project will, I believe, resolve most of the policy issues in the best possible way. Which is to say that as long as Ushahidi focuses on A) creating new data about crises and B) keeping the data and the platform open, it will provide serious additive value to any NGO that has the technical acumen to embrace the open web. It’s a wonderful thing.
The question of how many NGOs are in a position to even understand the value of Ushahidi, much less actually want to share their data, is another (rather depressing) subject.
You are absolutely right, Christopher, Ushahidi still has a ways to go and measuring the impact of the platform will continue to be a challenge. Here are some initial results, which I thought might be of interest:
http://irevolution.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/mapping-kenyas-election-violence/
The questions you pose are also important ones. I am reassured that the Ushahidi team is thinking seriously about these questions (conversation I had with Juliana) and they’re planning to “shift gears” somewhat and start focusing on the response part, i.e., what happens once the information is generated and mapped? Here are some initial thoughts:
http://earlywarning.wordpress.com/2008/10/17/crowdsourcing-warning-and-response/
My own professional background is in conflict early warning and response. I plan to work closely with the Ushahidi team to make sure we don’t repeat the same mistakes that have been made over the past 10 years.
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