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Disasters and Social Networking
9-1-1 Technology, Tech, Trends | Jerry | January 16, 2010 at 5:35 pm
Once again a major disaster has highlighted the growing use of social networking sites as the primary means of communicating in the aftermath of a crisis. Following the collapse of traditional channels of communication in Haiti, services like Twitter and Ushahidi have become the main source of contact and visual maps detailing aid and damage.
Just as during the initial hours of the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, the first images from the scene of the earthquake came from citizens capturing video with mobile phones.
Ushahidi is a particularly interesting system. Created by a Kenyan lawyer in South Africa it is an open source on-line system that allows users to submit eyewitness accounts or other relevant information for disaster zones via e-mail, text or Twitter — and then visualize the frequency of these events on a map. By Friday of this week, Ushahidi, which means “testimony” in Swahili, had received nearly 33,000 unique visitors regarding events in Haiti, and several hundred personal reports that mainstream news organizations might not hear about. Relief agencies are able to also tap into this data to help coordinate their relief efforts. More details can be found here.
Tags: social networking, Tech
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