Category: Tools

OCHA, UNOSAT and NetHope have been collaborating with the Volunteer Technical Community (VTC) specifically CrisisMappers, Crisis Commons, Open Street Map, and the Google Crisis Response Team over the past week.

The CrisisMappers Standby Task Force has been undertaking a mapping of social media, news reports and official situation reports from within Libya and along the borders at the request of OCHA. The Task Force is also aiding in the collection and mapping of 3W information for the response. UNOSAT is kindly hosting the Common Operational Datasets to be used during the emergency. Interaction with these groups is being coordinated by OCHA’s Information Services Section.

The public version of this map does not include personal identifiers and does not include descriptions for the reports mapped. This restriction is for security reasons. All information included on this map is derived from information that is already publicly available online (see Sources tab).

In the midst of this transition in Libya, one of the most devastating earthquakes in centuries hit northern Japan, causing one of the most destructive tsunamis in recent memory. Just hours after the earthquake, a member of Japan's OpenStreetMap community launched a dedicated Crisis Map for the mega-disaster. A few hours later, Japanese students at The Fletcher School (which is where the Ushahidi-Haiti Crisis Map was launched) got in touch with the Tokyo-based OpenStreetMap team to provide round-the-clock crisis mapping support.

Over 4,000 reports have been mapped in just 6 days. That's an astounding figure. Put differently, that's over 600 reports per day, or one report almost every two minutes for 24 hours straight over 6 days. What's important about the Japan Crisis Map is that the core operations are being run directly from Tokyo and the team there is continuing to scale it's operations. It's very telling that the Tokyo team did not require any support from the Standby Volunteer Task Force. They're doing an excellent job in the midst of the biggest disaster they've ever faced. I'm just amazed.

Tip of the Hat to Patrick Meier and Team at iRevolution.