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Ushahidi
Ushahidi is an open source software application that collates and maps data using user-generated reports. It uses the concept of crowdsourcing serving as an initial model for what has been coined as "activist mapping" – the combination of social activism, citizen journalism and geographic information. Ushahidi allows local observers to submit reports using their mobile phones or the Internet, creating an archive of events with geographic and time-date information.
The Ushahidi platform is often used for crisis response, human rights reporting, and election monitoring. Ushahidi (Swahili for "testimony", closely related to shahidi which means "witness") was created in the aftermath of Kenya's disputed 2007 presidential election that collected eyewitness reports of violence reported by email and text message and placed them on a Google Maps interface.
The Ushahidi platform has been used by the United Nations Department of Field Services and Peacekeeping, in response to the Haiti Earthquake in 2010, to monitor the Nigerian elections in 2011, by the Obama Campaign for America 2012, by the Nepalese army to respond to the earthquake of 2015, in and by local activists groups such as Humanitarian Tracker to monitor violence in the Syrian civil war and HarassMap to help women report on sexual harassment.
Successful deployment of crisis mapping applications like Ushahidi benefits from careful attention to how the technology fits into the relevant cultural settings, and focusing on realistic goals.
Ushahidi v2 was built on the Kohana web framework, a fork of the CodeIgniter framework. It includes support for Nexmo wholesale SMS API and Clickatell SMS Gateway (Budgetsms.net SMS Gateway is planned). Furthermore, the official Ushahidi-hosted websites use the commercial service. Ushahidi provides the option of using OpenStreetMap maps in its user interface, but requires the Google Maps API for geocoding. Ushahidi is often set up using a local SMS gateway created by a local FrontlineSMS set-up.
Ushahidi v3 was released in September 2015. As an improvement to the v2 platform it is built as an API with a web client. It allows for custom survey creation, and the running of multiple surveys on a single deployment, amongst other feature improvements from v2 such as embeddable maps and surveys, analytics, private deployments, and management of roles and permissions. It is built on the Laravel PHP web framework. It is open source under the AGPL license.
Ushahidi v4 was released in 2018, and replaces Kohana with Lumen.
Crowdmap was designed and built by the team behind Ushahidi. As the platform evolved, so did its users. Crowdmap allows users to set up their own deployments of Ushahidi without having to install it on a web server. Since its release in 2010, prominent deployments of Crowdmap have documented the global Occupy movement and the 2011 London anti-cuts protest. The original Crowdmap was a hosted version of the Ushahidi v2 open source software platform.
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Ushahidi
Ushahidi is an open source software application that collates and maps data using user-generated reports. It uses the concept of crowdsourcing serving as an initial model for what has been coined as "activist mapping" – the combination of social activism, citizen journalism and geographic information. Ushahidi allows local observers to submit reports using their mobile phones or the Internet, creating an archive of events with geographic and time-date information.
The Ushahidi platform is often used for crisis response, human rights reporting, and election monitoring. Ushahidi (Swahili for "testimony", closely related to shahidi which means "witness") was created in the aftermath of Kenya's disputed 2007 presidential election that collected eyewitness reports of violence reported by email and text message and placed them on a Google Maps interface.
The Ushahidi platform has been used by the United Nations Department of Field Services and Peacekeeping, in response to the Haiti Earthquake in 2010, to monitor the Nigerian elections in 2011, by the Obama Campaign for America 2012, by the Nepalese army to respond to the earthquake of 2015, in and by local activists groups such as Humanitarian Tracker to monitor violence in the Syrian civil war and HarassMap to help women report on sexual harassment.
Successful deployment of crisis mapping applications like Ushahidi benefits from careful attention to how the technology fits into the relevant cultural settings, and focusing on realistic goals.
Ushahidi v2 was built on the Kohana web framework, a fork of the CodeIgniter framework. It includes support for Nexmo wholesale SMS API and Clickatell SMS Gateway (Budgetsms.net SMS Gateway is planned). Furthermore, the official Ushahidi-hosted websites use the commercial service. Ushahidi provides the option of using OpenStreetMap maps in its user interface, but requires the Google Maps API for geocoding. Ushahidi is often set up using a local SMS gateway created by a local FrontlineSMS set-up.
Ushahidi v3 was released in September 2015. As an improvement to the v2 platform it is built as an API with a web client. It allows for custom survey creation, and the running of multiple surveys on a single deployment, amongst other feature improvements from v2 such as embeddable maps and surveys, analytics, private deployments, and management of roles and permissions. It is built on the Laravel PHP web framework. It is open source under the AGPL license.
Ushahidi v4 was released in 2018, and replaces Kohana with Lumen.
Crowdmap was designed and built by the team behind Ushahidi. As the platform evolved, so did its users. Crowdmap allows users to set up their own deployments of Ushahidi without having to install it on a web server. Since its release in 2010, prominent deployments of Crowdmap have documented the global Occupy movement and the 2011 London anti-cuts protest. The original Crowdmap was a hosted version of the Ushahidi v2 open source software platform.