Concepts to Know: Crowdmapping

Crowdmapping is the aggregation of crowd-generated inputs such as text messages and social media feeds with geographic data to provide real-time, interactive information on events such as wars, humanitarian crises, crime, elections, or natural disasters (the results are sometimes referred to as crisis maps). If properly implemented, crowdmapping can bring a level of transparency to fast-moving events that are difficult for traditional media to adequately cover in real-time, or to longer-term trends that may be difficult to identify through the reporting of individual events.

Anyone can create crowdmaps using tools such as Crowdmap.com, which runs on the open source Ushahidi platform. Ushahidi is a Kenyan technology initiative developed in response to the 2008 post-election violence...