Technology Innovations for Humanitarian Assistance

Last month, The Global Journal published a list ranking the top 100 NGOs in the world – an interesting, if ambitious task, with lots of room to quibble. The top ten list included some of the biggest, best-recognized NGOs in the world – like Oxfam (number 3), BRAC (number 4) and CARE (number 7). But number 10 on the list, Ushahidi caught my attention because it is a newcomer on the scene and relatively unknown.

Ushahidi is a Kenyan-based NGO that calls itself a “non-profit technology company.” It has developed mapping software that is distributed for free, and can be modified by anyone. In a very rapid way, is it democratizing how information is collected, distributed, and used. Its great innovation is to leverage the resources of volunteer curators and translators to allow data, collected from basically any source, to be posted on a map in real time.

Here’s how it works: people all over the world document and communicate information about their environment at ever increasing rates using social media like Twitter and Facebook. With the increasing number of mobile phone users, people can also photograph and video events in real time (like in Iran in 2009 or in Egypt this past year). This is the “crowd.” The crowd puts this information up on the internet – on YouTube, Flicker, and social networking sites...