CRISIS-MANAGEMENT CROWDSOURCING PLATFORM WAS LAUNCHED IN KYRGYZSTAN TO MAP AND SHARE RELIABLE INFORMATION

On June 21, 2010 crisis-management crowdsourcing platform was launched at http://www.aikol.kg . The website allows people on the ground to map and share information in nine different categories (events, infrastructure, epidemics, people gathering, etc) using text massages or internet. The site is in its early days of operations, but it quickly began to pick up posts from all over the nation.  It may not take much time before the platform accumulates significant amount of information. Two major problems that the initiative could face in near future are accessibility to the platform and reliability/verifiability of information.



The platform that is being used by the website seems to come from open source non-profit initiative called ushahidi. User named <altyni> initially posted that "We are supported by crisis managers of Chile, Haiti, Dushanbe, Ukraine, USA, Kenya #savekg" and several hours later "I officially announce that we have launched @ushahidi platform in #freekg", "#thanks: Mark Belinsky, Nona Lambert, Patrick Meier, David Kobia, Alana Shaikh, Anaha Ayala, Max Froumentin, Juliana, Sanjana and others."

“The open-source project Ushahidi, which takes its name from the Swahili word for “testimony,” ...  The software allows text messages to be mapped by time and location. It was developed to track reports of ethnic violence in Kenya in 2008. Suddenly mere words can create a moving picture of where violence started and where it intensified.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/business/09link.html?_r=1

The Ushahidi platform was most recently used in helping earthquake effort in Chile and Haiti; tracking extreme weather (snowstorm, etc) and wildfire; monitoring elections in India, Mexico and Sudan; covering activities in Gaza during the war; recording reconciliation effort in Kenya, etc. Here is descriptive video http://ushahidi.com/embeds/what_is_ushahidi.html



If you would like to share information, you can send text message to 0779069805, email to savekg@gmail.com or use #savekg on twitter. You can also contact the developers to offer your help via webpage http://www.aikol.kg/contact .