Crowdsourcing Tech for Social Good and Crisis Response

Heather Leson and Melanie GorkaFebruary 26, 2011 Oxfam regional Assembly Toronto

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Crisis Commons is a global network of volunteers who use creative problem solving and open technologies to help people and communities in times and

places of crisis.

Crisis Commons members organize response events called CrisisCamps.

Applied Social Media

What do we do?

Code, test tools, translate, map, wiki, Twitter, Facebook, communicate, collaborate, plan, coordinate, iterate, brainstorm, research, analyze, report, broker relationships, create content, videos, pictures, slideshare, and document

CrisisCamps for Haiti and Chile response

90 days8 countries50 events+2000 volunteers

CrisisCamp Paris

CrisisCamp Argentina

CrisisCamp CrisisCamp BogotaBogota

Team Canada

We are one of many Volunteer Technical Communities

• Sahana Foundation• Ushahidi, Swift River and Crowdmap• OpenStreetMap• Frontline SMS• Crisismappers• Random Hacks of Kindness• Humanity Road• Geeks without Bounds • HFOSS and more

Random Hacks of Kindness 1.0June 2010 - 5 countries

500 volunteers

RhoK Sydney, Australia

CrisisCamp PakistanAugust – September 2010

What if you read a text message (SMS) and could help your neighbour?

+ Text message + short code

+ Report

+ Read, search, document and categorize

+ Map

Mobile phones are global.

Pakreport.org

CrisisCamp London (UK) for Pakistan CrisisCamp London (UK) for Pakistan FloodsFloods

Global CrisisCamp Marathon September 4 – 5, 2010

24 hours

CrisisCamps:

Toronto Silicon Valley Sydney Bangkok London

Dozens of virtual volunteers

CrisisCamp SydneyCrisisCamp Sydney

Random Hacks of Kindness 2.0December 2010

10 countries, 21 cities1000 volunteers

RHoK Chicago

RHoK Toronto /Open Data Hackathon with CrisisCamp TorontoRHoK Toronto /Open Data Hackathon with CrisisCamp Toronto

Population Centers in Disaster

18 days1733 reports (verified and mapped)

82,121 unique visitorsFrom 65 countries

1000s of local volunteers Student Volunteer Army

Global volunteers and observers

What does it all mean?

Crisis Camp SendaiA CURRENT CRISIS

CrisisCommons continues to remain on active standby for Sendai Earthquake in Japan on March 11th. Information gathering activities such as collecting data sets to populate the Japan Data Profile, a collection of open data resources, initial begun to support UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Since March 11th, 225 volunteers have signed up to offer their skills to assist with projects from crisis response organizations. Volunteers have contributed content and new training to the CrisisCommons wiki in support of creating a Japan Data Profile for UN OCHA. On Wednesday, there were updates contributed such the Common Operational Dataset “101,” Foundation Center’s RSS Feed of Japan Relief Grants and the Miyagi prefecture townhall map. Contributions to the wiki are all volunteer effort and continue to be revised.

What does this mean?• 100’s of Volunteers from Canada, India, New Zealand,

Switzerland, Taipei, Syria, Nigeria, Brazil, Chile, Figi and the United States

• CrisisCamp Chile and CrisisCamp United Kingdom activated for the weekend of March 19th to continue support of CrisisCommons efforts in Japan

• the Volunteer Technical Communities have launched two crowdsourcing projects for japan:

• Locally Supported Japan Crisis Map

• OpenStreetMap

Contact and Credits

Heather@textontechs.comMelanie.gorka@gmail.com

@crisiscampto@crisiscamp @crisiscommons Crisiscommons.org

Photos by:heatherleson, Brian Chick, Cynthia Gould,

Mariella, Raztilla, Tolmie Macrae, Deborah Shaddon, Spike, Luis Aguilar