#crowdmap

[campanaubicua]

... la applicación USHAHIDI para dispositivos móviles nos permite cartografiar desde nuestros móviles procesos tan complejos como la semana santa de sevilla...

[nairobridge]

Kenyan Style, Mr. Owen

Anyone who spends anytime in Nairobi quickly understands its tremendous traffic challenges. Before I left Boston, several friends warned me about the city’s infamous gridlock. Still, I had my doubts. Having lived in both Boston and Washington, DC—two of America’s most congested cities—I thought I was well prepared for traffic in Kenya. Not true.

Nairobi’s narrow streets and limited sidewalks make navigating the city an adventure. The lack of pavement markings including double yellow lines adds to the chaos. And good luck spotting a traffic light (or even stop sign)—they barely exist. Most drivers “feel their way” through intersections, an experience not for the faint of heart. The best way to describe driving in Nairobi is through the voice of my favorite taxi driver, Jimmy, who blurted out a few simple words as he slipped into oncoming traffic to avoid a massive pothole: “Kenyan style, Mr. Owen.” I am sure that my friend Bruce Hamilton, a former short-term resident of Kenya and current road safety expert at the AAA Foundation, would not be pleased.

Luckily, some of the entrepreneurial East Africans working in and around the iHub have devised some intelligent, lightweight solutions that are gaining traction. Consider the success of Ma3Route, a mobile/web/SMS platform that crowdsources traffic data and provides users with information on congestion throughout the city. Ma3Route aims “to bring greater sanity to the roads”—a noble goal indeed. Bigwigs at IBM, Microsoft, Nokia, and Samsung provide Ma3Route funding, guidance, and support.

Beyond Ma3Route, others from the University of Nairobi, Columbia, and MIT are working together to create an accurate map of the city’s matatu (minibus) routes. While the map won’t change the wildly reckless driving of nearly 100 percent of the city’s matuatu drivers, it does offer a valuable service to Nairobians looking to get from point a to b on public transit. The Atlantic ran an astute article about the project a few months ago.

Even my own organization added their brainpower into the fray. A few years ago Nairobi underwent a massive petrol shortage that essentially brought the city to a halt. In response, Ushahidi supporters created a Crowdmap that identified gas stations with available fuel stocks. The rapid response map automatically populated information from Twitter via the hashtag #findfuel. Participants could also include pictures of petrol stations to provide visual confirmation of the purported fuel stocks. There is a nice CNBC video on YouTube that highlights the project. These examples underscore the entrepreneurial spirit imbedded at the iHub (and its associated workspaces). This secret sauce is a huge boon to the people of Nairobi, especially those stuck in traffic. I cannot wait to see the next wave of new ideas, innovations, and inventions designed to overcome Kenya’s (and perhaps Boston’s and DC’s) costly congestion problem.

[streetasamedium]

https://squaresdatabase.crowdmap.com

[crowdmaps-blog]

Erik Hersman. The @WhiteAfrican. Co-founder of Ushahidi, iHub Nairobi, BRCK and the Savannah Fund. Senior TED and PopTech Fellow.

[crowdmaps-blog]

Feeling peckish for <a href="https://crowdmap.com/map/pancakes" target="_blank">Pancakes</a>? This map is for you

[crowdmaps-blog]

The Turkana Eclipse map follows the BRCK team as they journeyed north to stress test the BRCK in Africa’s most harsh settings: the shores of Lake Turkana.

[dallastcarter]

I am really excited about the idea of social mapping. Crowdsourced maps are a cool concept in their own right, but once I fully get the hang of the mapping, having a social feed should be a fun and educational way to help people and make new connections.

[dallastcarter]

Crowdmap introductory video. The meetup/tutorial I attended last Saturday for Crisis Mapping showed me just how easy it is for even those with basic computer skills and the inclination to use this tool and CartoDB to make important information intuitive for the non-technical, remotely and in real time.