Crowdmap Offers a Cloud-Based Crisis Mapping Service

Improvements in mapping and mobile technologies have helped facilitate the development of new social innovation tools that respond quickly and efficiently to crisis situations worldwide. "Crisis mapping," as its called, is a processing of collecting mobile and map information and crowdsourcing, visualizing and analyzing that data. Mapping can be undertaken by researchers, first responders, NGOs, citizen scientists.

Ushahidi is a software tool uses for such mapping projects. Swahili for "witness," Ushahidi was initially created following a disputed presidential election in Kenya in 2007. The website collected eyewitness reports of violence, contributed via email and SMS. The software used to build the site was open sourced in 2008, and the Ushahidi platform has been in development since then.

Today Ushahidi announced the launch of Crowdmap, a hosted service providing Ushahidi "out of the box with nothing to install." Analogous perhaps to the difference between Wordpress.org (a downloadable version of WordPress that you run on your own server) and Wordpress.com (a Wordpress blog hosted on the Wordpress server), Crowdmap will provide a hosted version of the Ushahidi software.

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