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  • patrick 3:09 am on January 24, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Hey @caleb,

    Here are some design suggestions:

    * Thanks for adding the download feature on top of the website. Lets take the original one off.
    * On Categories section, lets get “Vital Lines” all on the second line (just like #6).
    * For the “Other Layers” box, lets stretch it out all the way to the right. This will look better and also give us more space to add layersin the coming days.
    * On the 447624802524 number, lets format it this way +44 762.480.2524
    * Lets turn “Official & Mainstream News” to “Mainstream News” and add a “Citizen Journalism” box below that takes Global Voices feed on Haiti.
    * On the “About Us” page, lets get rid of the bullet points and just use commas.
    * Instead of “Submit an Incident”, lets just go with “Submit Incident”
    * In the “Submit Incident” page, lets try and get the “Select a City” menu and the Lat/Long boxes on one line. On the category tree, lets have “Persons News” all on the second line.

    Thanks!!
    Patrick

    Last reply:

    patrick: rock on, thanks Caleb!

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    • sxpert 11:30 am on January 24, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      could we get the cell companies to triangulate where the person sending the SMS are ?

    • caleb 12:17 am on January 26, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Hey Patrick,

      Just a quick update: I’ve processed all of the above updates except the following:

      * On the 447624802524 number, lets format it this way +44 762.480.2524
      
* … Add a “Citizen Journalism” box below “Mainstream News” that takes Global Voices feed on Haiti.

      We’re in the process of moving to better servers so it may not be until late tomorrow that these get promoted to the live site. Either way, I plan on working on the remaining two items tomorrow.

      • patrick 5:42 am on January 26, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        Thanks Caleb!

        • caleb 5:01 am on January 27, 2010 Permalink | Reply

          Hi Patrick,

          Just wanted to let you know that the remaining items have been promoted to the live site.

          Caleb

          • patrick 5:04 am on January 27, 2010 Permalink | Reply

            rock on, thanks Caleb!

  • patrick 4:10 am on January 27, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Quick mini update: We’ve received some funding from The Fletcher School’s to tie us over for 2 weeks = food + coffee will be covered for our core volunteers who spend 8-16 hrs in the Situation Room. We should also be able to provide a paid internship for an MIT software developer from CrisisCamp to continue supporting our work in the Situation Room. We’re having a full Situation Report debrief session at 21:00 on Wednesday. So expect more a detailed tomorrow.

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  • patrick 5:51 am on January 26, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Situation Report: Boston

    Am liaising with Deans at Fletcher to get short term support for the Fletcher Situation Room. Going to DC on Friday to meet with various partners. Steady progress on providing training materials to Haitian diaspora. Will soon be including a link on the top of the Haiti page that reads “For Haitian Volunteers” which will link to guides, etc. Still on top of most urgent incoming SMS’s, average mapping time is under 10 minutes. New tools for processing SMS’s (courtesy of CrisisCamp) will be launched within the next 12 hours. I plan to start writing some blog posts on Ushahidi this week. Jaroslav is heading down to DC tomorrow and will meet with colleagues at Internews on Wednesday before flying on to Haiti.

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  • patrick 12:43 am on January 25, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Our goal with Ushahidi-Haiti: By May 1, 2010, the entire project is fully run by the Haitian diaspora in Boston in joint collaboration with appropriate Haitian NGOs on the ground. We have already started this process and the response has been hugely positive. All training material, CrisisCamp tools, etc will be made available in English, French and Creole on a dedicated wiki. It is important that Haitians take full ownership of this process and that they are the ones who hold the (forthcoming) development community accountable in the rebuilding of their country now and in the years to come. They will decide what categories to add as the situation evolves and how to collaborate with UN and other actors.

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  • patrick 12:01 am on January 25, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Situation Report: Boston

    Hi All, nothing “new” per se to report since the previous situation report. We’re continuing our work on all fronts. We’re keeping up with the processing of all incoming text messages (since Jan 20th).

    We’ve reached out to some amazing community leaders in the Haitian diaspora here in Boston and they are key to the sustainability of this project. Ownership of this deployment should become theirs as quickly as possible and the Situation Room here will continue to facilitate this.

    Yaroslav Valuch in the Situation Room will be heading down to Haiti where he will be based for 3 months to serve as Ushahidi’s Field Representative.

    The very helpful gadgets developed by CrisisCamp yesterday are now being tested by the core team and will be shared with all volunteers within 24rs. These new tools will significantly increase the speed and efficiency of the mapping.

    We will begin conversations with the Deans at Fletcher to identify ways that Tufts can support the long term efforts of the situation room. We’re preparing a grant proposal to sustain all the efforts we are engaged in.

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  • Erik Hersman 1:38 pm on January 24, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , ,   

    Tech Community Sitrep (Jan 22, 2010) 

    I’m a day behind on getting this SitRep up, my apologies.

    Word Doc version:
    Tech community sitrep – haiti 22 jan 2010

    See it inline below:
    (More …)

    Last reply:

    Erik Hersman: Great point Sanjana. It's one of the constant mysteries for me, why data isn't published in a format easy to get to, mix and reuse for multiple purposes. Don't even get me started on PDF maps as the only format on some websites...

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    • Sanjana Hattotuwa 5:35 pm on January 24, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Dear Eric,

      You said that “Decision-makers on the ground still do not have access to accurate, real-time data.” In addition to points noted by you as to why this is the case, the format the data is published on also comes into play. One example is the hugely valuable master contact list in Haiti published yesterday by OCHA and available on the OneResponse website as a ZIP download containing a Excel 2007 format spreadsheet with multiple tabs. Far more simpler would have been to just upload this information to the web for people to access and search? In fact, what I did was to save each tab in that huge spreadsheet as a separate file, upload it to Google Docs, publish them as webpages and link to them on the ICT4Peace Foundation wiki, referenced above. Simple, effective, efficient.

      VBW,

      Sanjana

      • Erik Hersman 6:04 pm on January 24, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        Great point Sanjana. It’s one of the constant mysteries for me, why data isn’t published in a format easy to get to, mix and reuse for multiple purposes. Don’t even get me started on PDF maps as the only format on some websites…

  • patrick 2:16 am on January 24, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Situation Report: Boston, Jan 23

    ***Jaroslav has accepted the offer to represent Ushahidi in Haiti. The plan is for him to leave no later than February 1st.

    ***CrisisCamp: Crisis camp people are awesome. Made quick find GPS tool. Tells you coordinate, works with a variety of tools and OSM. Set up SMS management tools, can triage. Also search SMS function. OSM to continue working with us for a week. We will feed in these new processes to our volunteers.

    ***Wiki is updated. Ready go live tonight.

    ***SMS Report: Running smoothly. We are working backwards. We have archived the backlog of SMS before Jan 20th (will get them up later), focus on current urgent SMS. We are going to start training the 10,000 Haitians to map better in addition translate.

    ***Mapping/IDP: WFPs has new spreadsheets of 500 camps. We trained 10-15 people who are now very good. Total IDP camps mapped = 100.

    ***Volunteers: Trained over 80 new volunteers today. Geneva Situation Room going well, starting to map. London is going well, should be operational in 24 hours. Geneva and London will become European Hub and will collaborate closely in training, support, etc. Should have Portland Situation Room operational by Wednesday. We need to start focusing on retaining volunteer base and providing regular update. We need Ushahidi T-shirts to help make this new community cohesive and proud. Have Erik Hersman Skype in Live in coming days so he can interact directly with volunteers. Everyone has watched Erik’s TED talk and I’m sure that this will be a special treat for them. We need to set up and schedule shifts sooner rather than later. We will create short 2 minute videos for training purposes.

    ***Communications: Putting together list of NGO on the ground, lots of contacts.

    ***Grant writing: Team meeting tomorrow afternoon to start writing grant.

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  • patrick 6:29 pm on January 23, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Mini Situation Update: Boston

    Sorry for the delay, it’s been busy and I have to make this quick so will stick to main points. I’ll forward a more detailed summary shortly.

    CrisisCamp: We have some 20+ CrisisCampers right here at the Situation Room. Ashirul is coordinating.

    Local Presence: Mark at Internews has offered to pay for an Ushahidi rep to be based out of PaP for the next three months. Jaroslav is my preferred candidate. He will let me know within 24 hours whether he can do this. Note, this could be huge for Ushahidi on many fronts. Not least since Jaroslav could help out with future disasters by being our on-the-ground rep. Of course, this needs to be discussed with the entire Ushahidi team. My personal preference would be to have him, he’d be a huge help to me in my strategic partnership work.

    SMS: We have shifted 80% of our core time/resources to SMS mapping and have outsourced the majority of media monitoring.

    Funding: We are preparing a full funding proposal (Fletcher/Tufts not Ushahidi) to get enough funding to run this Situation Room for the next three months, Feb 1 – May 1. We’ll be submitting this to donors with the help of Internews. We have a good friend of Pam Omidyar’s here, and of course the Omidyars have a strong connection to Tufts. We’ll also bounce this off State, etc. Will share draft with you Sunday night.

    Exit strategy: We do a “Call for Proposals” (RFP) on March 1 soliciting proposals from organizations interested in taking over the Fletcher situation room operations. After all the media attention we’ve gotten, we’ll have plenty of proposals to review.

    Sustainability: We are setting up Situation Rooms in London and in Portland. We had one major training this morning, about 30 undergrads. We have a larger training set for this afternoon at 3pm. We have also mobilized the Haitian community in Boston, several of their community leaders are here with us working directly with the mapping team. We are also in the process of mobilizing all Haitian students in the Boston area, they are fully committed to help now and for the long term.

    GIS Expert: We now have a full time paid-for GIS expert in our situation room, courtesy of Tufts University’s GIS Center. He is going to create some kick ass layers.

    Last reply:

    Erik Hersman: Wow! Will follow up shortly about some of these points.

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  • patrick 3:54 pm on January 23, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Important layer to add on hospitals, updated regularly by Sahana: http://haiti.sahanafoundation.org/prod/hms/hospital.kml

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  • Erik Hersman 9:47 am on January 22, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , photos   

    Embeddable Extraordinaries Images 

    The Extraordinaries have finished putting together an embeddable Haiti image grid. This allows it to be used all over the web and extends their reach significantly (see it in action on http://haiti.ushahidi.com).

    You can access it via the URL:

    http://app.beextra.org/appflickr/embed/collectionid/haiti/missionid/605/count/12/title/1/bg/white

    • count - number of photos you want to display in the grid
    • title – title visibility {true, false, 1, 0}
    • bg – optional parameter to change background color {black, white, gray, etc}

    And here’s sample iframe code:

    <iframe src=”http://app.beextra.org/appflickr/embed/collectionid/haiti/missionid/605/count/12/title/1/bg/white” width=”270″ height=”400″ scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″></iframe>

    Here’s an example of it on our site:

    Last reply:

    jongos: thanks so much for posting this, Erik!

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    • jongos 5:18 am on January 23, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      thanks so much for posting this, Erik!

  • jongos 5:17 am on January 23, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , ,   

    Situation Room Swift/Africa: January 22 and 23

    Swift Haiti Twitter Tracker: http://appfrica2.com/haiti/

    Working on Swift Architecture document at – https://docs.google.com/a/ushahidi.com/Doc?docid=0AXtjM3UhUoCeZGZ0azVwYjdfMWdjeDc5Y2Rj&hl=en. While I will continue to work on Haiti Tracker, I feel our team’s time is better spent getting a fully realized SwiftApp done. Working on mock-ups of final Swift app. Getting new team members up to speed by breaking down all features into smaller manageable tasks.

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  • Erik Hersman 11:01 am on January 17, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , ,   

    Tech Community SitRep (1/16/2010) 

    Courtesy of the good folks at InSTEDD, here is a comprehensive situation report on the tech communities activities through 1/16/2010.

    Download it as a Word Document:
    Technology Community SitRep Haiti 6 Jan 2010

    View it online below:
    (More …)

    Last reply:

    Polyglot Pledge : Week 3 - The Busy World of Regina Mullen: [...] #Geeks For Haiti Twitter Trackbacks, #CrisisCamp, #Ushahidi Situation Room [...]

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  • Erik Hersman 10:12 am on January 22, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , numbers, ,   

    Updated 4636 SMS stats: Overall 3296 Dee… 

    Updated 4636 SMS stats:

    Overall 3296
    Deemed Useful 2039

    With usable coords: 32%

    Breakdown:
    Food distribution 23.27%
    Missing Persons 11.06%
    Asking to forward a message 10.94%
    Response 9.79%
    Water shortage 9.33%
    Health services 5.65%
    Medical Emergency 4.38%
    People trapped 4.38%
    Shelter 3.46%
    Earthquake and aftershocks 3.23%
    Emergency 3.00%
    Persons News 2.19%
    Collapsed structure 1.73%
    Non food items 1.73%
    Vital Lines 1.04%

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  • patrick 7:57 am on January 18, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Fletcher Situation Report, Jan 18, 3AM – Boston

    Wow. This has probably been the most incredible day thus far thanks to Brian, David, Josh & co: the SMS feature is up and running. Team, this is completely unprecedented in the history of humanitarian response. We’re getting 100’s of text messages into Ushahidi, translated into English thanks to Brian’s 10,000 Haitian volunteers. We can then map this, or ask for more information (with pre-arranged text in English or Creole, eg, please send more location info). This SMS from Ushahidi then goes back to the original sender of the original SMS, who can then reply with the more precise location info (say in Creole). This goes back to the 10,000 Haitian translators who translate into English and then this goes back to us at Ushahidi in the appropriate SMS thread for us to map. Honestly, the word that comes to mind to describe this is “absurd”, in the best possible, most positive sense of the word. This, Team, is what I am fond of calling an iRevolution.

    Also an amazing live Skype chat between Anna here in the Sit Room and Eric Rasmussen (InSTEDD and former Chief Medical Officer of the US Navy). Eric skyping from tarmac of PoP airport asking for GPS coordinates of the most obscure addresses, sites, locations and Anna providing these in record time. She has wowed the entire team in PaP including military, UN, etc. Incredible to witness all this real time networking and collaboration. Mark my words, the response to Haiti is a turning point in the history of disaster response. All of this is completely unprecedented. I could go on and on with more of these “absurd” anecdotes, but this is supposed to be Situation Update ;)

    Dev Items

    * Layer IDP Staging area doesn’t work

    * Time line slider: the Play feature is quite jumpy. Could we make it move forward more slowly and smoothly at all? Hour by hour intervals?

    * Visualization: can we get Soyapi to try out & add some of the new visualization features we discussed in December?

    * Add download data link (already touched base with Ken, he’s got the details)

    * The number of total reports on the right of this screen in the situation room does not match the number on the backend. Which one is correct?

    Design items

    * Main page: we have a banner with the SMS info and then a box just above the map. I think that’s too much. Could we please remove

    * We’ll likely be adding more layers, could we make that a box a drop down menu of layers in which you can choose multiple layers if interested? That way we also deal with all that extra white space below the time line slider.

    Non-dev items

    * Important note on SMS: we are NOT to publish any reports including names of individuals or numbers. Humanitarian organizations will get all the info (names, numbers) but for privacy reasons, we cannot make this public. Had long discussion on this with our partners.

    * We sent out email to contacts at Fletcher, Harvard and MIT for a training at Fletcher on Tuesday evening that will allow us to transition and remain sustainable on the Haiti project.

    * Fletcher Situation Room is putting together a guide to map incoming SMS, please hold off on creating reports from incoming SMS until then. Guide should be available by 4am Boston time.

    * There’s probably more but this situation report is way over due. Will add items in the reply section as they come to mind.

    Last reply:

    Texts, Tweets Saving Haitians From the Rubble « PixelVulture: [...] still a work in progress, and it remains to be seen if it can be sustained over the long term. The Ushahidi situation room is already looking to train [...]

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    • tel4rent 8:37 am on January 18, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      WOW! this an incredible process. Good job guys! God bless.

      how is the cost of SMS handled? is it via skype? phone? free service sms?

      tel4rent.
      HaitiEarthQuake.tel team

    • Erik Hersman 8:46 am on January 18, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      @patrick, re: * The number of total reports on the right of this screen in the situation room does not match the number on the backend. Which one is correct?

      The backend is accurate. We’re just pulling the number from the backend up to this page for an overview. I’ll check with Brian, but I believe this one only checks every few minutes (not sure.

    • Linda (@meowtree) 1:40 pm on January 18, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Really really impressive. Thank you so much for all you are doing. Glad to see you are not publishing individual names, etc. That’s especially critical for child protection as well.

  • patrick 5:33 am on January 22, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    BOSTON SITUATION ROOM: JAN 21 – META-UPDATE

    *Biggest question right now is sustainability of Ushahidi’s involvement in Haiti, even before issues regarding closing the feedback loop and demonstrating success stories. We’re hitting breaking point again on available human resources, the team is stretched. We need to outsource a lot more of the Situation Room’s work; planning to leverage the Tufts undergrad community for a major training on Saturday. We also need to leverage Crisis Camp Boston in a big way.

    *There was a lot of frustration (more exhaustion) among the SMS Team today with technical glitches even though they’ve scaled up. That said, they’re very happy to report that when the tech stuff runs smoothly, they can do a super job.

    *We’re going to leverage the Tufts undergraduate community and get their help; hopefully a training on Saturday morning. If we can’t use this community to outsource 90% of the media monitoring, then we need to make some important decisions. Either we stop media monitoring and focus only on SMS or we decide to stop operations at a given date, eg, Feb 1st.

    *I’d like to propose that Ory and Erik join us for a conference call on Sunday with the team leaders

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  • patrick 5:24 am on January 22, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    BOSTON SITUATION ROOM: JAN 21 – From the Group | Am posting meta sit report shortly

    Minutes: De Brief Meeting
    Present: Anna, Laura, Denise, Jarov, Beka, Carol, Josh, Erin, Hana, Ashtun, Nona, Sabia, Vanessa, Jennifer, Althea, Hile, Lillian, Patrick, Yanina, DC Crew.

    Accomplished:

    * Cleared all reports. Approved SMS reports that were in the system. There was a back log from end of day yesterday but now cleared. We need to clear those more quickly.

    * Continued to work with WFP sites and got plotted maps from GIS. As of tomorrow, there will be a paid undergraduate GIS expert in Sit Room for support.

    * Spoke to German Ambassador to the US very proud of what we are doing, and Board of Overseers are very excited. Fletcher alum, this will be communicated to Sarah George.

    * WFP location are harder to find. Out of 300 IDPs we have mapped just over 1/3.

    * Complicated Day with SMS. All trained SMS and running very smoothly on their own. There is 10 people full time SMS!

    * Complications with the system, very productive today but around 6pm we had 100 SMS locations mapped very well, cleared 400 processed msgs total.

    * There are serious problems in the systems. The second operator started to using 4363, and problems during past two hours is caused by this. We are trying to find out with Brian, what is going on. The messages were coming but were misplaced on the website. They were coming with the wrong dates.

    * There is improvement in Haitian volunteers, they are getting better hour by hour.

    * Two new features: New box on action-ability, which means that if volunteers tick box then it goes directly to US Coast Guards. Today we see that they are being proactive and that they are taking action when they get them. They are contacting us for get more information. Difficult to see if there are any results right now, and we are working on feedback. The actionable tag, can only be msgs (SMS). This was an agreement with US Coast Guards, the reliability of SMS is higher than tweeter.

    * The SMS team put together a manual for themselves. Hopefully not many changes.

    * Who is in the ground that is saying we are using the report? getting that from Instedd. Suggestion: To close the feedback loop. Being in touch and ask for them. The US coast guard willing to share success stories. Up to us to contact them. How to get any feedback from relief NGOS? we are not in touch with relief workers? What is the channel? And how get response from them? We can’t contact them asking them right now, this may be complicated. Get in touch with clusters that are organizing on the ground. The SMS are working on sorting SMS based on clusters. This may be a good connection point, because at the clusters they are meeting and they are reporting what they have done and what they can do.

    * Trained 25 people. One major thing. Virtual training?

    * We have 92 subscribers on Wiki that includes Core team, and all the volunteers that were on the sign up sheets or that have since gone through the training. They are all added as readers. The Wiki is being updated as new sheets come up and the organization evolves.

    * Sabina (Tufts undergrad) is a huge resource, she speaks Creole, and knows Haiti. Josh did communications and is a writer. very smart strategy. This is a question to the group, how to use the Haitian community.

    * Media/Branding: What is the message? Before was the text msg. What is the next message? Key information that we would need to and communicate to go to 1000 Haitian-American, beyond the organization.

    * Mac wishlist sent out tonight.

    * For Saturday: How long can we do this? Propose solution that we have reading assignments and have a way to do this. How long, purpose, compare advantage? Do we now face back? need to start addressing, and sharing that for Ushahidi. We cannot continue at this pace. Saturday need to ask and decide, and solution.

    * Saturday traning with Humanitarian Class coming in, enthusiastic in quality. Working with engineers on the ground for two years. College of engineers in GIS classes, we are clearing house that they have asked, they want fundraising challenging in direction.

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  • ookolloh 9:32 pm on January 17, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    Could use a volunteer who can scan the American Redcross newsroom for updates http://newsroom.redcross.org/ and submit /enter relevant information to the Ushahidi site.

    e.g. “Today (Sunday), the Red Cross is setting up a field hospital in Jacmel which will be able to treat approximately 200 people per day. The Red Cross has already supplied medical kits to treat 2,000 patients, and hundreds of blankets and plastic sheets have also been distributed.”

    Last reply:

    Francesca Garrett: I would be happy to do this! How can I help?

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    • patrick Meier 9:41 pm on January 17, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Fletcher SitRoom already added feed

    • Francesca Garrett 5:03 am on January 22, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      I would be happy to do this! How can I help?

  • jongos 8:43 am on January 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: nlp, , , uganda   

    Situation Room Swift/Africa: January 21

    Swift Haiti Twitter Tracker: http://appfrica2.com/haiti/

    Today I’m committing EDXL, GeoRSS and PFIF xml feeds to SULSa and working on buttons for Haiti Tracker. Namely “Delete” and “Mark as Chatter”. ‘Send to Ushahidi’ button needs to validate with a token in the database to avoid duplicates from multiple users. Working on user and admin permissions. Two dedicated volunteers are contributing a great deal of their time, which is much appreciated. Exploring options for visualization. Victor is working on an NLP tagging module which he’s testing today.

    Last reply:

    Erik Hersman: Oh man, I really want to tweet that...

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    • jongos 11:10 am on January 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      Committed changes this morning. We can now offer PFIF, XML, JSON, EDXL and GeoRSS for apps querying SULSa for location info. I know it made it easier for me to talk to the Ushahidi API, hopefully it makes it easier for other app devs. =)

      • Erik Hersman 11:57 am on January 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        Nicely done Jon. Amazing how fast things are coming together. What are your areas of biggest need right now?

        • jongos 12:06 pm on January 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

          in the words of the King of Bing, Steve Ballmer….developers. Developers! DEVELOPERS!!!

  • patrick 1:56 am on January 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    From Wayne Gaines Suggestions: * Your ca… 

    From Wayne Gaines

    Suggestions:

    * Your categorization of data needs to be code assigned like: PT=Person Trapped MAN=Medical Assistance Needed F&W=Food and Water Request etc..
    * Someone needs to categorize the spread sheet detail and combine multiple same item incident under one heading to reduce clutter and duplication.
    * Symbols on the map are too vague and misleading. Better exact symbols representing PT=People trapped MAN-medical assistance needed. Anything is better than what is there now. Even clip art.
    * On time of incident: Consider converting to military time format. On spread sheet there is not indication of AM or PM but everyone gets military time and it is clean.
    * Assign code to the front of each Incident number indicating type of incident and color code emergency level or at least a assumed number scale of intensity of need.
    * Someone needs to cull out assigned incident or attach follow up reports by incident number if feedback if available.
    * Sort by location grouping incidents by location and priority level along with specific incident need code. This to priortize information.
    * A good number of incidents are history and people listed are back stateside or elsewhere so someone needs to cull the data down to actionable items otherwise it is just confusing data that can’t be acted upon.

    A few minor data improvements in coding will go along ways along with a general clean up of the data especially grouping of repeated incidents that show up multiple times.

    Last reply:

    jongos: I concur with the idea to switch to 24hr time. The API requires time but it also requires 'AM' or 'PM' with that time, most basic language functions have no way of calling that info, so it becomes more difficult than necessary for someone to timestamp. It's also counter intuitive to server settings, which many languages pull their time data from. It might make more sense to adapt the form that so that on the front users select standard 12hr time, but on the backend, the time is converted to 24hr time before going to the db.

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    • jongos 8:55 am on January 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      I concur with the idea to switch to 24hr time. The API requires time but it also requires ‘AM’ or ‘PM’ with that time, most basic language functions have no way of calling that info, so it becomes more difficult than necessary for someone to timestamp. It’s also counter intuitive to server settings, which many languages pull their time data from. It might make more sense to adapt the form that so that on the front users select standard 12hr time, but on the backend, the time is converted to 24hr time before going to the db.

  • patrick 4:14 am on January 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    SITUATION REPORT UPDATE: Boston – Jan 20th
    ———————————————————

    Situation Room in Boston is now getting into the practice of doing 1/2hour debrief at 9:30pm every night. Patrick will be in DC on Thurs/Friday but will stay in close contact with situation room.

    NEW INFORMATION

    * Overall coordinator at Fletcher Situation is vanessa.corlazzoli@gmail.com

    * UN agencies, Coast Guard, are still saying we’re the most accurate information on the ground (Anna)

    * If you compare SMS’s location info we got in the beginning with what we’re getting know, there is a huge improvement in data accuracy (Jaro)

    DEV NEEDS

    * Need to add 20 new admins that only have access to the SMS backend of Ushahidi

    * Add link feature on submit reports so that if reports are linked to each other we can do so, if there is a text box where we can enter related report numbers, that would be great.

    * Need more data quality control of the reports that get mapped, seems to be a rogue “acceptor” <– David, we need to know who accepts these reports, can we trace?

    * Need the tree structure for the layout of the categories on the submit report section (Caleb)

    ACCOMPLISHED

    * Developed organizational chart for Fletcher Situation Room (Vanessa)

    * Carried out trainings for new Mapping Team members and new SMS Team members (Misc)

    * Trained 6 new members of the SMS Team, shifts of 4 (Denise)

    * Mapped IDP locations, and rural concentrations, shifting away from mapping for SAR teams (Anna)

    * Set up Name@CrisisMappers.net email addresses for the core team (Ash)

    * We’ve mapped ~100 of the 300 IDP concentration areas requested by WFP, resulting in 2,500 people getting fed; will complete the remaining 200 tomorrow (Anna)

    * About 350 SMS’s processed and about 50 mapped (Denise)

    * Conference call with SOUTHCOM, they have our IFRAME and our RSS feeds (Patrick/Brian/John)

    * All SMS’s on 4636.ushahidi have been gone through and tagged if they are actionable, and all actionable SMS’s that did not have decent la/longs were fixed (Jen Ziemke)

    * Getting videos up of trainings done yesterday will be up on Vimeo to share not openly but only for our volunteers (Carol)

    * Monitoring Ushahidi in the media and sending out update at the end of every day this will be sent to all volunteers (Carol coordinating with Sarah)

    * Trying to get iMacs for Situation Room (Carol)

    * Set up @CrisisMappers Twitter account for all the Twitter users that are being followed by the situation room (Althea)

    * Wiki being set up to improve communication flow between/within Situation Room: (Jennifer/Beka)

    * Setting up http://www.crisismappers.info/haiti to streamline data entry of reports, a google form that will populate a Goolge Spreadsheet (Beka/Ashirul)

    * Geneva situation room has about 20 volunteers, 10 core volunteers; the room is starting be run on it’s own on a Doodle (Laura)

    * All haiti@ushahidi.com goes haitiushahidi@gmail.com and processed (Laura)

    UPCOMING TASKS

    * More Mapping and SMS trainings will be carried out at 08:00 tomorrow

    * We need feedback loops, get SAR/WFP teams to let us know they’ve responded, will coordinate with InSTEDD to get a list of places searched by teams (Anna)

    * For response, we need to get the cell phone numbers of the major orgs who we know are using our feeds through 4636; suggestion then is at 8pm every night we poll these organizations by sending out an SMS asking them to text back the report numbers they have responded to, + 0, 1; 0=responded but not resolved; 1= responded and resolved (Patrick/Josh)

    * CrisisCamp Boston taking place this Saturday, will make sure to interface (Patrick)

    Last reply:

    ookolloh: Definitely more needed on feedback loop your suggestions especially re polling the orgs every night is excellent.

    View all replies | Reply to this

     

    • caleb 4:50 am on January 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

      The category tree structure has been implemented on the front-end. I’m working on implementing it in the admin area right now, should have something up by the AM.

      • ookolloh 8:26 am on January 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply

        Definitely more needed on feedback loop your suggestions especially re polling the orgs every night is excellent.

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