The Kenyan team behind crowdsource map app Ushahidi has added two new online tools to its emergency response arsenal, Ping and Blood Donation. The two services were created in response to this week’s awful events at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, which saw a group from the Somali terror group al Shabaab attack a luxury shopping centre on Saturday using hand grenades and assault rifles. An armed siege finally ended yesterday afternoon, and the total number of casualties is believed to be at least 67.
Ushahidi was developed as a response to violence following the 2008 election in Kenya. It allowed citizens to easily report trouble spots using SMS or a web-broswer, and became not only vital for tracking problems as they arose but also for analysing the issues after the election. The open source tool is now widely used for a variety of purposes from disaster response to plotting the number of tech hubs in Africa.
Blood Donation is built directly on top of Ushahidi, in conjunction with the Red Cross who have been co-ordinating the enormous number of people who’ve turned out to donate blood to help those injured in the attack on Westgate using their website, social media and traditional media spots. It can be used to find the nearest spot for giving blood or to volunteer services and equipment to help out.
Ping, on the other hand, is a completely new project which is designed to let friends and family of disasters know that you are safe. From the Usahidi website:
There was a consistent problem in every disaster that happens, not just in Kenya, but everywhere. Small groups, families and companies need to quickly check in with each other. They need to “ping” one another to make sure they’re okay. It has to be something incredibly simple, that requires little thinking to use. People have been doing some stuff in this space in the past, the best like “I’m Ok” are focused on smartphone users, but we have a need to make it work for even the simplest phones. Our goal is to have this available for anyone globally to use.
As with Ushahidi, the emphasis is on giving people who don’t have access to smartphones the ability to broadcast and share vital information using SMS. Ping is still under development, but the idea is that you create a list of people you’re most concerned about and should a major, city or country-wide issue occur you can instantly message them all with an ‘Are you OK?’ text. Responses are then relayed to Ping’s servers and if none is received the contact is repeatedly contacted over other media until their situation can be verified.
The Ping team say that they’re looking for collaborators to help with the finishing touches, using the code sharing service Github.
As with Ushahidi, Ping and Blood Donation were put together in an astonishingly small amount of time. According to Erik Hersman – one of the founders of Ushahidi and its spiritual home iHub – work began on Monday afternoon.
