Welcome to the crazy world of Ushahidi- a Crowdsourcing platform using geospatial information to aid social activism, encourage public accountability and  increase citizen journalism.

Ushahidi- (meaning ‘testimony’ in Swahili) – was initially created in the aftermath of the 2007/2008 Kenyan elections, when a wave of violence spread across the country.

A group of Kenyan citizen journalists realised that their fellow countrymen and women required urgent access to communications, to increase their nation’s awareness of the desperate situation.

The founders decided the best way to highlight this would be to build an open-sourced Google map, pinpointing the exact areas where the reported areas of violence were occurring, based on the information of the Kenyan people.

As these chaotic scenes unfolded, local observers were actively encouraged to make themselves more visible to the humanitarian authorities and government, through reports via email, text, Twitter and video message, informing them of the situation, and the needs of the people most adversely affected.

45,000 users responded, proving the Crowdsourced model offered a genuine option for future conflicts, disaster and mass confusion. Furthermore, the Ushahidi application is accessible for free download- making it an ever increasingly popular and valuable public service for the organisation of disaster management.

Open-source mapping was used again during the violent outbreaks in Gaza and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It was then re-introduced in the monitoring of the 2009 Indian elections, and during the reporting of the global swine flu outbreak. This year Ushahidi proved a vital resource during the operation to cope with the devastation caused by the Haiti earthquake.

And now the system is being used to help alleviate some of the problems faced in the Gulf of Mexico, where oil began leaking at a rate of 5,000 barrels a day. As the oil spill drifts ever closer to land, the residents of the Gulf Coast have been directed towards Crowdsourcing to provide a large community clean-up operation.

Effectively, the model provides a vision and a voice of life in these local communities and provided the rescue organisations a way to strategise their response to specific problems, including sightings of endangered wildlife, oil on shore, health impacts, using the Oil Spill Crisis Map.

“The Oil Spill Crisis Map compiles and maps eyewitness accounts of the oil’s effects in real time,” said Anne Rolfes, of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade- a local environmental health and justice organisation. “This is a tool for all of us to understand the extent of the damage.”

It will also provide a long-standing public record of the events, which can help prevent, or at least prepare future generations how to best deal with wide-spread devastation or chaos.

This simple Crowdsourcing web tool has quickly become an integral part of global relief strategy- and shows no signs of slowing down yet.