Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
platform helps to open widely the data sharing and accessibility, not yet provides a
full data analysis mechanism on the web with past technologies. The emergence of
web 2.0 technology enables the phenomenon of volunteer GIS (Goodchild
2007
)
introducing new terms as data mashup, crowdsourcing, and neogeography (Turner
2006
) into GIS research, development and practices. Nowadays, map making has
no longer the task of experts or mapping agencies but everyone, e.g. openstreet-
map (
www.openstreetmap.org
) is a typical success of voluntary efforts in devel-
oping open-source world map data. Whistle benefits from frequently updated map
and substantial crowd-sourced collected data is obvious, the uncertainty of its
quality presented as a major issue for wider uses (Hudson-Smith et al.
2009
;
Goodchild and Glennon
2010
). Disaster aftermath when authoritative data
acquisition may be disrupted, the contribution of such crowd-sourced data is
necessary to quickly grasp the real situation and provide efficiently relief effort to
the devastated areas.
Sahana Eden and Ushahidi are the most two common open source crowd-
sourcing platforms so far, built specifically to aid in crisis and disaster manage-
ment and deployed in response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2010 Haiti
earthquake and the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami among other events.
Ushahidi means ''witness'' in Swahili, and the first Ushahidi platform was released
during Kenya's post-election violence in January 2008. It enables individuals and
groups to collaborate in making live multi-media maps and use for all kinds of
projects (Anahi
2011
). The word ''Sahana'' means ''relief'' or ''compassionate
help'' in Sinhala, one of the Sri Lanka languages. Sahana Software was initially
innovated by the information technology (IT) community in Sri Lanka to help the
country recover after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami (Sahana
Software Foundation
2011
).
Based on Ushahidi and Sahana Eden platforms, disaster managers and emer-
gency response practitioners can track users' reports on the map and timeline,
know the needs of the affected victims and coordinate emergency agencies and aid
resources. Nevertheless, some barriers and issues in technology deployment exist
in relief planning efforts. In particular, an interactive map seems to be the only
obvious geospatial component in existing systems. It would be very interesting to
review the current implementation and evaluate the capability of geospatial
components of these platforms. Some questions of our concerns: Are there other
geospatial functions provided in the platform? How geospatial data are fed into
platform? How are they managed? Are users comfortable with working on these
platforms? We used the data available after the 2011 Christchurch earthquake to
mimic the situation of post-disaster responses. The study area and data are
described in
Sect. 2
followed by methodology in
Sect. 3
. The review and evalu-
ation outcomes are given in
Sect. 4
prior to concluding remarks in
Sect. 5
.
