Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 2
Comparison of main functions between Ushahidi and Sahana Eden
Ushahidi
Sahana Eden
Data input
Multiple data stream: text
message, email, twitter,
web-forms
Comma-separated value
(CSV) format
Analysis
Medium level
Limited
Data management
Medium level with data filter
by time and incidents
High level with various
modules
Visualization
Interactive mapping
Interactive mapping
User's evaluation
Fairly satisfied
Satisfied
though text messages are designed as one of data collection methods in Ushahidi,
such low-tech 2G phones and network infrastructures may be even not available in
remote, low-developed disaster-affected areas. That deficiency may be considered
as the barrier of high-tech deployment in disaster relief.
Users are fairly satisfied with Ushahidi. Based on user's evaluation of the
Ushahidi platform, although Ushahidi could provide the precise location of inci-
dents, it is said that in serious emergency situations (such as people trapped or
injured), victims usually need fast response by calling emergency centers, and
filling in the Ushahidi web-forms is not effective. In fact, calling emergency or
sending messages to give short descriptions and the location of incidents is faster
than turning on a computer or smart-phone to fill in the web-form which needs
time to start up and log on, and depends on the internet connection. Users also
highlighted that it may not be people's highest priority to report incidents to the
Ushahidi platform during or immediately after disaster strike. In order to enable
the system to work effectively, there should be programs building preparedness
capacity for communities in general framework of disaster mitigation planning,
e.g. in the case of the 2011 Japan earthquake, people reported through the internet
via Facebook and Twitter. These systems provide only one aspect as important
ground-truth information, and it cannot provide a complete picture of the damages.
Therefore,
such
information
needs
to
be
integrated
with
other
sources
of
information.
In general, based on the designing purpose, the data input capacity of Ushahidi
platform is more diverse than the one of Sahana Eden while Sahana Eden shows
more prominent capacity of data management in comparison to the Ushahidi
platform. Although both platforms present rich visualization capacity, the limita-
tion of geospatial analysis also exists in both of them (Table
2
).
5 Conclusion
Sahana Eden and Ushahidi are the two most effective open source software
platforms, designed specifically to aid in disaster management and achieved the
great success in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2011 Japanese earthquake
