Crowdsourcing Platform Enables Citizens to Document Crisis Information

These days, communities with great ideas are utilizing technology to improve their neighborhoods. Crowdmap is one such pervasive platform that allows users to crowdsource information like citizen protests or crisis information (ie. natural disasters) and view it on a map and timeline.

Living the Dream

In Seattle, the Rainier Beach Community Empowerment Coalition is using Crowdmap to capture actions, milestones, and victories in social justice and community building across the Rainier Beach neighborhood, one of the most diverse communities in America. Their map is called “Living the Dream.”

How do the victories going on now in Rainier Beach appear in map form? The Crowdmap system works by gathering information from websites, news sources and cell phones. The data collected is aggregated into the centralized platform to be viewed as an online map and timeline.

CrowdMap uses the Ushahidi (“Testimonial”) platform originally developed by the Kenyan non-profit of the same name. Created in late 2010, diverse map projects have now been deployed across the world. The tool allows users to build interactive Google maps that can help them plot reports and collect the data they need quickly, with no need to install any software. Real time tracking functionalities allow users to stay on top of the information, gathered in a way that is easy to understand.

The “Living the Dream” Crowdmap is a component of Rainier Beach Coalition’s Lift Every Voice campaign which is intended to transform public perceptions of the neighborhood by giving prominence to the voices of the people and organizations who live, work, serve and learn there. The campaign has supported the creation of an online information and exchange commons that presents a growing reservoir of locally generated information not otherwise readily available through existing channels.

Since so many in the community are already empowered and engaged, participating in performances, celebrations, service activities and so on, the Rainier Beach News Wire was implemented. As a result, local volunteer correspondents are now reporting headlines in near-real time on events, activities, and accomplishments across the neighborhood.  The acts of social justice and community building are also then mapped out on the Crowdmap, drawing upon the News Wire, local blogs and “crowdsourced” reports. Anyone can add their own report on what they have seen or participated in related to the theme.

In addition, a very important segment of Rainier Beach is already committed to the future of its neighborhood. SE Seattle FreedomNet, the youth-focused project under “Lift Every Voice,” is training and supporting 20 youth as citizen journalists who broaden awareness of local leadership through many activities, including contributing to the Crowdmap, and in turn, lead a neighborhood demonstrating its passion for revitalizing itself for the benefit of all its residents.

You can now use the search section of the Crowdmap homepage to find global deployments. Similar neighborhood Crowdmaps we’ve discovered include Chicago Sucker Poles, a map to help eliminate bad places to park bikes. (Sucker poles are sign poles from which bicycles can easily be stolen).

In NYC, Flock House map was made to engage New Yorkers in recycling and reusing, the development of community assets, and other shared civic responsibilities. In Washington, D.C. a transit themed map has been created called “Help TBD map WMATA problems: Reporting and mapping Metro issues all over Washington - with your help.”