Digital Crisis Mapping: The Help.Map Initiative During Russian Wildfires

Help Map (Russian Fires)Crisis Mapping Case Study AlexeySidorenko Prague, March 9th 2011

Prerequisites for Wildfire Crisis in Russia, 2010 • Unusually hot period; • Degraded system of wildfire protection; • Almost simultaneous outburst of wildfires in different Russian regions; • Raise of activism on the background of government’s inability to cope with the disaster;

What’s the Story of Help Map? • Idea of implementing digital tools wasn’t new; • Two persons publicly suggested usage of Ushahidi in their blogs; • One of them, Gregory Asmolov, proposed to try to install Ushahidi; • First reaction: “It would take at least a month” (MEH!) • Second reaction: “This is actually quite easy! THIS COULD WORK!” • Third reaction: IT WORKS!!!! • Result: Ushahidi deployment in 2-3 days;

Difficulties • Poor support for Cyrillic fonts; • Inactive community support -> necessity to fix all the bugs by ourselves; • Poor documentation / difficult customization of the platform; • Unexpected high load of the server (10-15 thousand unique visitors daily) -> necessity to move to a new hosting really fast;

Our Main Principles At That Time • CROWDSOURCING. We crowdsource everything: message moderation, PHP/JavaScript programming, server optimization, server hosting, design; • TRUST. We trust all volunteers, we don’t have time for background checks – dangerous but necessary; • CREDIT. We credit everyone who helps us – people need to know and feel that their effort is taken into account; • NEUTRALITY. we don’t support with any political organization;

Help Map The First Ushahidi implementation in Russia; Stage 1: Monitoring of various sources concerning wildfires; Stage 2: Coordination of volunteers and victims of wildfires;

Information Coordination • Connecting random initiatives together -> creating synergy; • Connecting those who asked for help and those who could provide help; • Providing information on the abilities of private initiatives.

Information coordination Pozar_ru Doctor Liza Igor Cherskiy Russian Church Volunteer groups Random Citizen Initiatives

Work of Coordination Center • Moderation of reports; • Monitoring of sources; • Coordination of the work of remote moderators; • Site maintenance; • Phone “Hot Line” maintenance; • Coordination of help. Фотографии ottenki_serogo

Full cycle of help Clothes Transportation «I have a car. Mazda 3, I am available to lift people or food to any place in the Moscow or Ryazan region. «We have some spare clothes”, Moscow Victims Help Report • «In Vladimir region we need (August 14, 2010): • Утюги - 50 шт • Тонометр – 1 • Глюкометр (+тестполоски) – 1 • ...» Trip report: we brought food and clothes to …

Weak sides of the project • Limited information flow from the cell phones; • Limited number of sources (mostly from the bigger cities); • Mapping as a process was unusual for some less computer literate users; • Technical instability; • Lack of interactivity on the basis of the platform; • Limited feedback functionality (volunteers and victims couldn’t connect with each other without the help of moderators); • After the crisis is gone the future of the platform is unstable;

Perspectives: • Upgrade of the platform to version 2.0 + change of design to our own platform; • Integration of aerial photographs; • Information support in endangered regions ; • Better cooperation with the NGOs

Thanks! AlexeySidorenko • Sidorenko.a@gmail.com • Twitter: @sidorenko_intl

Digital Crisis Mapping: The Help.Map Initiative During Russian Wildfires