Name: Reporting crisis via texting
Uploaded: 2009-04-22T01:00:00Z
Duration: 3 min 42 s
Description: At TEDU 2009, Erik Hersman presents the remarkable story of Ushahidi, a GoogleMap mashup that allowed Kenyans to report and track violence via cell phone texts following the 2008 elections, and has evolved to continue saving lives in other countries.

Erik Hersman: Reporting crisis via texting

Reporting crisis via texting

At TEDU 2009, Erik Hersman presents the remarkable story of Ushahidi, a GoogleMap mashup that allowed Kenyans to report and track violence via cell phone texts following the 2008 elections, and has evolved to continue saving lives in other countries.

A platform born in Kenya during post-election violence let anyone report events with a mobile phone, transforming crisis response in just three days. This simple crowdsourced map has spread from Congo to Gaza, helping communities and NGOs worldwide track real-time events. As fast reporting outpaces our ability to process it, a new challenge emerges: making sense of a flood of eyewitness data. By building filters and crowd-based verification, this approach refines truth from chaos, proving that innovations born in Africa can lead the world.