computer science

Ushahidi

Ushahidi is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Ushahidi rather than just read about it. In short: Ushahidi is an open source software application that collates and maps data using user-generated reports. It uses the concept of crowdsourcing serving as an initial model for what has been coined as "activist mapping" – the combination of social activism, citizen journalism and geographic information.

Key takeaways

Ushahidi belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Ushahidi to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Ushahidi from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Ushahidi is an open source software application that collates and maps data using user-generated reports. It uses the concept of crowdsourcing serving as an initial model for what has been coined as "activist mapping" – the combination of social activism, citizen journalism and geographic information. Ushahidi allows local observers to submit reports using their mobile phones or the Internet, creating an archive of events with geographic and time-date information. The Ushahidi platform is often used for crisis response, human rights reporting, and election monitoring. Ushahidi (Swahili for "testimony", closely related to shahidi which means "witness") was created in the aftermath of Kenya's disputed 2007 presidential election that collected eyewitness reports of violence reported by email and text message and placed them on a Google Maps interface. The Ushahidi platform has been used by the United Nations Department of Field Services and Peacekeeping, in response to the Haiti Earthquake in 2010, to monitor the Nigerian elections in 2011, by the Obama Campaign for America 2012, by the Nepalese army to respond to the earthquake of 2015, in and by local activists groups such as Humanitarian Tracker to monitor violence in the Syrian civil war and HarassMap to help women report on sexual harassment. Successful deployment of crisis mapping applications like Ushahidi benefits from careful attention to how the technology fits into the relevant cultural settings, and focusing on realistic goals.

Products

Ushahidi Ushahidi v2 was built on the Kohana web framework, a fork of the CodeIgniter framework. It includes support for Nexmo wholesale SMS API and Clickatell SMS Gateway (Budgetsms.net SMS Gateway is planned). Furthermore, the official Ushahidi-hosted websites use the commercial service. Ushahidi provides the option of using OpenStreetMap maps in its user interface, but requires the Google Maps API for geocoding. Ushahidi is often set up using a local SMS gateway created by a local FrontlineSMS set-up. Ushahidi v3 was released in September 2015. As an improvement to the v2 platform it is built as an API with a web client. It allows for custom survey creation, and the running of multiple surveys on a single deployment, amongst other feature improvements from v2 such as embeddable maps and surveys, analytics, private deployments, and management of roles and permissions. It is built on the Laravel PHP web framework. It is open source under the AGPL license. Ushahidi v4 was released in 2018, and replaces Kohana with Lumen.

Releases and codenames 1.0 Mogadishu – 10 December 2009 1.2 Haiti – ~22 January 2010 2.0 Luanda – 22 November 2010 2.1 Tunis – 9 August 2011 2.2 Juba – 13 March 2012 2.3 Juba – 24 April 2012 3.0 - September 2015 4.0 - 1 Oct 2018

Crowdmap

Crowdmap was designed and built by the team behind Ushahidi. As the platform evolved, so did its users. Crowdmap allows users to set up their own deployments of Ushahidi without having to install it on a web server. Since its release in 2010, prominent deployments of Crowdmap have documented the global Occupy movement and the 2011 London anti-cuts protest. The original Crowdmap was a hosted version of the Ushahidi v2 open source software platform. On 31 December 2010, the Ushahidi team announced a new version of Crowdmap, that differed from the Ushahidi v2 codebase: Checkins, a geosocial add-on to Crowdmap that allows users to create a white-label alternative to sites like Foursquare and Gowalla. Rather than filling out submission forms online, checkins allow Crowdmap users to expedite data entry to their deployment, focusing first on location and adding more detailed information later. Ushahidi describes the effort as "checkins with a purpose".

SwiftRiver (discontinued) SwiftRiver was free software whose goal was "to democratize access to the tools for making sense of information", particularly Twitter tweets. It was born out of the need to understand and act upon a wave of massive amounts of crisis data that tends to overwhelm responders in the first 24 hours of a disaster. The project attracted a lot of interest from newsrooms. In December 2014, Ushahidi stopped development and support, leaving the source code available on github. A user of the software was FirstToSee, a crisis management group in Pierce County, Washington, who noted that "One of the challenges of the project is the extensive technology stack used... deployment requires at the very least a “jack of all trades” who understand the basics of all these technologies." No new users are currently known.

Rollcall Ushahidi built RollCall after a team member was involved in the terrorist attack at Westgate Malle in Nairobi in 2013. Rollcall is a quick way to check in with the people someone is responsible for during critical situations. Rollcall sends a one-click message with a binary question such as "Are you okay?" to a pre-prepared contact list, such as list of colleagues, parents at a school, or an embassy's list of citizens in a country at that time, via text, email, mobile app, and Slack. The recipients respond with a "yes" or "no" allowing the organization responsible for them to quickly triage who is in danger.

History

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Ushahidi

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Ushahidi claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Ushahidi before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Ushahidi ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Ushahidi

In research: Ushahidi appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Ushahidi in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Ushahidi is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Crowdsourcing, Electoral fraud, Emergency management software, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Ushahidi outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Ushahidi in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Ushahidi means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Ushahidi out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Ushahidi in simple terms?

Why does Ushahidi matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Ushahidi?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Ushahidi.