Yearly Archives: 2010

During the International Conference on Crisis Mapping this past fall, the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) and information gathering and mapping tool Ushahidi announced the launch of Universities for Ushahidi (U4U).  This initiative recognizes the significant contribution that students around the world, include several right here at SIPA, have already made to the crisis mapping community and their potential to do more in the future. To underscore the importance of student crisis mapping, Craig Fugate, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) administrator publicly stated […]

By Sawako Sonoyama I took a course titled “Benchmarking Skills for Organizational Improvement” at SIPA. Our assignment was to choose a process for an organization that could be improved by conducting a benchmarking assessment. How could I get excited about writing a paper about organizational improvement? If I tie it in to crisis mapping! This assignment posed a convenient opportunity for me to focus on one of many crisis mapping processes that could use some revamping. What is our biggest challenge right now? Below is […]

By Nadia Hasham Nadia Hasham is a first year student at SIPA and Volunteer Correspondent on the Pakistan Crisis Mapping Committee at SIPA. The numbers are staggering. Over 20 million affected. At least 1600 people killed. 6 million in urgent need of food aid. Only $275m donated of the estimated $460 required. One quarter of arable land submerged. One third of productive capacity destroyed. Two months of destruction with little end in sight. The comparisons are striking. More devastation than the past half-decade’s natural disasters […]

It was Friday afternoon of midterms week (again) and the New Media Task Force Board members were excited to be catching up with SIPA alumna and Ushahidi enthusiast Anahi Ayala, sharing about our PakReport 3000-3-3 campaign and how crisis mapping is formalizing at SIPA. However, our relaxing Friday afternoon did not last long when the news of the Haiti Cholera Outbreak jumped into our inbox. At that moment, the Cholera Haiti crisis mapping instance was quickly deployed and a massive Skype chat began, led by […]