Underskog

Patrick Meier on:

Interactive mapping and crowdsourcing information

We are happy to invite you to this special edition of på|tår, with Patrick Meier, Director of Crisis Mapping & New Media in the non-profit tech company Ushahidi. He is also co-founder of the International Network of Crisis Mappers and is completing a PhD at The Fletcher School on “The Role of New Media and Information Technology in Popular Resistance Against Repressive Rule: Egypt, Sudan and Beyond”.

We have invited Patrick Meier to give us an introduction to real time mapping platforms and how social media can be used to crowdsource information, and again visualized and made accessible in maps. The Ushahidi Company initially started as a website that was set up to map incidents of violence following the 2008 election in Kenya. This website had 45.000 users, leading to the conclusion that there was a need for a platform based on the initial website that could be used to map similar events around the world; “We build tools for democratizing information, increasing transparency and lowering the barriers for individuals to share their stories.”

Examples of deployments of the Ushahidi platform is the Haiti crisis map, set up after the 2010 earthquake, the Atlanta Crime Map, visualizing incidents of crime in the Atlanta metropolitan area and the Libya Crisis Map, following the current situation in Libya. Take a look at the maps, as well as Patrick Meiers blog iRevolution, and do join for an interesting lecture on Tuesday – with coffee.

http://haiti.ushahidi.com/main
http://crime.mapatl.com/main
http://libyacrisismap.net/
http://irevolution.net/

The lecture will take place in Undervisningsrom 1, next to the computer labs at 11 am.

^{Studentutvalget ved Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i Oslo arrangerer første mandag i måneden en forelesningsrekke hvor vi inviterer ulike aktører/fagpersoner til å forelese og diskutere temaer. Denne forelesningsrekken tar sikte på å invitere personer som kan belyse temaer som vi vanligvis ikke berører i de faste forelesningsrekkene om arkitektur og design ved skolen. Dette kan være innenfor temaer som grenser til skolens fagfelt eller temaer som er aktuelle ellers i samfunnet. Forelesningene skal bidra til å gi studenter og ansatte flerfaglig kunnskap og inspirasjon.}