The end of ‘datagoraphobia’ – organizing event data spatially to support humanitarian relief and peacekeeping operations

Much of the event data that new technology is making available to practitioners contains geographic information, and to take advantage of this we need a way of thinking about geographic information in a predictive way.  Combining today’s post with last week’s “Corralling the Data instead of the Data Corralling Us” post, we get a data [...]

TechChange Photographer Goes to Haiti

In August of this year, Keith Lane, professional photographer and a member of the TechChange team, went to Haiti to document, through photography, whether and how the country is recovering since the devastating earthquake in January. I had a chance to sit down with Keith and ask him about his trip, what he observed and what [...]

Online Location: From Facebook’s ‘Places’ to Pakistan’s Floods

Before getting too carried away with Facbeook’s Places app, look into how smartphones are locating and coordinate relief efforts in Pakistan’s natural disaster, via crowdsourcing. On August 18th 2010, Facebook enabled the Places app, introducing a 3D human element to the traditional status update, allowing you to “immediately tell people about that favorite spot.” Places [...]