Haiti Quake Updates

Geeks and technologists around the world are creating tools to help earthquake victims in Haiti. These tools are focused around gathering and mapping the data, and broadcasting it to the relief workers on the ground.

When the news of the earthquake broke, several groups and companies sprang into action very quickly. Ushahidi, a portal originally built to track election violence in Kenya, created Haiti.Ushahidi.com. The site, developed by Patrick Meier, director of crisis mapping at Ushahidi, tracks incidents, search and rescue operations and people in Haiti.

A team of volunteers in Boston keep Haiti.Ushahidi running. The volunteers monitor text messages from people in Haiti who are stranded and need food or aid. Some messages also report news. Almost anyone in Haiti can send a text to the system, a joint effort from Thomson Reuters and Google ( GOOG - news - people )-funded InSTEDD. Text messages come in from Digicell and CellTell, the biggest Haitian carriers (impressively, Digicell's system was up within a day after the quake).

So far more than 19,000 messages in English and Creole have been sent through the system, and the number of messages is increasing by 10% daily. The goal is to place all information reports on a map for immediate dissemination and future analysis of trends. About half the messages are useful and can be mapped (a smaller number of messages carry urgent information and are routed to the proper agency). Oftentimes, volunteers have to get clarification and more location information from the sender. Government agencies and NGOs are tracking Ushahidi's data.

The maps created for Haiti.Ushahidi rely on the Open Street Map (OSM) project. Prior to the earthquake the OSM map of Haiti only contained major arterials. A day after the quake, Port-au-Prince was almost completely mapped and the new maps were powering Ushahidi. Normally, this would have been very expensive and taken a lot of time to do. Instead, volunteers made huge progress on the maps within a day.

OSM volunteers used satellite imagery to create streets and buildings for use in disaster relief efforts across Haiti. These crowdsourced maps are improved constantly and the Ushahidi portal can pick up new versions every five minutes if necessary. The volunteers are often brought together via Crisis Camps to brainstorm and work.

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Rebuilding Haiti

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Oxfam America's Coco McCabe is one of several Boston-based colleagues in Haiti to help with the relief effort. Here's her latest update, dated January 27; this is part two of a two-part series.

Read part 1.

In December, about a month before the tragedy changed everybody's lives, Janicia Dorval got a bank loan of 15,000 gourdes (about $370) to help her fund a used-clothing business. It was in full swing at the Petionville Club on Wednesday, with customers--mostly women--crowding around the shoes and purses heaped on plastic tarps next to the dusty road. There were the red patent leather slip-ons, shimmering in the sun, and green flip flops, and practical black loafers.

Dorval, leaning toward the practical in flat canvas shoes and a simple hat to keep the sun off her head, was driving a hard bargain with her customers. She wouldn't budge on the price of a black bag with a zipper--35 gourdes (87 cents). But toss in a pair of sandals, and she'd let the whole catch go for 400 gourdes (about $10). Behind her stood her shelter, decked out in a tiered lace curtain, yellow with dust.

Asked what she needed to help her business grow, the answer came as no surprise.

Money, she said.

But for Pharisien Marcaise, a 45-year-old tailor, who had sent all four of his children to Catholic school, there's something even more important for Haitians to have if they are going to move their country forward following this disaster.

"Education," he said. "If the country doesn't have education, it's a dead country."

Marcaise spoke with an unshakable conviction, even as the price he has now had to pay for it is higher than any parent should ever have to shoulder: When the quake struck, his son, who was studying to be a lawyer at Rubens Leconte University and was the first of Marcaise's children to achieve that academic level, was killed when the building around him collapsed.

"There are people who have lost five children," he said quietly above the hum of the camp around him. "I have to keep going with my life."

For now, that means keeping a small generator chugging so he can charge the batteries on the cell phones everyone here carries. Without a regular source of electricity, people depend on small vendors like Marcaise to keep them connected with their friends, their families, and the world.

Invest in Haiti's recovery by donating to Oxfam's Haiti Earthquake Response Fund. 
Learn more about how Oxfam is responding.