Report violence in Afghanistan through information sharing technologies

In the final few days before the Afghanistan elections on August 20th, many are hard at work to ensure that  they are successful, accurate, and attract minimum disruption. As all eyes are on Afghanistan for this critical week, one project on the ground is mapping related incidents online-- enabling people to share information that bolsters democracy.

Ushahidi first mapped violence in the aftermath of the 2008 elections in Kenya, sparking a new, open way to visualize grassroots reports of election related violence.  The platform has since been used by Vote Report India in May 2009, and again in Mexico  in July. Mapping of election related incidents combined with demographic data allows observers to verify the legitimacy of the results of the election and identify trends that could inform policy. The open platform allows anyone to modify it for the election of their choice. It collects data from anyone who chooses to send it, resulting in unprecedented transparency. Following the elections, stations where voting results were entered successfully can share lessons learned. Areas with a high number of incidents reported may need to be recounted, and may also expose underlying issues to address. 

The election on August 20th in Afghanistan presents an even greater challenge to observers given the insecure environment. Currently, organizations including Fortius One’s GeoCommons, Global Development Commons  at USAID  Google, Development Seed, The Synergy Strike Force (SSF), RELIEF STAR-TIDES, and Alive in Afghanistan are partnering to supply hardware, software, tools, and outreach to map trends and data. You can see the maps and layers of data uploaded so far here: http://news.geocommons.com/afghanistanelection09.

The project began informally as an initiative of MIT’s Fablab-- a hard drive set up in a hotel bar at the Taj in Jalalabad where people could upload their data-- for a beer. This collection of freely shared data has been mapped and is now available online to anyone with an internet connection. In the meantime, following a dry run of all the equipment at Camp Roberts, the SSF’s Todd Huffman has returned to Afghanistan with a laptop full of tools to collect, map, and push out the data as quickly as possible to see and share what he can over the next few days.Todd’s team is working with Alive in Afghanistan who is using Ushahidi’s platform to bring in data submitted via SMS.

Anyone who is interested in supporting the current effort is welcome to participate by uploading any geographically coded data at http://maker.geocommons.com/. If anyone in country has an incident to report via cell phone, they can send a text message to 93 79 404 0569.  

The world will be watching over the next few days to see how elections roll out in Afghanistan, and what the implications of those results are for the future of that country and the coalition forces who are working with the Afghans to build peace and democracy. This open data mapping project is one way to increase transparency by allowing anyone anywhere to report an incident in the name of more meaningful end results. May the election be well mapped, and may the best candidate win.

For more information about the partners and tools involved, please click here.