Over four years ago, as I experimented with the emerging broad tools for location, mobile, and the web, Platial arose to be the new place to easily share location information. Utilizing the increasingly popular GoogleMaps platform they made it clear that people were going to engage in new and comfortable ways with geospatial technology.

I remember being impressed by Platial and the goal of providing a way for anyone to easily annotate places that mattered to them.When I originally pitched the idea of a “Neogeography” book to O’Reilly it was with the inspiration of Di-Ann’s drive to citizen access to geospatial tools that I considered how people should be able to map their genealogy and share their trips.

As Mikel and I built Mapufacture, we partnered with Platial on several projects. Platial had attempted to make a local information aggregator that never really took off, and so we discussed how to utilize the geospatial data aggregation platform in Mapufacture to provide and aggregate content for Platial. I even helped build and test the Platial developer API using the first iterations of AtomPub and OpenSearch, the results of which can now be seen in Mapufacture’s and GeoCommons’ APIs.

In looking at specifically the GeoWeb landscape, Platial definitely provided a necessary capability of easily allowing people to annotate and share locations. It is the more explicit version of more recent location-sharing tools such as FourSquare, BrightKite, or Latitude that merely ask where you are, not what’s important to you. When Mapufacture was acquired by FortiusOne, the combination of the large head of geographic data in GeoCommons, combined with the very long-tail of aggregated sensor and streaming information provided for mixing disparate datasources and understanding of context and relevance. Users want to collaborate around all types of data, and share insights, find out relevant information, share this with friends, family, coworkers, and their government.

Clearly geographic data is not merely limited to traditional map sources or cartographic outputs. Location is being integrated across all platforms and recognized as a primary component of any data. What differs is the means by which users will interact, create, and use this information depending on their needs, context, and capabilities.

As has been widely reported by the news, GeoCommons is archiving the Platial user data and maps. Users can find their data by visiting the GeoCommons Platial Source page and searching for their username or maps and freely download them or build new maps and widgets. Along the way, perhaps users will also realize the capability of combining their personal information with relevant geographic data – because for example, you should know great surfing spots combined with wave heights and approved recreation areas.

Where to Surf? View full map

Di-Ann, Chris, Jason, Jake, and the rest of the tremendous Platial team have provided an amazing lead in the future of user contributed mapping – and while Platial itself is currently on hiatus, we’re excited that GeoCommons can provide a role in continuing open access to Platial users’ data and easy to use tools for them to visualize, analyze, and share their experiences and insights.

Tom and Schuyler are wrapping up their first deploy with the World Bank to Haiti. They’ve been doing amazing work in connecting the various participants on the ground in sharing data and providing them with lightweight tools and data from the broader web, CrisisMappers, and CrisisCommons community.

Schuyler has been writing up his experiences but due to connectivity and the large amount of work, they’ve been utilizing Twitter: @schulyer and @buckley_tom, continuing to keep the world up to date on their progress, safety, and insights. They have even managed to get out video discussing the use of OpenStreetMap by UN OCHA and other reconstruction efforts.

The USB Drives and USB Sticks that we sent down have seemed to be incredibly useful. The ability to utilize dynamic information and map interfaces in an offline, or semi-disconnected environment is empowering, while also allowing people to still print their maps with the data. We’re now working on deploying these same tools to Afghanistan and other areas that there has been a large amount of data gathered but not broadly distributed.

Tom and Schuyler head back to the U.S. tomorrow, but the job is far from done. Mikel’s Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (H.O.T.) is looking to deploy at the end of March to provide continue logistics support and begin training Haitians on building and utilizing the maps – much like the MapKibera project. Haiti has perhaps an excellent opportunity to leap-frog the use of open data and technology by empowering the government and people with tools they can use in reconstruction.

The platforms continue to evolve, incorporating lessons learned from user needs, to new data sources, and working in varied environments. We’ll continue to provide data and maps through GeoCommons that are usable by everyone, and distribute tools to anyone who needs them.

In a joint project with the World Bank, USAID, and numerous other partners, there are now 6 TB hard drives on the ground in Haiti with mapping tools and satellite and remote imagery data being shared with the Haitian government. Read more about the project on the FortiusOne blog.

Schuyler Erle and Tom Buckley will be heading down on Tuesday to provide on the ground support between the government agencies and the community.

A tremendous thank you to the numerous individuals and groups that helped and provided tools or data: World Bank, San Diego State University / Calit2, Internet2, Georgetown University, DigitalGlobe, Delta State University, Sahaha, Crisis Mappers, OpenStreetMap, NOAA, Ushahidi, DevelopmentSeed, TelaScience, STAR-TIDES, CrisisCommons, USAID, GeoCommons, OpenSGI, GeoEye.

On Saturday, CrisisCamp Haiti was a revolutionary step that was indubitably a success. Within 3 days of an idea a small group of people helped coordinate and run a series of CrisisCamp Haiti code-a-thons across 5+ cities, over 400 participants, and at least 20 continuous hours of work. At least 6 projects were started, and many more existing projects added people to their community, taught new skills, and built out new features.

In general, the last week has involved a whirlwind of grassroots organization and development of numerous projects. This change of realtime engagement and response by volunteers and non-traditional organizations through internet has no doubt raised the hackles, or at least the concern, of traditional responders, agencies, and government. There are often voiced considerations of causing confusion, providing technology that will have no use, and lack of organization and hierarchy.

Even within these grassroots participants there are calls for centralization, and building chains of responsibility that are somewhat antithesis to the very mechanism by which the project started and how it acts. Many of these projects formulated from simple ideas, growth through passion, an aligned community, and freedom to explore ideas and vet these within the organization. Over time the best ideas crystalize and become part of the long term project and others spin out to new projects.

It’s about the Mindshare and Multiplied Resources

In the beginning of a Crisis response there is an intense desire for people to engage and provide some type of resource: money, time, guidance, knowledge, contacts. At the same time, there is the alternate side of organizations seeking these vast, and limited, resources. Aid agencies put out SMS shortcodes for donations, PayPal links, matching funds. First responders need time, physical labor, and fortitude. Technology projects seek knowledge, translation, testing, documentation, data, integration.

Perhaps uniquely, technology has the possibility of multiplying any individuals efforts. By providing code, or data, and aggregating that data out, my contribution can feed into numerous other projects – whereas time or money is nominally a single use resource. It can buy water, or work for an hour moving rubble, and that’s all that resource can do for that time.

So a perceived problem is in bifurcation and redundancy of efforts and confusion. This can largely be mitigated by open collaboration, and easily sharing data through interchanges. Projects like the People Finder is slowly converging on this type of solution through the use of PFIF exchange and common aggregation points with API’s.

We’re working on improving the CrisisCommons.org site and wiki in order to track active projects, aggregate similar efforts and point volunteers to project homes to join their individual communities.

The last 2 days have been filled with coordinating various efforts in gathering information and volunteers responding to the massive Haiti earthquakes of January 12. The analysis team at FortiusOne has put together a news dashboard highlighting the event and current response efforts.

There have been several tremendous groups that have actively been contributing data and tools both with remote developers and responders on the ground. CrisisMappers, CrisisCommons, Ushahidi, OpenStreetMap, just to name a few.

Many data providers have been making their data freely available. This is most notable when looking at Mikel’s screenshots of OpenStreetMap before the quake and after volunteers began tracing over historic maps and newer satellite imagery from Digital Globe and GeoEye.

Other efforts:

• Ushahidi Haiti is crowd-sourcing reports. You can send a text message to 447624802524, send an email to haiti@ushahidi.com, or send a tweet with the hashtag/s #haiti or #haitiquake.
• The CrisisCommons Wiki has a list of available data and organizations
• Sahana has a form to list offices and organizations that are working on the ground
• GeoCommons search for Haiti has all the datasets and maps that people have contributed for download as Spreadsheet, Shapefile, KML, and more
• OpenStreetMap’s Project Haiti has a list of datasets and people tracing data