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Ushahidi is an open source web application that helps you gather reports to understand what happened, when and where. It helps you collect info from: SMS, Twitter, RSS feeds, Email and other sources. It helps you to process that information, categorize it, geo-locate it and publish it on a map.
Ushahidi has had the same platform code base for five years. In 2012 we spent the time to do very deep user experience research within our user base, our developer base, and our own team in order to build a new, better Ushahidi core platform. We call it "Ushahidi Version 3.0 (v3)".
Ushahidi v3 is the next iteration of this tool, rebuilt from the ground up -- not only the code but the way in which we think about users interacting with mobile and social data.
Crowdsourcing strategies have come a long way in the five years Ushahidi has been around and we've been fortunate enough to learn a lot from our global community.
- Technology changes. It’s been more than five years since we built the first version of v2. Fragile tech. Many bugs and an obselete tech stack. The framework we built on is now deprecated and unmaintained. We decided we needed a better foundation from which to grow.
- The use case has changed (grown!) - Ushahidi 2.x was built to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Now Ushahidi is used to monitor elections, track pollution, report corruption, manage disaster response/recovery and much more.
Uses have grown beyond just a simple crisis mapping tool to a full fledged management platform for crowdsourced data. With this in mind, we decided to build a more versatile tool that can be easily configured for data collection and visualization.
The purpose of v3 is to provide a better crowdsourcing platform, so that the leaders, crisis responders, funders, and decision making organizations can do their work more efficiently, gather better information, and understand what is happening on the ground. It is a data collection platform that makes gathering and organizing data easy. It is a mobile first platform, as always, thinking of people with simple phones and moving up to those with web access for a beautiful visual feel.
Key Improvements:
- v3 is designed to support all types of social good activities, not simply crises.
- Mobile first, responsive user interface.
- Better, deeply integrated post types (previously referred to as custom forms)
- Customisable workflows: create a set of steps that match your workflow
That depends.. We've released v3 to the public. However, past users may notice it is still missing a few features that were in v2. We recommend you give it a try and see if it meets your needs. If something is missing, let us know! Your feedback will help us prioritise future development.
Yes! Development moves pretty quickly but the tech stack is getting more and more stable. If you're keen to help build something awesome, Jump on board.