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Typhoid outbreak - Index of articles
Kubatana
maps typhoid affected areas from crowd sourced info
Technology Zimbabwe
February 07, 2012
View this article on the Technology Zimbabwe website
Today, we stumbled
upon a tweet by Kubatana.net
announcing a map of Typhoid affected areas in Zimbabwe that the
organisation has created from data crowd sourced via SMS. As you
probably know Zimbabwe is currently battling a Typhoid
epidemic. Currently over 1,000 cases have been reported.
Kubatana basically
sent an SMS to their subscribers asking them how typhoid has affected
their communities, and what they think government should do. They
took the SMS messages whose location they could get, about a quarter
of the 200 responses received, and used them to create the map.
According to
Kubatana's Amanda Atwood, they used Clickatell for outgoing
SMS messages and FrontlineSMS for the incoming. She says it works
out more efficient for them and that its cost effective than using
FrontlineSMS for both. They used free online mapping software ArcGIS
Online for the actual map.
The epidemic
is not over and one hopes more data is added to the map to make
more information easily available directly from ordinary people
on the ground. Atwood says people can still text the Kubatana SMS
number 0772452201 to add their voice to the map. Remember to include
your location in the SMS when you do.
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
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