InterAction’s HaitiAidMap Launched

Yesterday InterAction relaunched their aid transparency site focused on recovery funding and work in Haiti. Haiti Aid Map was developed in partnership with InterAction, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Business Civic Leadership Center (BCLC) and sponsored by FedEx. It provides simple, fast and accurate information about who is doing what, where – and helps to identify the areas of greatest need to better allocate resources. The Haiti Aid Map also provides transparency into relief and recovery efforts and enables donors and members of the public to track progress following the January 12, 2010 earthquake.

InterAction partnered with us in 2009 to leverage GeoIQ across their 193 member organizations to better demonstrate NGO impact and accountability across the globe. We’ve worked with them to gather data and analysis for each member to provide better assistance and efficient resources. HaitiAidMap is the first of many investigations on the security and needs of global communities. For instance you can see that while there is a defined concentration of projects in the capital of Port-au-Prince, there is still a distribution of projects working over the entire country. Or look at specific sectors such as Food Aid or where the 220 active Health projects are located.

In the following months, organizations and projects will continue to update their status and work, and also provide specific highlights on issues and needs in the Haitian recovery. Analyses such as Water, Sanitation & Hygiene help the world, and affected populations, better understand needs and effectiveness. For example, looking at cholera, while the majority of projects are in Port-Au-Prince, the majority of deaths are to the north of the city where there are far fewer projects.

Vizzuality worked with our platform and their expertise in design to build a powerful project tracking and reporting system. The data is fed through GeoIQ and combined with additional indicator data for InterAction and their members to quickly build visualizations and analyses based on their member needs and questions. It was great seeing them in action and we’re working on another fascinating project integration that will be announced soon.

We’ve been heavily involved with supporting the tremendous efforts in the response and rebuilding of Haiti since January 11th. Immediately following the event we worked with the CrisisCommons community to host 5 CrisisCamp events that next weekend in London, New York, DC, Chicago and LA, as well as for many weekends for months afterwards in developing technology tools and information assistance. We worked with the World Bank to deploy the first volunteer mapping team of Schuyler and Tom with 6 Terabytes of data and mapping tools.

This summer, Kate went down on two missions with IOM and the World Bank to train Haitians and response workers on using OpenStreetMap in their recovery efforts and continues to provide leadership and work through Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team

It’s been a long and enduring year for the citizens of Haiti and the dedicated response and recovery workers that are seeking to make the country a better place. We hope that through all of the tragedy a new Haiti can emerge that is more resilient against these types of disasters.