Hi guys, I'm a journalist based in Mpumalanga (though on sabbatical in the US at the moment), who is exploring geo-mobile and location-aware reporting tools as a way of making news more relevant & more accessible to people.
Journalists are notoriously bad at maths or IT though , & I'm definitely not a techie. I'm struggling with a lot of the GIS and coding aspects of the projects I want to tackle, & was hoping to find possible collaborators here to help. What I'm really keen to do is replicate some of the mapping & data visualisation I've seen in the US, at places like www.oakland.crimespotting.org and www.ushahidi.org , to tell news stories in a visual way that gives people info they can immediately use. The owners of both platforms have given me permission to use their open APIs and source code ... but I don't know how to deploy or customise it . Some of the thing's I'd like to do are: [1.1] Prove the power of mapping as a means to tell news stories in a high-profile proof-of-concept case by tracking the service delivery riots that have swept across Mpumalanga over the past year, and that have sparked similar riots elsewhere in SA. No-one else has actually told the coherent story yet, by "joining the dots" to see whether there are underlying trends, triggers, or commons patterns. I'd like to tell the story using a similar chronological & categorised interface as the Oakland Crimespotting folk. [1.2] As part of this project, I'd like to add a layer to the map tracking all the xenophobic attacks in the Mpumalanga region over the same period, to see whether there are any relations between them & the service delivery riots. Once we've got the basic data sets up, I could then start adding additional layers tracking corruption, infrastructure problems, matric results (a big issue in Mpumalanga), etc. This layered information would start doing what the SA media has failed to do: tell us why things happen. Then, once we've proved the concept, I'd like to tackle the following kinds of mapping projects: [2] Tracking public infrastructure problems, so citizens can start reporting everything from potholes to broken water pipes / drains using their cellphones (SMS & cameras) to send geo-tagged & time-stamped reports via an Ushahidi-type interface. I could then use this to identify hotspots, trends, etc, to produce media reports that force authorities to act. [3] Tracking crime reports, from both police & private security companies, and mapping it so that it is accessible to ordinary residents so they can begin to understand the underlying trends, hotspots, etc. I'd like to use this project to take the interactivity one step further, so that in addition to them being able to send in crime reports, the site / map will also send back alerts to users when a crime happens in their neighbourhood. I've got a couple of other additional ideas as well, and have access to a newsroom (to help generate the content), etc. What I really need is mapping experts to assist. Anyhow interested? Justin Arenstein Knight Fellow Mobile: +1-650-575-1944 Email: [email protected] Twitter: JustinArenstein Web: http://www.linkedin.com/in/justinarenstein Web: http://knight.stanford.edu/ Visit FAIR 's website at: http://www.fairreporters.org Visit CAPITAL 's new fan-page on Facebook at: http://bit.ly/5918SS Visit LOWVELD LIVING 's new fan-page on Facebook at: http://bit.ly/6Mot8K
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