Makoto Discusses Crisis Mapping Site sinsai.info and Volunteer Efforts After 2011 Tohoku Earthquake

Makoto

Wednesday, 20 July 2011

• Lives in London RoR

• “Building Real Time Web” @ RubyKaigi2010
RubyKaigi2010

• A developer (at @newbamboo )

• In charge of international communication at
sinsai.info (@sinsai_info_en) sinsai.info


I’d like to thank my company for sending me to RubyKaigi when I do not talk about their
product nor services, but talk about sinsai.info, which is crisis mapping site for East Japan
earthquake. At sinsai.info, I am in charge of international communication, where I mostly do
translation.

Hal

sinsai.info Geo


Makoto

• What happened after the earthquake?

• sinsai.info

• 4 months after 11th March

• What can we do ?


• More than 15,000 people were killed.
• There are still another 5,000 people missing.
5

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dugspr/5541815267/in/set-72157626305323978

• Roads were completely disrupted.

• Electricity and cell-phone networks were washed away.

• Cell-phone were useless more than 24hrs even in Tokyo.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dugspr/5549191112/in/set-72157626305323978


• Data explosion

• Data curation

• Curated system


- Average Tweet per day (before) = 18, mil
- Average Tweet per day (3/11) = 33, mil
(Report by NEC Big Globe)
http://gigazine.net/news/20110427_earthquake_twitter/


@takepon_jp [pls RT] Looking for my friends, 20
yrs old, height 150cm, black hair with partially
blonde

Celebs with many followers acted as hubs to spread
important information


John Roos is US ambassador to Japan

Some people were directly reaching
influential figures

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-04-11-japan-social-media_N.htm


http://longtailworld.blogspot.com/2011/03/operation-tomodachi-is-real-but-obamas.html



Not all the information was curated properly.
The use of unofficial “RT” made it difficult to
http://www.kotono8.com/2011/04/08dema.html
delete the original t weet even after the
information is false. Twitter announced to
encourage the use of official t weet



- Google person finder
- launched after 2 hrs
- over 600,000 records
- Integrated with Picassa to convert name list from
evacuation Center into the system with crowd source.


Hal


We need help! We are stuck in
isolation at Akasaka hospital and
getting suffer. Please spread this
information to the others.

I made a phone-call to Self-
Defence force and they said
they would go help ASAP
...


• Geo tagged report using Open Street
Map

• Directly from the form & via twitter
Geo tagged manually

• Monitored , geotagged, and moderated
because normal t wee,
only 0.4 % of t weets has
geotags attached
by volunteers

• Launched within 4 hrs


It was even used during London tube
strikes.


PHP!!

It was even used during London tube
strikes.


PHP at RubyKaigi

PHP!!

http://www.slideshare.net/plataformatec/writing-your-own-programming-language-to-understand-ruby-better-euruko-2011


• Big problem, no tasks, no work ﬂows
• Many Rubyists knew how to create tasks and ﬂows
through their daily Open Source activities.
Rubyist

• A few Ruby core committers acted as core member of
sinsai.info Ruby sinsai.info


• Over 12,000 reports
• 1,000,000+ PV in ﬁrst month
PV

• 500,000+ Unique Visitors
• Accessed from Sendai the most


http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/hichako/5547226578/


• Safety enquiry
• Available service
• Mostly via Twitter
Safety = eg: looking for people

Available service = Gas, Bath, Food, Which
stores are open?



• Volunteers, available services
• Number of report decreasing
• Switched off Twitter hashtag
crawling

• Manually sourced from White listed &
Why switched off t witter?

- Noise ratio increased in
t witter
- More people started
publishing information from
trusted news sites and blogs
their blogs and sites
RSS



Open Data encourages mash ups.
http://wiki.ushahidi.com/doku.php?id=ushahidi_api

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/misswired/440919666/sizes/l/


Makoto

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2001984/Japan-tsunami-earthquake-Pictures-recovery-3-months-later.html


http://www.hisaisha.net/archive/2000/01_14.html

Tohoku

Kobe

The graph shows
the number of
people at
evacuation
centre (before
moving to
temporary
housing)

http://www.cao.go.jp/shien/1-hisaisha/pdf/5-hikaku.pdf

Solving the wrong problem
( )


Seki san will be at Tono
If anyone interested
joining, ask Seki san after
the talk


http://code.google.com/p/open-geiger-development-kit/

Photo: http://internet.watch.impress.co.jp/img/iw/docs/456/371/html/h4j11.jpg.html


We are organising
“Volunteer package”



http://on.fb.me/qpXbsm http://on.fb.me/qF9nXB

http://on.fb.me/pvI3E8 http://on.fb.me/oU4zp5


http://japaneselandscapes.blogspot.com/2011/03/most-beautiful-place-in-all-japan-swept.html

http://app.yonhapnews.co.kr/YNA/Basic/Gallery/YIBW_showPhotoNews_New.aspx?contents_id=PYH20110314082200340

Please have a look at sinsai-info-en.blogspot.com. Our translation team did a lots of
translation from Japanese blog and you will ﬁnd lots of interesting stories around sinsai.info

Makoto Discusses Crisis Mapping Site sinsai.info and Volunteer Efforts After 2011 Tohoku Earthquake

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