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Humanitarian Tracker
In the News
 Crowdsourcing Satellite ImageryWe tried to save 150 people in Aleppo from 5,000 miles away, The Washington Post, Steven Livingston and Jonathan Drake, 01/09/2017. The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy along with Harvard Humanitarian Initiative partnered with AAAS - The American Association for the Advancement of Science, together they corroborated evidence using near-real time satellite imagery and reports on the ground from Syria Tracker. |  UN Solutions Summit 2016The Choices We Make and the Stands We Take: Reflecting on This Year’s UN General Assembly, Solutions Summit event at the United Nations, Elizabeth Cousens, 09/29/2016 - (Photo/Stuart Ramson for UN Foundation) "...Just look at the 10 “solution-makers” at the Solutions Summit whose creativity, drive, and passion for human betterment are bringing us scalable solutions like the Syria Humanitarian Tracker" |  UN Solutions Summit 2016Two Ushahidi Deployers Selected for UN Solutions Summit. Nat Manning, 09/26/2016. "Solutions Summit, hosted by the UN Foundation and the Office of the US Chief Technology Officer" "Two of the ten selected from thousands were organizations that were created from using Ushahidi. The first was Humanitarian Tracker (@SyriaTracker), the creators of Syria Tracker, who have used Ushahidi for over 6 years to collect first-hand reports of the violence going on in Syria." |
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 UN Solutions Summit 2016The UN Foundation, the UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service and the Global Innovation Exchange Announce the Second Annual Solutions Summit. 09/21/2016. "Hend Alhinnawi, Syria Tracker (United States) After the conflict broke out in Syria in March 2011, a group of concerned citizens created Syria Tracker, a crowd sourced online platform that allows people in Syria to share what was happening to and around them." |  Report from SyriaReport from Syria: Fusing Citizen & Digital Diplomacy. Medium post, Hend Alhinnawi, 08/19/2016 - (Photo/ David Scales for Humanitarian Tracker, Refugees living in Zaatari Camp, Jordan) "Today is World Humanitarian Day. Over the past five years, thousands of ordinary citizens in Syria have risked their lives to save others and tell the world what is happening on the ground in their country." Photo by David Scales |  EpidemicsWe know more about epidemics than ever before. Now what? Devex, Elizabeth Dickinson, 08/08/2016. "The first reports started coming in by mobile phone. Concerned users in Syria opened up the website of HumanitarianTracker.org and filled out a basic web form. Someone was sick; it looked like polio." The key to spotting the outbreak was what Kass-Hout calls the data “mosaic effect.” |
 Citizen EngagementL’alleanza tra la comunità tech, designer e Onu Mappe, dati e applicazioni aiutano sia i migranti sia gli interventi in situazioni di crisi umanitaria come il terremoto in Nepal, Il Sole 24 Ore, Alessia Maccaferri, 03/15/2016. The Alliance between the Tech Community, Designers and UN... "It [Syria Tracker] is an important resource for anyone who wants to know something about what is happening in the country affected by war." |  Tech SuperstarsWanted: Tech Superstars to Drive Government Innovation. NextGov, TechInsider, 03/11/2016. Latanya Sweeney and Dan Tangherlini. "an example from civil society, the nongovernmental organization Humanitarian Tracker is using crowdsourced reports to get a better understanding of when and where violence is happening in places such as Syria." |  Women Dying in NumbersSyria Tracker: Women Dying in Numbers. Posted: Huff Post, 12/03/2015 7:25 pm EST. "Unsurprisingly, patterns show a steady rise in the proportion of female deaths over the course of the conflict. It went from less than 1% in April 2011 to over 18% today suggesting targeted killing." |
 Big Data on Syria's ConflictCan Big Data Help the Syrian Conflict, iCrunch Data News. Lavanya Rathnam 10/08/2015 "...Big Data has just entered the Syrian sphere. More collaborations & innovative tools using Big Data combined with political will from developed countries can sure help Syrians to return back to their country and live in peace." |  Media Freedom in EgyptThe Cry For Media Freedom in Egypt: Melissa Jun Rowley, Aug 31, 2015 "we have technology that can help us stay informed" "Humanitarian Tracker is a forum that connects and empowers citizens around the world by giving them a voice to tell their story. It offers tools, methods, and training by which citizen journalists can share reports of what they witness on the ground about human rights violations, conflicts or disasters." |  Internet RevolutionCan the internet revolution break down the barriers of data secrecy in the Middle East? Johnny Matta, August 9, 2015 "Crowdsourcing solution providers with relevant activities include First Mile Geo which has partnered with Caerus Associates to map the conflict in Aleppo by using the web to survey people who are witnessing the events first hand, and the Syria Tracker Crisis map project." |
 Training Citizen JournalistsTraining Citizen Journalists in Reporting Human Rights Abuses in Conflict, GBV Uncovered Last updated: 08/07/2015 "They [citizen journalists] need to serve as a counterpoint to excessive international coverage of violence and militarism, telling stories of social issues and progress, as well." Kathleen Bartzen Culver, University of Wisconsin-Madison "...providing an alternative to the official news and keeping the events in the spotlight when the mainstream media look away" |  Admissible EvidenceThis app turns war crime footage into legally admissible evidence: Liat Clark, June 8, 2015 "the team behind crowdsourcing humanitarian tool Syria Tracker revealed that citizen journalism was the most prominent source of news coming out of the country's conflict." |  Volunteering Sparks InnovationMasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth: Volunteering sparks innovation in Data for Good, May 29, 2015 "When data scientists from businesses volunteer their time in nonprofits, the result is much more than the sum of the parts" "SumAll analysts have been working with Humanitarian Tracker to create a dashboard that examines the different causes of death in the Syrian civil war. These visualizations provide a powerful tool with which to push back against “coverage fatigue”" |
 Violence in SyriaResearch Could Shed Light on Messy Wars: Benjamin Plackett, March 2015 "The tracker is a humanitarian effort, which aims to document the number of Syria’s war dead and also their names. It uses not only social media to gather intelligence but also news reports and information from NGOs still operating on the ground in Syria." |  Battle for Free SpeechThe Media Column: The journalist who believes 'decency' is the best weapon in the battle for free speech: Adam Sherwin, March 15, 2015 "Marianne Pearl, whose journalist husband was killed by Al Qaeda abductors, will help recognise the world’s most courageous and creative journalists and campaigners, as a judge at the 15th global Freedom of Expression awards" "The battle for free speech is now fought daily on the digital ... platform Syria Tracker" |  Crisis-mapping in a warzoneSyria Tracker: Crisis-mapping in a warzone, Index on Censorship, March 11, 2015. "Index on Censorship's Freedom of Expression Awards celebrate the world’s most remarkable fighters for free expression. Syria Tracker is one of the nominees in the digital activism category." |
 #IndexAwards2015#IndexAwards2015: Digital activism nominee Syria Tracker: Will Haydon, March 11, 2015 "...in 2014 Syria Tracker showed a rise in the percentage of total deaths which were of women or children, indicating a rise in civilian targeting." |  Información HumanitariasDoble filo de información para causas humanitarias: ALAI, David García Maciejewski Versión para impresión March 7, 2015 "Organizaciones como Humanitarian Tracker, un foro de ciudadanos implicado en causas humanitarias, utiliza la gestión de los datos masivos para hacer un seguimiento de las víctimas del conflicto sirio y de la represión..." |  Big Data and Humanity¿El ‘big data’ puede ayudar a descubrir crímenes contra la humanidad? EsGlobal, Iván Giménez Chueca, Jan 26, 2015 "Pero Humanitarian Tracker, una organización que se autodefine como un foro de ciudadanos implicados en causas humanitarias, ha puesto en marcha el proyecto Syria Tracker, que a través de la gestión de big data, mapean las víctimas del conflicto en el país árabe desde abril de 2011." |
 Syria Polio VaccinationSyria struggles to vaccinate residents: Sophie Cousins, AlJazeera Last updated: 11/23/2014 @10:40AM "... thousands of children in remote areas continue to miss out on being vaccinated. According to Humanitarian Tracker... more than 22K children missed out on being inoculated during the second phase of the campaign. In the sixth round, more than 1,100 children in Deir ez-Zour missed out, while almost 800 missed out in al-Raqqa." |  Childhood Polio VaccinationSyrian Polio Vaccine Campaign Demonstrates Potential for Fast, Accurate Analysis of Complex Data in the Cloud. Market Wired, Last updated: 10/28/2014 @09:00AM Using data provided by Humanitarian Tracker " -- children who had received the first, but not the follow-up, dose. The resulting visualization identified specific districts within the region where the "doses not reached" |  Big Data For Social GoodBig Data For Social Good: 5 Ways To a Higher Purpose: Anjali Acharya, NetApp for Forbes, 10/15/2014 @ 8:56AM "Humanitarian Tracker has crowdsourced data on more than 100,000 deaths in Syria. The database lists each victim’s name, gender, age, location and cause of death." "“In recent months there were six incidents where more than a dozen females were killed outside of a battle situation—possibly an indicator of massacres,” says Stephan Heeke, executive director of SumAll.org." |
 Digital WitnessesDigital witnesses: International Red Cross, October 1, 2014 "This online, interactive map from the Syria Tracker website allows viewers to select the kind of data they are looking for, then get more detail by clicking on the coloured dots. The numbers inside the dots indicate the quantity of reports received from a given geographic area. Other features allow to viewers to categorize deaths and violent incidents by gender and age of victims, location and cause of injury, among other variables" |  Scientists Uncovering CrimesHow Data Scientists Are Uncovering War Crimes in Syria: Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, Mashable, 8/8/2014 @ 10:25AM "Before the high-profile Syrian defector "Ceasar" came forward with evidence of Bashar al-Assad's killing machine, groups of researchers and data scientists have been painstakingly collecting, verifying and analyzing crowdsourced reports from Syria for years, revealing that some evidence of potential war crimes might have been hidden in the data all along." |  Citizen JournalismCitizen journalism key to covering conflict in Syria: Liat Clark, Wired UK, June 16, 2014 "Online crisis mapping system Syria Tracker has revealed that citizen journalism is the most prominent source of news coming out of the ongoing conflict." |
 Return Power To The People3 Ways To Return Power To The People: Ashoka, Forbes, 5/27/2014 @ 02:44PM "In the face of such uncertainty, Humanitarian Tracker has become the go-to crisis map for the Syria. Its information is used by U.N. agencies, news outlets, and foreign governments to design humanitarian assistance and coordinate response efforts." |  War's Wheel of DestructionWIRED UK: Copy - Madhu Venkataramanan; Illustration - Signal Noise 4/7/2014 SumAll.org Team: Katie Lee, David Mosenkis, Phil Martin, Stefan Heeke Humanitarian Tracker - Taha Kass-Hout, Hend Alhinnawi |  Big Data To Make A DifferenceFederico Guerrini, Forbes Magazine, 4/24/2014 @ 10:25AM "SumAll partners include the Clinton Foundation. The organization is also partnering with Humanitarian Tracker to analyze data coming out of the Syrian crisis to pull insights like types of killings and how they are changing over time, the casualties in Aleppo picking up, overtaking the amount in Damascus, the amount of female vs. male slayings. They even created a tool to document the crisis thus far." |
 Crowdsourcing Syria CrisisUshahidi Blog, April 8, 2014 "Humanitarian Tracker (HT), a volunteer-based non-profit organization, has been crowdsourcing information from Syria over the past 3 years. As you’ve all heard by now, 14 years after its eradication, Polio has re-emerged in Syria. What you didn’t hear was that several reports from the ground were received and published by Syria Tracker, a project of HT, weeks before it became mainstream." |  Syrian Nonviolent MovementsSyrian Nonviolent Movements Do Exist, Huffington Post, March 24, 2014 "nonviolence movement, known on social media, is Syria Tracker -- or @SyriaTracker on Twitter. Syria Tracker is a Project within Humanitarian Tracker ( @HNTracker), which was co-founded by the U.S.-based Taha Kass-Hout and Hend Alhinnawi. Like Humanitarian Tracker's crowd-sourced platform, @SyriaTracker relies on "citizen diplomacy" by combining eye witness reporting with social media data mining techniques." |  Voices from SyriaVoices from the War: Interview with Syria Tracker, Journalism for Change, March 7, 2014 “Our job is to make sure that those voices are being heard, that their story’s out there,” says Hend Alhinnawi, co-founder of Syria Tracker, a long-running crowdsourcing initiative that started in 2011. The organization is committed to making sure that vital information about what’s really going on gets out, while at the same time ensuring that the identities of those who report to the map are safe.“ |
 Humanitarian Crisis ReportingSyria Tracker: Reporting on Humanitarian Crisis and Violence, Journalism for Change, February 27, 2014 |  Humanitære OrganisasjonerBlir humanitære organisasjoner de nye overvåkerne? February 14, 2014 "På det humanitære feltet hersker det stor optimisme med hensyn til hvordan teknologi kan hindre kriser og gjøre nødhjelpsarbeid mere effektivt, slik at mer av hjelpen når raskere frem til dem som trenger de""I Syria har frivillige dokumentert menneskerettighetsovergrep på siden SyriaTracker , og i Darfur har et prosjekt kalt Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP) hatt som mål å dokumentere overgrep ved hjelp av satellittbilder." |  Syrian Refugee Crisis MapSyrian refugee crisis map, The Washington Post, December 17, 2013 Syria Tracker, is one of the data sources used to create this map. |
 La Crise SyrienneSyria Tracker : la crise syrienne sur une carte interactive, L'Orient Le Jour, December 12, 2013 "Syria Tracker" a été qualifié par le magazine britannique "NewScientist " de site qui "cartographie le coût humain de la révolte syrienne". Les données sur la carte "pourraient être les estimations les plus exactes" concernant les victimes de la guerre en Syrie, indique le magazine dans un article publié en mars 2012. |  10 Mapas de Ciudadana10 mapas de información ciudadana para entender el poder de la colaboración Por: Periodismo Ciudadano el March 10 2013 10:21 "Syria Tracker, es otro ejemplo de mapa basado en el software de Ushahidi en el que, a través del crowdsourcing, usuarios y testigos presenciales ayudan a documentar los crímenes producidos durante las revueltas en Siria para proteger a la población civil." |  Syria's Citizen JournalistsHow Syria's citizen journalists are developing their skills, ethical standards Margaret Looney, September 16, 2013 "Many of these citizen reports also supply the data needed to create infographics that can tell the story of what's happening on the ground. Humanitarian Tracker worked alongside Ushahidi to create Syria Tracker, an interactive map that uses crowdsourced social media reports to track deaths throughout the country." |
 The Latest on SyriaPresident Obama cautiously praises Russia's chemical weapons proposal for Syria Madina Toure September 10 2013 3:38 PM ET "How you can keep up with the latest developments on Syria" "Humanitarian Tracker: Syria Tracker: Features official and mainstream news, data on chemical attacks and reports on documented killings." |  Targeting Sites in SyriaMusings on Maps: Targeting Sites of Attack in Syria Daniel Brownstein, August 29 2013 3:24 PM ET "The direction of the situation is not good, to be sure. The number of Syrians reported killed, abducted, gassed, or poisoned during the civil war over the past two and a half years, tabulated by Syriatracker, clearly centers the focus of violence around its capital city, Damascus, and is probably vastly under-reported" |  Syria's Hidden EmergenciesSyria's hidden emergencies Mona Chalabi, July 25, 2013 06.01 EDT "The most comprehensive initiative by far however has been the Syria Tracker Crisis Map which was launched in 2011 just a few weeks after protests in the country began. The map collects online sources such as news articles and blog posts and checks these against first-hand reports that have been crowdsourced from websites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube." |
 Mapping SyriaMapping Syria Heather Leson from Ushahidi July 2013 "Humbled and challenged. Lauren Wolfe of Women Under Siege and Souraya (pseudonym) of Syria Tracker joined Chris and I to share stories and lessons learned about Mapping Syria. We discussed research methodology, verification, their team structure, data quality, data cleanup guidelines, funding models, and post-traumatic stress. Here are few points that struck us: Syria Tracker only approves ~6% of the reports they receive..." |  Ushahidi Panel DiscussionUshahidi hosts panel discussion on crowdsourced crisis mapping in Syria Caroline O'Donovan, The Nieman Journalism Lab, July 2013 "Ushahidi — the crowdsourced mapping technology — has grown from one project in Kenya to more than 100 countries around the world. Today, they hosted a Google Hangout with three organizations utilizing Ushahidi’s technology to track and document the crisis in Syria — Women Under Siege, Syria Tracker, and Syria Deeply..." |  Tracking Violent ConflictsHow Computers Can Help Us Track Violent Conflicts — Including Right Now in Syria John Sides, JULY 9, 2013 A guest post by David Masad of Caerus Analytics. "The Syria Tracker project compiles data on individuals killed in Syria from volunteered reports. As the graph below shows, while the number of violent events is higher than the number of reported deaths, the two trends initially move together: an increase in violent events accompanies an increase in reported deaths, and vice versa." |
 Une Géographie en SyrieUne géographie de la révolte en Syrie. Cartographier la guerre 27 mai 2013 "Selon le site www.journalismes.info, avec la crowdmap Syria Tracker, mise en ligne le 25 mars 2012, on constate que plus de 2000 rapports ont été transmis par les internautes syriens. Tous les témoignages sont géolocalisés. Le bilan chiffré d’une répression sanglante est désormais possible. Syria Tracker permet de connaître en détail ce qui se passe sur le terrain en Syrie. Dans le bandeau de la page d’accueil..." |  موقع أمريكي لرصد أعمال العنف في سوريموقع أمريكي لرصد أعمال العنف في سوري 20 May 2013 - 9:13am | تقرير: إذاعة هولندا العالمية "تقرير جولي بليسه - إذاعة هولندا العالمية/ يقوم موقع سوريا تراكر Syria Tracker بجمع التقارير من السوريين العاديين حول اعمال العنف الجارية في سوريا. حصيلة هذه البيانات ملفتة للنظر- لكن النقاش حول قيمتها مازال مستمرا. تحدثت إذاعة هولندا العالمية مع احد مؤسسي هذا الموقع والذي يرغب ان يبقى اسمه مجهولا، لذلك سنطلق عليه اسم "محمد"." |  Socialt Nätverk för KatastroferSocialt nätverk för katastrofer växer Publicerat: torsdag 23 maj kl 14:03 , Ekot "Hemifrån lägenheten i Washington D.C. i USA, sköter Hend Alhinnawi sajten Syria Tracker. Det är en plattform som vem som helst i Syrien med tillgång till nätet kan använda för att rapportera vad de ser omkring sig. Efter tusentals sådana rapporter om våldtäkter, dödsfall och sjukdomar bildas så en karta över det aktuella läget i olika delar av landet." |
 Crowdsourcing PlatformsCrowdsourcing Platforms Monitor Disease, Dissent, and Disasters Greg Goth March 8, 2013 "This Humanitarian Tracker map crowdsources data from eyewitness reports, social media feeds, and Internet news searches to document reported deaths in and around Damascus, Syria." |  Witness ProjectionWitness Projection: How Ushahidi is mapping crises around the world Tristan McConnell March, 2013 "Like all crowd-sourced information, Syria Tracker’s reports are incomplete and imperfect, but they may nevertheless prove to be the most accurate records available of the bloody events in Syria..." |  Tracking Rape In SyriaTracking Rape In Syria Through Social Media Deborah Amos, NPR February 05, 2013 2:57 PM "...a website called Syria Tracker, a crowdmap that documents deaths in the country. He has noted places where women have accounted for many of the deaths, and that's a signal to check the database to see if there's a correlation." |
 60,000 Dead in Syria?The Atlantic - 60,000 Dead in Syria? Why the Death Toll Is Likely Even Higher Armin Rosen January 2013 ..."This isn't an estimate," emphasized Patrick Ball, chief scientist and vice president of the human rights program at Benetech, a Silicon Valley startup that develops and applies open-source technology to human rights-related uses. "We have the names of 59,000-odd people. Let's be really clear here. This is a very conservative undercount..." |  Targeting Women in SyriaThe Atlantic - Are Women Being Targeted in Syria? Lauren Wolfe December 2012 "The baby's body was found near a checkpoint on the road that connects Homs with the ancient city of Palmyra, in central Syria, in January. At four months old, she was said to have been given over to a paternal uncle, dead, with bruises on her back, abdomen, and hands." ..."That's where various groups of citizen journalists and social scientists come in. One such crowdsourcing effort, called Syria Tracker..." |  Humanitarianism and New TechHumanitarianism and New Technology: Challenges and Opportunities Rob Grace on December 04, 2012 "As the crisis in Syria unfolds, the Syria Tracker Crisis Map uses data acquired through various communication platforms to create an on-line map documenting acts of political violence, and organizations such as Amnesty International and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have published reports about the conflict based in part on satellite imagery." |
 Siria. Aritmetica di un ConflittoTreccani - Siria. Aritmetica di un conflitto Marina Turi November 2012 "È una combinazione di applicazioni per il data mining e di crowdsourcing... per denunciare i crimini e tenere costantemente aggiornato il numero delle vittime ... una mappa dinamica realizzata grazie alla segnalazioni online per geolocalizzare gli eventi e suddividerli per categorie: refugees, killed, arrested, missing, eyewitnessreport..." |  Tools for TransparencySunlight Foundation - Tools for Transparency: A Crowdmap for Open Government Scott Stadum November 2012 "Two examples include Syria Tracker which tracks the missing, arrested or killed in Syria while Vacant NYC keeps tabs on vacant properties in and around New York City..." |  Tracking Casualties in SyriaThe Guardian's Middle East Live Blog - Interview with the Every Casualty Programme Matthew Weaver and Brian Whitaker September 2012 "Headlines from the Syrian conflict claimed that last Wednesday, 26 September 2012, was Syria's bloodiest day since the beginning of the confict. Syrian activists said that there were over 340 deaths in a single day, making it the highest death toll figure for a single day from the Syrian conflict to date. Hana Salama, Networking Officer of our Every Casualty.. |
 Tracking the RevolutionTracking the Revolution Jason Kumar September 21, 2012 "...Syria Tracker has been forming a crowdsourced crisis map in Syria for well over a year, to good effect. Syria Tracker is a crisis mapping system that uses crowdsourced text, photo and video reports to form a live map of the Syrian revolution, while also leveraging a data-mining tool that scans English language sources on the web for reports about human rights violations in Syria." |  Counting the VictimsBBC News - Syria crisis: Counting the victims Jastinder Khera May 2012 "Initial casualty reports come from ... tweets and email reports (in the case of Syria Tracker)." "Activists in the US who set up the Syria Tracker website say that "with the escalation of violence starting in February 2012, some groups have needed to change their methodologies... and relax some of the controls they are placing" on recording deaths..." |  Mapping the Human CostNewScientist - Mapping the human cost of Syria's uprising Jim Giles March 2012 "The team, whose work appears on the Syria Tracker website, began collecting reports from the country in April last year, just a few weeks after the first protests began." ..."They started from day one," says Patrick Meier, a Washington DC-based member of Ushahidi, the non-profit company that developed the mapping technology that Syria Tracker uses. "And they're documenting meticulously..." |
 Rape VictimsSyrian uprising: Imam tells rape victims they deserve to be honored Elizabeth Flock, 03/28/2012 05:47 PM ET "On its launch day today, Women Under Siege has about 20 reports of sexual abuse in Syria. Wolfe is confident they can get many more. Syria Tracker, a Web site that also uses crowd-sourced technology to document human rights abuses in Syria, has received more than 11,000 reports. Once it has enough reports, the group hopes its documentation can be used as evidence of war crimes." |  Siria"11.147 persone uccise in Siria tra il 18 marzo 2011 e il 16 marzo 2012. Per favore, aiutaci a documentare questi crimini. Qui trovi un piccolo tutorial su come riportare [le segnalazioni]. Inoltre, guarda la pagina delle istruzioni per le precauzioni da prendere mentre le invii dal campo. Puoi rimanere anonimo o fornire i tuoi dati personali”. Questo paragrafo è ripreso dal sito Syria Tracker... " |
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