It’s been a week since the Port-au-Prince earthquake and images streaming in are helping us to grasp the region’s boundless misery and desperation. Hundreds of thousands have perished, and despite our best efforts, more will die and suffer for myriad reasons including the inability to deliver relief where it’s needed.

Despite the gut-wrenching news, it’s heartening to learn that determined, inventive people are finding ways to alleviate the suffering and, in some cases, save lives.

One of the more interesting stories is about an open-source project called Ushahidi which takes its name from the Swahili word for “testimony”.  The software, developed during the post-election violence in Kenya in 2008, enables text messages to be mapped by time and location.  Anyone with an internet connection, regardless of the device they use to access it, can send a text message, an image or an email. Ushahidi can also store data offline for later synchronization.

During its initial deployment in Kenya, Ushahidi was used to record hundreds of incidents of violence that might have otherwise gone undetected. It’s since been used to document incidents in the War in Gaza,the Vote Report India and Pak Voices (violence in Pakistan).  Ushahidi has also been used to track crime using its Atlanta Crime Maps.

But the application met its most demanding test after the earthquake in Haiti when the country’s mobile networks were down. Even after coverage was restored, the Ushahidi team realized that they needed a local SMS short code for the system to be widely accessible.

With a little help from our friends

Fortunately, Ushahidi has friends in high places. The team turned to Josh Nesbit, Co-Founder of FrontlineSMS:Medic, who used Twitter to reach a contact on the ground who was on his way to local mobile carrier DigiCel’s command center. With the help of the U.S. State Department, Ushahidi secured short code 4636 from DigiCel which is now being used to record the times, locations, and accounts of incidents.

Ushahidi updates its Haiti incident map with reports of medical emergencies, security threats, relief efforts and logistical bottlenecks.  It provides a filter for mapping earthquake survivors and deaths. Ushahidi also aggregates Tweets and streams from YouTube and Flickr, all of which can serve to orient first responders and relief workers while giving the rest of us a granular picture of what’s going on in the region.

Ushahidi teams in Kenya and Uganda are working around the clock to verify data from Haiti, and a university in Geneva, Switzerland is establishing a situation room there. Meanwhile, Ushahidi’s Boston team has approached Harvard, MIT and other institutions seeking volunteers to handle the massive volume of data pouring in.

As someone interested in how “home grown” technology is used in developing regions, this story is especially gratifying.  Ushahidi is about how inventive people in one developing country have created a simple but powerful “crowd-sourcing” tool to provide assistance in another hemisphere.

I’m concerned that “crisis fatigue” will set in, dampening world interest in supporting Haiti’s relief efforts.  By raising awareness about the on-going challenges in the region, we stand a chance of preventing the potential “disaster after the disaster”.

As this crisis evolves, new unforeseen challenges will arise. Let’s recognize that this is a long-haul operation. Perhaps stories like Ushahidi can serve to focus our attention on the enormous level of humanitarian assistance that’s needed in Haiti, and what we can do about it.

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Note: Ushahidi is currently seeking volunteers to process incoming SMS reports. Here are instructions to find out how you can help.

> Update (4/6/10):  Here’s an interview with Ushahidi’s Patrick Meier on a range of issues around crisis mapping and validation.

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Want more info about Ushahidi? Here is more on the 4636 SMS emergency code being used in Haiti.

And this is a Forbes piece (11-08), Citizen Voices:  “A Kenyan blogger found a way to get information from the crowd. Now she wants to take the idea to other parts of the world in trouble.”

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