WikiMapAid: Mapping Humanitarian Needs (around official channels)

WikiMapAid, built on Google Maps, was launched this month as a “collaborative wiki software to enable humanitarian workers and others to add health, welfare and education information to a version of Google Maps ...The hope is that by circumventing official information channels, a clearer picture of what is happening on the ground can develop.”

The app is in use in Zimbabwe as it fights a cholera outbreak. Global Map Aid leads the project, which is built on a Brazilian project called Wikicrimes that tracked crimes via user contributed data. Vasco Furtado at the University of Fortaleza in Brazil built both pieces of software.

The article in New Scientist describes other health related geo-efforts as well including HealthMap and GeoChat.