Technological advancements always make a huge impact in terms of mobilizing resources and highlighting the needs of relevant people. Our PUAN flood warriors remained highly active when it comes to the best use of interactive technology to help flood affectees. Shafeeq Gigyani’s crowdsourced crisis mapping represents a significant step on this path.
Shafeeq Gigyani and his team developed a crowdsourced platform named flood.pk to help flood affectees and relief teams and to strengthen countrywide relief efforts. They developed this website, an interactive portal aimed to provide real-time crowdsourced data on relief camps, flooded areas, relief needed, list volunteers and fundraisers, rivers’ flow, and other flood-related data to help flood-affected (people), relief teams, and the government.
The first-of-its-kind website has a dashboard and tables of all flood-related latest data displayed on one platform, which is accessible to all internet users and connects people with the government and other organizations who are actively taking part in the management of flood relief activities. The data is being verified by code for Pakistan. The website also has brief sheets of fundraisers and volunteers providing relief to the flood affectees and updated river flow data. Dataset was provided by the Performance Management & Reforms Unit.
Furthermore, the same crowdsourcing techniques are used in Kenya, Chile, Russia, and the US for solving disasters and mass mobilization, due to which a significant loss has been avoided. The team has requested that all relief and affected people can take benefit from the platform. This initiative is featured by major TV channels and newspapers.
