GeoAvalanche

Ushahidi for crowdsourcing

snow avalanche information

GeoAvalanche
Ushahidi for crowdsourcing
GeoAvalanche
Francesco Bartoli
CTO Geobeyond Srl

Francesco Bartoli
snow avalanche information
CTO Geobeyond Srl

Who we are
Startup with expertise in Geospatial solutions and Identity &
Access management systems
Partner of Boundless Spatial Inc. as Solution Provider

Who we are
Who we are

Founder of RIOS - Italian Professional Open Source Network

What is GeoAvalanche
Snow avalanche spatial data infrastructure for exchange
information and maps with standards (WxS OGC, GeoJSON, CAAML)
Social mapping application for capturing snow avalanche
information from the crowd
Entirely based on Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial
GeoNode
Ushahidi

What is GeoAvalanche
What is GeoAvalanche

Background
Every avalanche has a place, shape and path which can be
spatially described
Avalanche information are complex and structured data
avalanche danger, incidents, weather observations, snowpack,
bulletins

Background
Background

Worldwide Avalanche Warning Services are source of truth but

often are unstructured organizations (nationally and regionally)
where geospatial ICT is totally/partly missing
Bulletins and avalanche danger are their forecast products at
regional scale resolution while the public runs activities at
microscale (slope, aspect, elevation, temperature, recent wind
activities, snowpack)

Rationale
Tourists
attempt in the wilderness with a number as much as increased
in the latest years

Rationale
Rationale

are not totally aware of the risk

claim innovative early warning alert systems
Mountain professionals
plan their activities more often via mobile devices
make their business on the safety of outdoor activities
could be actively involved to report snowslide-prone areas as
the situation evolves (human sensors)

Trustworthiness
Rely on people that have credibility in such community
Professionals are daily on the snow and ready for a coordinated
meaningful response

Trustworthiness
Trustworthiness

Make their voice counts

Give them the right instruments for their eyes
Make their information from inaccessible places available for
the rest of us (Don't make them dispersedly told over a beer!!!)
Educate the public to being proficient reporters (Give feedbacks
rather than get them away!)

Awareness is timeless
Awareness is timeless
Awareness is timeless

Ushahidi
Crowdsourcing platform that fits perfectly GeoAvalanche
requirements
Open Source and ready to make collected information released as
Open Data
Large and influent community

Ushahidi
Ushahidi

Complete software with mobile apps (iOS, Android) and web

application
Easy to use, develop and customize (based on robust MVC
framework)

Important features
Basic:
Organization of reports into categories and subcategories
Variety of filters for searching reports (temporal, by category, by
geographic area, etc)

Important features
Important features

Information can be anonymously reported (Who triggers an

avalanche can be prosecuted even when nobody has suffered!!!)
Advanced:
Custom forms with different kinds of fields (combobox,
public/private, required/optional, etc)
Customisation of categories icon
Subscription for location based notifications
Few of them while there are a lot more!!

GeoAvalanche design
Four types of main categories and one custom form for each type
of snow avalanche information:
Avalanche Incidents further divided in five classes related to the
international danger scale:
VERY-HIGH
HIGH

GeoAvalanche design
GeoAvalanche design
CONSIDERABLE
MODERATE
LOW

Snow Conditions
Snow Depth
Spontaneous Avalanche

Workflow management
Workflow management
Workflow management

Custom development
Responsive theme geobootavy with slider from Twitter Bootstrap code available on the project repository
Custom background map with outdoors tiles from Thunderforest
GeoAvalanche Android app with:
custom theme
support for reports based on custom forms - code available on
the project repository
support for real time weather maps (temperature, snow, wind,
etc) from OpenWeatherMap

Custom development
Custom development

 CROWDSOURCED SNOW AVALANCHE INFORMATION

Home

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Submit a Report

LOGIN

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English (US)

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Search
Map of clustered snow avalanche information accordingly to relevant avalanche data

Map

4
2

337
5

Android app
Android app
Android app

Issues and migration

Open issues:
Capability to define roles certain with assigned geographical areas
where they are allowed to verify and approve reports, aka known
as georole functionality (i.e. nation-wide, region-wide)
Tackled from the Grant MacEwan team - Still evaluating this
integration with 2.7.4

Issues and migration

Issues and migration

Handling with multisite Ushahidi deployment for visualizing

restricted sets of reports only from certain subdomains (i.e. even
here nation-wide, region-wide scenarios)
Why not different Ushahidi installations? It could ever possible
but there would be limited from the lack of a unique central
users database

Issues and migration

Challenges:
We are waiting for a stable version of Ushahidi V3 to perform
migration
Manage with the mobile clients which are massively using
custom forms with old API system
Alignment of the GeoAvalanche custom theme to the V3 look &
feel

Issues and migration

Issues and migration

Possibly deploy into a dockerized Ushahidi

How to help
Italian community is actively involved with a lot of deployments:
Support the localization of software (V3 is at 5%) - you don't need
to be a coder, transifex is your friend
Support the translation of technical documentation, here again use
the online service gitbook
If you need custom developments or plugins then ask the experts
or raise funds for new features, otherwise if you are a developer
make your hacks and then spread the word so community can
benefit from it

How to help
How to help

Thanks!
Questions?
GeoAvalanche - http://geoavalanche.org/incident/
@geoavalanche
Project by:

Thanks!
Thanks!

http://www.geobeyond.it
francesco.bartoli@geobeyond.it
@francbartoli