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Google recently announced a joint effort with the [U.S. Holocaust Museum][2] to add layers to Google Earth which will combine high resolution images of Darfur with images, stories and more collected by aide groups working in Sudan.
The project, which was designed to raise awareness of the genocide in Darfur by tying eyewitness accounts, photographs and videos together with precision mapping tools, also highlights the efforts of ordinary users who increasingly turn to, not the web, but Google Earth to get their message out.
If the team behind the Darfur project had any doubts about the effectiveness of their message, aide workers in Sudan report that the government is now blocking downloads of Google Earth. "those of us who had already downloaded it can access it but those who haven't are unable to view it," said one worker who wished to remain anonymous due to safety concerns.
Outside of Sudan Google Earth has been downloaded over 200 million times and following similar trends in online communities, a growing number of those users are turning from consumers of data, to producers.
While the Darfur Project was eventually picked up and supported by both the Holocaust Museum and Google, it began, not with an army of programmers, but as the pet project of enthusiastic users who recognized the potential usefulness of Google Earth as a humanitarian tool.
The Darfur multimedia project is the brainchild of Michael Graham, now head of the Museum's Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative.
"When Google Earth came out in June 2005 we had an 'aha!' moment at the Museum," Graham recalls. "We seized upon the concept of Google Earth as a way to bring together multiple layers of information."
But despite the initial enthusiasm at the Holocaust Museum, in the beginning, the bulk of the work involved on the Darfur project was carried out by a small group of volunteers, helmed by Graham.
"An independent volunteer group was formed in December of 2005," says Graham.
The group, known as [BrightEarth][1], set out to collect disparate data from sources like the U.S. State Department, Amnesty International, as well as photographers and journalists working in the region, and turn it into interactive Google Earth layers.
While most of the data in the Darfur project was previously available, it was spread out in a variety of formats stored around the web. One the BrightEarth's early goals was to bring it together in one place -- Google Earth.
"One of the problems is that there's a tremendous amount of data out there, but most of it doesn't interact very well," says Declan Butler, a senior writer at Nature and one of the early volunteers in the BrightEarth Project. "In that sense Google Earth becomes a vector and brings it all together."
"Google Earth allows you take data from lots of different sources and mix them together easily, anybody can make these files," adds Butler.
"Google Earth is really like a browser and adding layers is like making a webpage."
Another of BrightEarth's goals was to create a proof of concept, not just for the Holocaust Museum, which became actively involved shortly after seeing the initial GE layers, but also for humanitarian groups -- many of whom have yet to tap into Google Earth's potential.
"Why should organizations like the UN or aid organizations have to spend days creating and disseminating individual maps whenever they want to contribute to the 'situational picture'?" Asks Graham.
One of BrightEarth's goals was to show humanitarian organizations how Google Earth can help collect and make data viewable and searchable from a single folder within Google Earth -- making access as simple as possible.
While much of the data and imagery in the Darfur Project is a couple of years old, even aide groups responding to crisis events like the earthquake in Pakistan or hurricane Katrina are eyeing Google Earth as a potential tool.
"Satellite imagery and other remote sensing material has been used in relief efforts for a while now," says Paul Currion founder of [Sahana][3], a tool to help manage large-scale relief efforts. "However we haven't yet realized the full potential that this technology has, particularly in terms of deeper analysis of the situation on the ground."
One potential use that of that deeper analysis is collecting imagery for use as a legal tool. "Many atrocities take place in anonymity, and we are slowly whittling away at that," says Lars Bromley of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Graham likes to imagine what would have happened if the the host of NBC Nightly News had opened up the Darfur project in Google Earth during a recent interview with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. "I would love to see the host zoom down to the burned out remains of hundreds of villages and ask him to explain how these remains of villages the audience is seeing with their own eyes have actually not been attacked and destroyed."
What audiences in Graham's hypothetical confrontation would have seen is high resolution imagery that gives a bird's eye zoom across Sudan and into the Darfur where a sea of red flame icons show destroyed villages and yellow and red flame icons highlight partially razed areas. Other icons include links to videos, photographs and eyewitness accounts of each damaged and destroyed village.
It would be the sort of display that reminds viewers that while the technology behind it is remarkable and the Darfur project may prove to be watershed moment for the intersection of Google Earth and humanitarian effort, as Currion says, "what it's really about is the people of Darfur, and how we might relieve their suffering."
[1]: http://www.brightearthproject.org/ "BrightEarth Project"
[2]: http://www.ushmm.org/googleearth/ "Holocaust Museum, Darfur Project"
[3]: http://www.sahana.lk/ "Sahana: Open Source Disaster Management system"
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