GeoTag-X is an open source platform set up by UNITAR-UNOSAT within Citizen Cyberlab to engage and educate volunteers all around the world in analysing media coming out of humanitarian crises and natural disasters. GeoTag-X aims to produce datasets that can be used in relief and recovery efforts by humanitarian and disaster response agencies, both within and outside the United Nations system.
Large quantities of media, including photos and videos, are often generated during disasters and humanitarian operations. UNITAR-UNOSAT believes this media can complement existing efforts at gathering data to summarize disaster impacts and humanitarian response. With the GeoTag-X platform, we seek to gather all the relevant media coming out of a disaster situation or humanitarian operations, and to crowdsource analysis of that media so it can be used by the international community.
GeoTag-X is built on the open source PyBossa and all code developed for GeoTag-X is made available on GitHub. GeoTag-X currently hosts 14 projects covering various disaster-related topics. Some of these were simply developed as test cases as we implemented new ideas and code, and almost all of them have been developed in collaboration with external organizations and agencies such as the REACH Initiative, UNFAO Somalia, and Yamuna’s Daughter, a project by Women for Sustainable Cities.
My role in the GeoTag-X project was that of the Lead Developer, and the project is currently live at : https://geotagx.org