[ddj] Open data murder tracker in Trinidad and Tobago

Thu Apr 10 11:09:57 UTC 2014

HI Gerard and folks,

Here is a best practice example for using Ushahidi -
http://blog.ushahidi.com/2014/04/08/humanitarian-tracker-crowdsourcing-syria-crisis-since-2011/

I'd recommend reaching out to Angela Odour, the Community Manager to
discuss (angela at ushahidi dot com). As well, it would be a good idea to
review the toolkits (
https://wiki.ushahidi.com/display/WIKI/Ushahidi+Toolkits).

Lastly, I think that it would be a good idea to outline your privacy and
security measures (internally, if need be) when reporting violence and
sensitive information. Dirk wrote this post about some thoughts -
http://www.fabriders.net/mapping-violence/

All the best,

Heather

On 8 April 2014 14:50, Gerard Best <gerardbest at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks Tarek! I think I will eventually go with the unique ID. I also
> think that an additional column for the date of the discovery is important.
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 3:34 AM, Tarek Amr <tarekamr at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Gerard,
>>
>> In Egypt we have a website (http://wikithawra.wordpress.com/) counting
>> the number of death (by police and army) since the Egyptian revolution in
>> 2011, they use a Google Spreadsheet for that.
>>
>>
>> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApHKfHFs3JYxdGQybmtTVk42bEtxemNjZldJcWxjbnc&usp=drive_web&pli=1#gid=0
>>
>>
>> For the two problems you mentioned they do the following:
>>
>>
>>    - Separate record (row) for each person, so for example if 20 persons
>>    died in the same incident there will be 20 rows, one for each of them.
>>       - This is to enable them to add the victim's name in each row,
>>       also for the row count to reflect the actual number of deaths.
>>
>>
>>    - In each row there are two fields among others, one for the date of
>>    incident and one for the death, as in some cases, people die days after
>>    they have been attacked by the police. In your case it can be a field for
>>    the date the body is discovered and other by the actual date of death.
>>
>> For them they keep the ID's a a serial number starting from one, since
>> the date, but as you said since you want to also track the number of
>> killings, then an additional column with a unique reference number for
>> each incident should solve your other of counting the number of incidents,
>> as a pivot table in this case on the incidents ID's will help counting the
>> number of incidents.
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 8:09 PM, Gerard Best <gerardbest at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>> INTRO
>>> I'm on a team working on a open data journalism project called Bullet
>>> Points and I'm hoping you can lend your collective experience/expertise to
>>> the project.
>>>
>>> Bullet Points tracks murders in Trinidad and Tobago. The murders are
>>> tracked on a Google doc here: http://tinyurl.com/bulletpoints2014
>>>
>>> The fatal incidents are listed chronologically and are numbered by
>>> victim (murder toll). The victims are announced on Twitter (
>>> twitter.com/bulletpoints_) by their toll number. This system has some
>>> serious limitations.
>>>
>>> PROBLEM
>>> Firstly, it is geared toward tracking the murder victims but is an
>>> inadequate way of tracking the actual killings themselves. For example,
>>> when there is a double murder, the toll goes up by two but the number of
>>> incidents goes up by only one.
>>>
>>> Secondly, killings do not always occur in the same chronological order
>>> that the victims' bodies are discovered. Sometimes bodies of murder victims
>>> are discovered after several days. When this happens, the relevant killing
>>> must be inserted somewhere in the middle of the existing chronological
>>> list, which obviously changes the toll count of all subsequent victims.
>>> Unfortunately, because our current system relies on the toll count to
>>> identify the victim, it has now run into this serious limitation.
>>>
>>> PROPOSED SOLUTION
>>> I think that what I need to do is add another column that contains a
>>> unique reference number for each incident. The unique reference number can
>>> follow a standard protocol such as [DATE][INTEGER]. For example, the most
>>> recent murder, which was discovered today, would have a reference number
>>> 2014013001. I think this will deal with the problem but I am not sure
>>> it is the best solution.
>>>
>>> Thanks for taking the time to read this. If you think you can help, I
>>> would be grateful for your perspective on this problem and proposed
>>> solution.
>>>
>>> --
>>> ---
>>> Gerard Best
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Best Regards
>> Tarek Amr
>>
>> http://tarekamr.appspot.com/
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> ---
> Gerard Best
>
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>

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