Bushfire Connect activated for its second year of operation on Saturday, the 22nd of October, 2011.
Bushfire Connect is a free, community driven service that combines fire information from multiple sources: official and crowdsourced, through multiple media such as the web, mobile devices and SMS.
Bushfire Connect allows local communities to complement official emergency information with grassroots fire reporting.
Bushfire Connect was founded in May 2010 in response to the needs from communities affected by the 2009 Black Saturday fires in Victoria.
Driven entirely by volunteers, Bushfire Connect puts together in one virtual space the local community residents, emergency management services, and government agencies to, when bushfires strike, help prepare the community to ensure their safety and protection.
Bushfire Connect’s mission is to “harness the power of Web 2.0 in order to allow people on the ground to produce and use timely, trusted and transparent information in bushfire emergencies.”
The service started as a response to a request from affected Victorian bushfires residents who felt there were gaps in accurate and reliable information during the crisis.
It is inspired by the successful deployment of community crisis mapping in disasters such as the Haiti and Chile earthquakes, the Queensland floods, and the Japan Tsunami, which recorded 200,000 hits/day at the height of the crisis.
For more information on Bushfire Connect, please visit http://www.bushfireconnect.org.
