African communities living in violence- or disaster-prone areas will soon be able to use online early warning tools to map the incidents.

After successfully using Ushahidi.com to map post-election violence in Kenya, the site's team is now focusing on building a tool that can record early warning signs and allow people to share their stories online.

"During the violence in Kenya, people told stories of how they had received verbal threats and leaflets warning them, and they knew what was going to happen," said Ory Okolloh, a member of the Ushahidi team.

Ushahidi.com was developed at the height of violence in Kenya. "It is a forum for people to share their stories. We want to improve the features to suit specific communities and have early warning reporting features," Okolloh said.

Ushahidi.com is a collaborative effort among team members Okolloh, Juliana Rotich, David Kobia and Erik Hersman. The group worked together to develop content and user-friendly tools that could be used by victims and people who had witnessed violence. The team used an online platform as well as Short Message Service (SMS) messages to collect information.

In March this year, the Sokwanele site mapped the violence in Zimbabwe, using a different online platform as well as SMS services.

"By the time Sokwanele launched their mapping application in Zimbabwe we had not fully developed our application, so we could not offer much help, but we were in communication. But we have learnt from their experience in Zimbabwe and we plan to build on it in our applications," Okolloh said.

In May, the Ushahidi team worked with local organizations to track xenophobic attacks against people in South Africa, updating news about incidents online, said Okolloh.

An organization in Madagascar has also contacted the Ushahidi team and wants to use its online application to track endangered species. The communities will take pictures whenever they see the endangered species and upload them.

The application, which uses a Google Maps mashup and Microsoft's ASP (Active Server Pages), is easy to download and will also be available and useful to organizations working with communities affected by HIV/AIDS, Okolloh said. A missing-persons feature will make it easier to track child soldiers in Northern Uganda, Okolloh said.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.