Nickdfresh
04-11-2007, 05:24 PM
Google maps Darfur genocide
HOLOCAUST MUSEUM PARTNERSHIP AIMS TO INSPIRE ACTION
By Frank Davies
MediaNews Washington Bureau
San Jose Mercury News (http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_5641476)
Article Launched:04/11/2007 07:17:05 AM PDT
WASHINGTON - In an unusual partnership, Google Earth - with 200 million users - has joined with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to focus its high-tech lens and high-powered search on the atrocities in Darfur.
The goal of the project, launched Tuesday, is to inform and motivate users to help relief and human rights groups and prod governments to deal with a crisis that has uprooted more than 2 million people and killed about 200,000 in Sudan since 2003.
The mapping and data initiative uses the latest high-resolution satellite imagery, 3-D technology, photos on the ground and witness accounts and other data compiled by the Holocaust Museum in Washington, which has an extensive research branch.
"People can now locate and visualize with great specificity what is happening in Darfur," said Sara Bloomfield, director of the museum. Unlike the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, "there is plenty of visual proof about Darfur, and that can build understanding, empathy and the ability to act."
Google worked on the philanthropic project for more than two years, and Eliot Schrage, vice president for global communications, said it was a "model for future collaborations." Future projects could map and track refugee movements, "ethnic cleansing" and the impact of global warming.
The search giant is hosting the annual meeting of the Global Philanthropy Forum over the next three days at its Mountain View campus, drawing former President Clinton, America Online co-founder Steve Case, and executives of the Rockefeller and Bill & Melinda Gates foundations, among others. How to use Web-based information to combat global health and poverty issues and climate change is the subject of tonight's discussion.
Project preview
With free downloaded software, users of Google Earth will see a preview of the Darfur project, which allows them to zoom over the arid landscape of western Sudan, where government-backed Arab militias have destroyed or damaged about 1,600 villages.
Users can see the hollowed, blackened circles of burned-out huts and, dozens of miles away, the thousands of white tents in refugee camps along the border with Chad. Clicking on icons, users can see statistics and personal stories from each village and camp, and information on different groups and how to get involved.
The U.S. government has described the massacres in Darfur as the first genocide of the 21st century. The International Criminal Court in The Hague has accused Sudanese leaders of atrocities and the forced relocation of thousands of people, which Sudan has denied.
"This is a global catastrophe, and technology can be the catalyst for action," Schrage said.
For leaders of the museum, which has a current photo and video exhibit on atrocities in Darfur, the project with Google Earth reinforces their theme that the promise of "never again" after the Nazi Holocaust has not been kept. They say governments have failed to act - or acted too slowly - in the mass killings of Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
It also opens up the museum's work and data to millions of new users. The museum's Web site attracts about 15 million visits a year. Google Earth has about 200 million users.
"We hope this project will make it harder for people to stand idly by when genocide happens," said Lawrence Swiader, the museum's chief information officer.
Since 2001, the U.N. Environmental Program has contracted with Google Earth to display global environmental conditions. For Google, the project launched this week goes a step further - into a political issue and global controversy.
Human rights and other advocacy groups have criticized governments for not intervening in Sudan to prevent massacres and protect refugees.
Call for action
A Darfur refugee, Daowd Salih, participated in the news conference at the museum and called on the United Nations and NATO to send peacekeeping forces to the region "to stop the killing."
The data and imaging in the project will be updated frequently, Google officials said Tuesday, describing the partnership as a natural outgrowth of the search engine's global mission to make information widely accessible.
The project was the result of some brainstorming by Google staffers looking for new uses for the powerful, popular mapping applications. Staffer Andrea Ruben McCool said she was inspired by her great aunt, a German Jew who recently turned 100, to find a way to make new technology serve social justice.
As visitors leave the museum's Darfur exhibit, they see a quote from Ervin Staub, a Holocaust survivor and genocide scholar, who wrote in 1989: "In emergencies, the likelihood of helping greatly increases when one bystander says the situation is serious or tells others to take action."
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More technology news and opinion at www.siliconvalley.com
Mercury News Staff Writer Mary Anne Ostrom contributed to this report. Contact Frank Davies at fdavies@mercurynews.com or (202)662-8921.[/url]
HOLOCAUST MUSEUM PARTNERSHIP AIMS TO INSPIRE ACTION
By Frank Davies
MediaNews Washington Bureau
San Jose Mercury News (http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_5641476)
Article Launched:04/11/2007 07:17:05 AM PDT
WASHINGTON - In an unusual partnership, Google Earth - with 200 million users - has joined with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to focus its high-tech lens and high-powered search on the atrocities in Darfur.
The goal of the project, launched Tuesday, is to inform and motivate users to help relief and human rights groups and prod governments to deal with a crisis that has uprooted more than 2 million people and killed about 200,000 in Sudan since 2003.
The mapping and data initiative uses the latest high-resolution satellite imagery, 3-D technology, photos on the ground and witness accounts and other data compiled by the Holocaust Museum in Washington, which has an extensive research branch.
"People can now locate and visualize with great specificity what is happening in Darfur," said Sara Bloomfield, director of the museum. Unlike the Holocaust in Nazi Germany, "there is plenty of visual proof about Darfur, and that can build understanding, empathy and the ability to act."
Google worked on the philanthropic project for more than two years, and Eliot Schrage, vice president for global communications, said it was a "model for future collaborations." Future projects could map and track refugee movements, "ethnic cleansing" and the impact of global warming.
The search giant is hosting the annual meeting of the Global Philanthropy Forum over the next three days at its Mountain View campus, drawing former President Clinton, America Online co-founder Steve Case, and executives of the Rockefeller and Bill & Melinda Gates foundations, among others. How to use Web-based information to combat global health and poverty issues and climate change is the subject of tonight's discussion.
Project preview
With free downloaded software, users of Google Earth will see a preview of the Darfur project, which allows them to zoom over the arid landscape of western Sudan, where government-backed Arab militias have destroyed or damaged about 1,600 villages.
Users can see the hollowed, blackened circles of burned-out huts and, dozens of miles away, the thousands of white tents in refugee camps along the border with Chad. Clicking on icons, users can see statistics and personal stories from each village and camp, and information on different groups and how to get involved.
The U.S. government has described the massacres in Darfur as the first genocide of the 21st century. The International Criminal Court in The Hague has accused Sudanese leaders of atrocities and the forced relocation of thousands of people, which Sudan has denied.
"This is a global catastrophe, and technology can be the catalyst for action," Schrage said.
For leaders of the museum, which has a current photo and video exhibit on atrocities in Darfur, the project with Google Earth reinforces their theme that the promise of "never again" after the Nazi Holocaust has not been kept. They say governments have failed to act - or acted too slowly - in the mass killings of Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.
It also opens up the museum's work and data to millions of new users. The museum's Web site attracts about 15 million visits a year. Google Earth has about 200 million users.
"We hope this project will make it harder for people to stand idly by when genocide happens," said Lawrence Swiader, the museum's chief information officer.
Since 2001, the U.N. Environmental Program has contracted with Google Earth to display global environmental conditions. For Google, the project launched this week goes a step further - into a political issue and global controversy.
Human rights and other advocacy groups have criticized governments for not intervening in Sudan to prevent massacres and protect refugees.
Call for action
A Darfur refugee, Daowd Salih, participated in the news conference at the museum and called on the United Nations and NATO to send peacekeeping forces to the region "to stop the killing."
The data and imaging in the project will be updated frequently, Google officials said Tuesday, describing the partnership as a natural outgrowth of the search engine's global mission to make information widely accessible.
The project was the result of some brainstorming by Google staffers looking for new uses for the powerful, popular mapping applications. Staffer Andrea Ruben McCool said she was inspired by her great aunt, a German Jew who recently turned 100, to find a way to make new technology serve social justice.
As visitors leave the museum's Darfur exhibit, they see a quote from Ervin Staub, a Holocaust survivor and genocide scholar, who wrote in 1989: "In emergencies, the likelihood of helping greatly increases when one bystander says the situation is serious or tells others to take action."
---
More technology news and opinion at www.siliconvalley.com
Mercury News Staff Writer Mary Anne Ostrom contributed to this report. Contact Frank Davies at fdavies@mercurynews.com or (202)662-8921.[/url]