Ushahidi Crisis Response Hub
Citizen journalism platform empowering communities to report and verify crisis news in real-time. Enables verified news sources to coordinate crisis response efforts, connecting aid organizations, governments, and NGOs with ground-truth information during emergencies to save lives.
Client
Ushahidi Network
Timeline
2023
Duration
7 months
The Challenge
During critical humanitarian emergencies, the platform needed to handle massive influxes of citizen reports while maintaining credibility through verification. System instability during peak moments and lack of verification workflows meant delayed crisis response when every second counts.
10-minute downtimes during traffic spikes when citizen reports flood in (5,000+ reports/minute)
No systematic verification workflow for citizen-submitted reports
Database query timeouts under load causing critical report loss
Difficulty distinguishing verified news from unverified citizen reports
Limited geographic redundancy despite global crisis coverage
Manual scaling requiring DevOps intervention during emergencies
Our Solution
Re-architected the platform with horizontal scaling, verification workflows, and event-driven architecture to handle massive citizen report influxes while implementing credibility systems for verified news sources.
Phase 1: Verification System
Built comprehensive verification workflow enabling trusted sources (journalists, aid workers, verified organizations) to validate citizen reports. Implemented credibility scoring and source verification to distinguish verified news from unverified reports.
Phase 2: Architecture Modernization
Migrated to event-driven microservices architecture. Implemented message queues (RabbitMQ) ensuring zero report loss even during massive citizen journalism surges. Separated read and write workloads for optimal performance.
Phase 3: Database & Search Optimization
Optimized PostgreSQL queries reducing average query time by 78%. Implemented read replicas and connection pooling. Added ElasticSearch for fast full-text search enabling rapid crisis report discovery.
Phase 4: Auto-Scaling
Implemented Kubernetes horizontal pod autoscaling responding to CPU and custom metrics. System now scales automatically from 5 to 50 pods based on real-time citizen reporting demand during crises.
Technologies Used
Express & Solidity
Core application framework
Next.js
Modern citizen journalism interface
Redis
Multi-layer caching for verified reports
ElasticSearch
Fast crisis report search
PostgreSQL
Primary database with replicas
AWS
Cloud infrastructure
Kubernetes
Auto-scaling orchestration
RabbitMQ
Message queue ensuring report reliability
Impact & Results
The verification system transformed how we handle citizen reports during crises. We can now distinguish verified news from unverified reports, enabling faster, more accurate emergency response.
Technical Director
Ushahidi Network
Key Features
Citizen journalism platform with verification workflows
Trusted source credibility scoring and validation
Automatic horizontal scaling during crisis influxes
Event-driven architecture preventing report loss
Real-time mapping and geospatial crisis visualization
Multi-region deployment for global resilience