5 Humanitarian Crises Where Open Source Projects Aimed to Bring Stability Government Software

Natural disasters, epidemics, terrorism, and uprisings—the world awaits with bated breath for the situation to turn to normalcy for those directly and indirectly affected by these crises. Here are five crises where open source technologists have helped, in some way, to bring stability in these hostile regions. An annoyed user couldn’t fix his printer as the printer’s source code wasn’t available to users. This was the reason that led to the start of the open source movement. Organizations have saved billions of dollars and man hours by collaborating and innovating on the open source platform.

The open source software has been used almost everywhere, and most importantly, technologists are taking full advantage of it when the world needs it to solve humanitarian problems. Here are some humanitarian crises that technologists have built open source platforms for, just to give a new life to those badly affected by it.

One of the deadliest civil wars in recent history, the Syrian Civil War has claimed hundreds of thousands of civilian lives and has displaced millions. The Syria Conflict Mapping Project, a work by The Carter Center and Palantir Technologies, has analyzed open source information with minute detail and mapped over 70,000 conflict events as well as the movements of armed forces and civilians. Humanitarian organizations directly get this information using a software tool by Palantir, which could help them mobilize volunteers and aid workers to conflict zones...