We just finished working on the Pandemic Preparedness Capacity Project, a new tool for InterAction and USAID that will be used to help prevent the spread of catastrophic disease outbreaks, especially bird flu. The goal of the site is to both improve both data collection from public health organizations on the ground and improve data visualization for policy makers here in Washington, D.C. We built this dynamic mapping portal on all open source software: the content management system is Drupal and the mapping stack is running on Mapnik, a C++/Python GIS toolkit.

We had a lot of fun working directly with Elizabeth Bellardo at InterAction, along with several other members on her team, to develop a strategy for making data collection, site administration and data presentation all incredibly simple. In addition to the strategy, we also did the site architecture, design, and development (of both Drupal and Mapnik). I want to use this post to show some of the behind-the-scenes details that are only available to the site administrators and the NGOs using the site.

First, we needed a effective way to show the great data InterAction is collecting in almost real time to decision makers here in D.C. As you can see, the main page is showing density points based on the number of projects geo-tagged for each country. All projects are classified by specific sectors that help to describe their projects. This classification allows us to do dynamic filtering directly on the map.

If you click on a point, you are taken to a drilled-down country view showing geo-tagged projects. You can see that the map shows geographical detail down to the provincial level.

Clicking on one of these points, you can then see information about projects in a particular province or town. Here we are using Google Charts to help us display the coverage by sector in North Sumatra.

You can then go to each project to lean more specific information about an organization’s work. For example, here is a bio of a project run by the Academy for Educational Development.

A specific requirement for the site was to make sure that both the decision makers in Washington and the NGOs on the ground could easily take the data from the site with them off-line. We spent some good time designing a print-friendly style sheet that works well for both user groups.

Of course, the information on the site will only be as good as what NGOs add to the site. We need a simple workflow for public health organizations to easily upload data to the site. To do this, we redesigned common Drupal admin elements and turned some of the more mundane parts of administrative process – elements often over-looked in site development – into advantages to help increase data collection. Here you can see how clean and light-weight the data submission forms are, making geo-tagging easy even for non-technical users.

As soon as an NGO adds information, it is put into a queue and an administrator at InterAction is instantly notified. They can then securely log in from any computer to approve the data for display on the map.

In just two clicks, an administrator can quickly see the all recently added content that is not published and awaiting review.

Administrators can then review the content and in just one click, publish it to the live site to instantly show up on the map.

We’re really excited about how simple this process is and by InterAction’s commitment to make a simple site that would be easy on users. For websites being used to manage information among geographically dispersed teams – particularly when those teams are loosely affiliated and aren’t obligated to use a tool – it’s essential that users be able to take action quickly and without much effort. We feel like we were able to get there with this project and are excited to see how it works once it starts getting heavy use in a couple weeks.