Today ONE.org released an interactive feature using open data to walk through step-by-step how the famine has spread, what’s causing it, and what world leaders are doing in response. This is part of a the much larger open data movement this past month as we’ve been working with USAID and the World Food Programme to process open data and show the impact and consequences of the famine in the Horn of Africa. 750,000 people’s lives are threatened. This is the worst drought the region has had in 60 years. And it’s complicated by civil conflict that limits access to much of the most-impacted regions by humanitarian organizations.

One.org’s “Where is the Hunger” is a highly interactive presentation that uses the open data USAID Administrator Raj Shah released just this Monday to make the agency’s data more accessible and usable. Earlier this week USAID featured these maps on their own FWD campaign site, which is raising awareness about the famine by encouraging people to learn about the causes and response and pass on the information and opportunity to donate.

Since this data is released in open formats, including MBTiles and TMS tile server endpoints through TileStream for the maps and as raw data on Data.gov, organizations like ONE can quickly leverage it in their own work. This builds on what WFP and InterAction have been doing too. Both feature maps that pull directly from USAID data. Now as USAID updates its understanding of the crisis that new information is immediately shared to these other organizations. This is scalable to all of organizations doing complimentary work.

We helped ONE craft this story using MapBox. Like all of our past projects, we used TileMill to design custom interactive maps and TileStream to host them in a fast, reliable cloud infrastructure. What’s most exciting though, is how it’s possible to tie these raw maps together into a tight story using javascript libraries like Wax and Easey.

We’re really excited to partner with ONE on this feature. Check it out at Where is the Hunger?.