GeoChat is a flexible open source group communications technology that lets team members interact to maintain shared geospatial awareness of who is doing what where -- over any device, on any platform, over any network. GeoChat allows you and your team to stay in touch one another in a variety of ways: over SMS, over email, and on the surface of a map in a web browser.

The Problem

When a major humanitarian crisis occurs, every second matters for the affected community. What is needed is a response that is agile, efficient, and effective, where diverse groups – NGOs, the UN, national governments, military, and the local community – self-organize temporarily into a coherent, coordinated network to provide assistance to a population in need.

Unfortunately, more often than not, coordination among relief organizations today is far from adequate. Responders in the field find it difficult to keep one another in the loop about what they are doing and where. They have a constant sense that they out of touch with headquarters, and headquarters with them. Often, they lack adequate means to engage members of the local community and ensure that they participate meaningfully in the response. When key contacts are excluded from the process, they are left with an incomplete understanding of what is needed, and they cannot act as one. Delays mount up, too little arrives too late, and the cost may be measured in human lives.

There are many factors that may contribute to this lack of coordination, but to a great degree, much of it comes down to a single problem: reliable team-based communication during and after a crisis is critical to success, yet remarkably difficult to achieve. In a crisis, responders must first establish reliable cross-organizational flows of information that include everyone with a role to play, and then interact regularly with one another to maintain a shared understanding of current plans, new developments, and who is doing what where.

Yet as dozens, or even hundreds, of relief organizations mobilize teams to respond, arrive on site, and join forces to coordinate relief efforts, they often find that the technologies they use to communicate internally – computers, telephones, and radios -- do not allow them to communicate effectively with all of their new teammates.

What is GeoChat?

GeoChat is a flexible open source group communications technology that lets team members interact to maintain shared geospatial awareness of who is doing what where -- over any device, on any platform, over any network.

GeoChat allows teams to stay in touch one another in a variety of ways: over SMS, over email, and on the surface of a map in a web browser. GeoChat allows networks of organizations and individuals to form cross-organizational virtual teams on the fly, linking field to headquarters -- keeping everyone on your team connected, in sync, and aware of who is doing what, and where.

Features include:

• Create, join and participate in chat groups by SMS, email, or web browser.
• Translates location names sent by users to a position on a map
• Supports a variety of explicit location formats, as well as other user-defined tags.
• Subscribe a group to one or more RSS/ATOM feeds, and each new item will be broadcast to mobile users via SMS.
• Groups may be set as public or private.
• GeoChat Server is available both as a free download and as a hosted service.
• Twitter access via “geochat”, and domestic US gateway service via 44911.
• Dedicated international SMS gateway supported by 96% of the world’s mobile carriers.
• Optional “local gateway” mini-client that allows you to plug a local cell phone into your laptop, connect to the Internet, and allow users to send and receive text messages through the service via the local cell network, rather than using the international gateway.

For more information

GeoChat is in public beta and available under the MIT licence. For more information, feature information, and how to obtain it, go here GeoChat