May 3, 2007 | Read Time: 1 minute
Believing that information and understanding are the first steps toward action, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Google are using the Internet company’s mapping technology to educate the public about the crisis in Darfur.
The museum has assembled photographs, data, and eyewitness accounts from a variety of sources — including the U.S. State Department, the United Nations, and Amnesty International — which has now been integrated with Google Earth’s satellite imagery and mapping technology.
“This technology allows us to visualize information in seconds or minutes that might otherwise take pages of text or columns of figures to understand, if ever,” Lawrence Swiader, the museum’s chief information officer, said.
“Crisis in Darfur” is the first project of the museum’s Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative, which it plans to use to provide information about potential genocides so that governments, citizens, and others can respond quickly. Said Mr. Swiader: “It’s our hope that by combining this up-to-date satellite imagery with authoritative data and evidence on the ground in Google Earth we can make it harder for people to stand idly by when genocide happens.”
To get there: Go to http://www.ushmm.org/googleearth.
