How Developers Can Aid Gulf Recovery

About the Gulf Oil Spill

On April 20, 2010 an explosion occurred on the semi-submersible offshore drilling rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico killing 11 rig workers and injuring 17 others. On April 24, it was found that the wellhead was damaged and was leaking oil into the Gulf. As of May 26, the wellhead continues leaking thousands of barrels of oil each day into the Gulf of Mexico, causing a severe environmental and economic crisis across the Gulf region.

The Response

Crisis Commons, Intridea and Appcelerator are working together—along with with the gulf coast and global tech communities—to assist in the recovery effort. We’ve launched the oilreporter.org web site to serve as a crowd-sourced resource for compiling news, applications and data to aid in the recovery effort. The first two applications, Oil Tracker and Oil Reporter, are now available at oilreporter.org:

Oil Reporter

Oil Reporter is an application available for iPhone and Android that enables collection of time-stamped and geo-tagged eyewitness accounts of oil sightings and injured or dead wildlife. Users can also attach a photo or video and tweet their sightings.

All reports are saved to a publicly accessible database for use by emergency responders, scientists, news organizations, local citizens and others. Importantly, developers can access the report data to build apps for tracking the spill’s progress.

Oil Tracker

Oil Tracker, a complementary heat map app available for iPhone, Android and iPad, leverages Google Maps and Oil Reporter data to show where there is the greatest concentration of dead or dying wildlife.

Oil Reporter and Oil Tracker are open sourced, with source code available on github. The Oil Reporter APIs are documented at oilreporter.org so you can get to work building mashup applications using the data.

How you Can Help

There is much more to do to help the Gulf region, which is why we are reaching out to the community of more than 47,000 Titanium Developers to participate in several ways:

1. Watch the on-demand Webcast "How Intridea Built Oil Reporter and How You Can Extend Oil Tracker" to learn more about building mobile apps with Oil Reporter data.
2. Volunteer to Develop New Apps. Recruited developers will be matched with government agencies and animal rescue organizations for a coordinated effort to better identify hotspots for crisis mitigation and protection of the natural environment, wildlife, etc.
3. Get Oil Reporter and Tweet your support for the initiative. "RT @appcelerator Announcing OilReporter: How Developers Can Aid Gulf #OilSpill Recovery http://bit.ly/9WMoRa". Live in the Gulf Region? Volunteer as a data collector through the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command.
4. Donate the proceeds from a Titanium Professional subscription. Through June 30th, with your new Titanium Professional subscription, Appcelerator will donate the 100% of the first month’s proceeds to the National Wildlife Federation.

Appcelerator Contributes to the Cause

Appcelerator cares deeply about the gulf region. Our employees are contributing their time to the relief effort. What’s more, Appcelerator will donate 100% of the first month proceeds to the National Wildlife Federation for any developer that signs up for a Titanium Professional subscription by June 30th.

Our Partners

Intridea, an Appcelerator Partner, developed Oil Reporter to aid in the Gulf oil spill cleanup.

Crisis Commons creates technological tools and resources for responders to use in mitigating disasters and crises around the world.