Live Universal Awareness Map, commonly known as Liveuamap, is an internet service to monitor and indicate activities on online geographic maps, particularly of locations with ongoing armed conflicts. It was developed by the Ukrainian software engineers from

Dnipro Dnipro is Ukraine's fourth-largest city, with about one million inhabitants. It is located in the eastern part of Ukraine, southeast of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on the Dnieper River, Dnipro River, from which it takes its name. Dnipro is t ...

, Rodion Rozhkovskiy and Oleksandr Bilchenko.

Creation and name

The two founders of Liveuamap, Rodion Rozhkovskiy and Oleksandr Bilchenko, initially experimented independently with algorithms to filter and correlate social media information related to distinct geographic locations of interest. Together, they started the website ''liveuamap.com'' on 18 February 2014 to monitor

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

n activities in

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

. They were able to indicate in detail the operations that led to the

annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation In February and March 2014, Russia invaded the Crimea, Crimean Peninsula, part of Ukraine, and then annexed it. This took place in the relative power vacuum immediately following the Revolution of Dignity. It marked the beginning of the Russ ...

using their

web crawler Web crawler, sometimes called a spider or spiderbot and often shortened to crawler, is an Internet bot that systematically browses the World Wide Web and that is typically operated by search engines for the purpose of Web indexing (''web spider ...

. The "UA" letters in the "LiveUAmap" name were originally from the country code for Ukraine, before the "Universal Awareness"

backronym A backronym is an acronym formed from an already existing word by expanding its letters into the words of a phrase. Backronyms may be invented with either serious or humorous intent, or they may be a type of false etymology or folk etymology. The ...

was officially proposed by the creators.

Publication method

Their system tracks authors of social media posts of interest by identifying their former posts, number of activities, whom they follow and applies filter techniques to extract relevant information. When an accumulation of correlated messages about an event occurring at a location passes thresholds defined by the algorithms, the situation is listed for human intervention. At least two Liveuamap members decide whether the information about the event is valid, to be used on the map or if further verification is needed. Followup information about the accepted events is used as feedback to improve the system. Liveuamap members use additional sources such as satellite pictures and official communications. Archives are accessible to track the evolution of a particular map.''Liveuamap: About''
liveuamap.com. Retrieved 30 March 2022.

Role as an information source

Liveuamap has been used to track ongoing armed conflicts. The website has provided interactive maps for armed conflicts such as the Syrian civil war, the Yemeni civil war, the

Russo-Ukrainian War The Russo-Ukrainian War began in February 2014 and is ongoing. Following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia Russian occupation of Crimea, occupied and Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, annexed Crimea from Ukraine. It then ...

, and the greater

Arab–Israeli conflict The Arab–Israeli conflict is a geopolitical phenomenon involving military conflicts and a variety of disputes between Israel and many Arab world, Arab countries. It is largely rooted in the historically supportive stance of the Arab League ...

(including the

Gaza war The Gaza war is an armed conflict in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel fought since 7 October 2023. A part of the unresolved Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Israeli–Palestinian and Gaza–Israel conflict, Gaza–Israel conflicts dating ...

and Israel–Hezbollah conflict). The website's interactive conflict maps have been utilised by organisations such as the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF; pronounced ), known in some English-speaking settings as Doctors Without Borders, is a charity that provides humanitarian medical care. It is a non-governmental organisation (NGO) of French origin known for its projects in conflict zo ...

, ''

Neue Zürcher Zeitung The (''NZZ''; "New Newspaper of Zurich") is German language daily newspaper, published by NZZ Mediengruppe in Zurich. The paper was founded in 1780. It has a reputation as a high-quality newspaper, as the German Swiss newspaper of record ...

'' and

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

as part of their respective coverage.

References

External links

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Syria news
{{2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine Web mapping Russo-Ukrainian War Infographics Internet properties established in 2014 2014 establishments in Ukraine

Creation and name

Publication method

Role as an information source

See also

References

External links