‘Cartography of care’: Cornell student creates online hub for wildfire relief

ITHACA, N.Y. – A Cornell University doctoral student in the field of information science developed an interactive map at fireaid.info that has become an online hub for thousands of people in the greater Los Angeles area who need provisions, are looking to donate supplies or want to get involved.

“I like to say that I build at the speed of crisis,” said Johan Michalove, who hurriedly developed and launched the map on Jan. 8, just as wildfires around L.A. intensified. “I have been calling my map a ‘cartography of care,’ because it’s not only a visualization of aid and resources, but it’s a visualization of the collective goodwill of people on the ground and in the community.”

Fireaid.info – which to date has attracted 280,000 views – automatically pulls information from a collaborative Google spreadsheet that serves as a kind of community message board connecting L.A. neighbors in need with free resources and services.

Information on the spreadsheet is vetted and managed by Mutual Aid LA Network – MALAN – and shares where people can find free food, clothes, phone-charging stations and even childcare among the dozens of aid locations across the greater LA area. Volunteers can also learn which locations need which items. 

“Was able to find friends and neighbors!” wrote one resident about the map. “They helped make a hygiene kit for a 64-year-old friend whose home burned down.”

“This website helped my organization find a place to drop off donations that we collected,” wrote another.

A technologist and systems designer currently based in New York City, Michalove created the map after seeing social media posts about the wildfires, which sparked memories of his time in Australia during the catastrophic brush fires of 2019 and ’20, known as the “Black Summer.” He came across MALAN’s spreadsheet and was floored: Here was grassroots organizing happening online, in real-time, and in response to catastrophe. He immediately went to work making MALAN’s information more interactive and mobile-friendly.

“Trying to use a spreadsheet on your phone is miserable. Now, imagine how miserable you’d be if you just lost your house, all you had was your phone, and you’re trying to get access to free resources,” he said. “So I said, ‘I can build an interface layer and just pull data from the spreadsheet and put it in a map.’”

Since launching fireaid.info, Michalove has made a few tweaks based on user feedback. Most notably, the map can be translated into 17 different languages.

As for future use, he said the technology behind interactive maps like fireaid.info can be used “anywhere people want to help each other.”

The experience led him to establish mutua, a nonprofit that develops technologies in collaboration with community organizers to build digital infrastructure for mutual aid networks.

For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.

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