Dayana Bustamante may not have power in her New Jersey home, but that’s not stopping her from helping residents in the Hurricane Sandy stricken Northeast find an open gas station.
Bustamante is the lead coordinator of a group of Franklin High School students developing a crowdsourced map that identifies open gas stations in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The project, called Mappler, helps the millions of Northeast residents struggling to find a gas station that is not out of power, and most importantly, not sold out of gas.
The project launched on Wednesday night with just a few data points, and now the map features hundreds of gas stations around the Northeast. Green dots indicate that a gas station is open, yellow dots indicate a charging station and red dots mean the station is sold out of gas.
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“We didn’t think a lot of people would use it,” Bustamante says.
She couldn’t have been more wrong. Just one day after the Mappler launched and local news organizations began covering them, the site crashed. Bustamante describes the site as an “overnight sensation.”
Bustamante said that since the map is crowdsourced, users can download the application for iPhone or Android and update the map’s data.
“We’ve been having so many requests, calls on the phone, on Twitter,” Bustamante said. “People can update the site as well through the computer and the smartphone.”
It’s no wonder why Mappler was an instant hit. Thousands of stations across the Northeast have been shuttered because of power outages and gas shortages. Miles long lines of desperate drivers have formed at the few stations that have gas, as drivers are unsure where else to go. Tensions have run so high at gas stations that fights have broken out and police have been dispatched to keep the peace.
Bustamante said the idea for the map stemmed from a group that she was part of high school and still very involved in as a college student, Scholars Organizing Culturally Innovative Opportunities (IMSOCIO). The organization began as a summer program to help underprivileged youth achieve success. Students can create interactive maps using GIS software, under the leadership of community mapping specialist Dr. Wansoo Im. Many of the students that the program serves are Latino.