Google, the UN and George Clooney Group to Watch for Sudan Violence Using Satellites

The United Nations, Harvard University, Google and an organization founded by Hollywood celebrities including George Clooney, along with other groups are banding together to provide near real time coverage of actions in Sudan as the country approaches the date of a vote which could split it in two.

The hope is that if the government and other parties involved know that people are watching, via commercial satellites over the region, they will be more reluctant in resorting to violent actions or even genocide.

The Satellite Sentinel Project which went live today will provide satellite imagery of the region and look for signs of burned or destroyed villages, mass movement and other clues which would indicate violent action.

United Nations' UNOSAT program will handle the image collection for the region. Satellite imagery, while technically available to a lot more people than even a few years ago, is still very expensive, especially for the kind of images the program requires, specific locations at specific dates.

The project has raised $750,000 as initial funding which should help it rent the satellites and provide the online platform. The money comes from the Not On Our Watch foundation, founded by Clooney along with Don Cheadle, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, David Pressman and Jerry Weintraub.

Google is partially responsible for the website and platform for viewing the images and information. A customized Google Maps instance is embedded on the site and provides the imagery from UNOSAT, some of which is already available, and information from the Enough Project.

The region, like many parts of Africa, has seen a great deal of violence for the past decades. The conflicts escalated in recent years and there are fears that an upcoming vote on January 9, 2011, which could see Southern Sudan split into an independent entity, could lead to further bloodshed.