Kapta

What?

Kapta Mobile is a Progressive Web App to create WhatsApp Maps in 3 steps:

1. Share locations in a WhatsApp group
2. Export chat to Kapta
3. Share your WhatsApp Map

👉 📱 https://kapta.earth

Why?

To connect users and producers of ground information. See our latest blog and where this started in 2010:

• WhatsApp Maps? Connecting users and producers of ground information
• Extreme Citizen Science in the Congo rainforest

What's next?

Kapta: A (de)centralised crowdsourcing system to connect users and producers of ground information.

Who?

Kapta is being developed by the University College London (UCL) Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS) research group and the Advanced Research Computing Centre (UCL ARC), with help from outside partners & contributors.

Currently the core Kapta team consists of:

• Marcos Moreu, UCL Geography
• Fabien Moustard, UCL Geography
• Tom Couch, UCL ARC
• Muki Haklay, UCL Geography
• Jonathan Cooper, UCL ARC
• Claire Ellul, UCL CEGE
• Amanda Ho-Lyn, UCL ARC
• Jed Stevenson, Durham University
• Dessalegn Teckle, Addis Ababa University, NGO IPC

Guidance for Developers

Requirements

• Node.js v20.0.0 or later
• npm v10.0.0 or later
• mapbox API key (create an account at https://www.mapbox.com/)

Installation

1. Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/UCL/kapta-mobile.git && cd kapta-mobile
2. Run npm install in the root directory
3. Create config file (see below)
4. Run npm run build to build the project
5. Run npm start to start the development server
6. Open http://localhost:8080 in your browser

Configuration

Kapta requires a configuration file to be created in the src directory. The file should be named config.json and should contain the following fields:

{
  "mapbox": {
    "accessToken": "YOUR_MAPBOX_ACCESS_TOKEN"
  },
  "api": {
    "invokeUrl": "" // API URL (optional)
  },
  "kapta": {
    "askTheTeamURL": ""  // URL for user support e.g. WhatsApp business chat URL (optional)
  }
}

Legal disclaimer

Copyright © 2024 University College London

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

       http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.