The river seems like a wholly inadequate format for visualizing this data in any actionable sense, especially because the use of the data is context-specific.

What type of data would be useful from a real time, human-powered, and geographically distributed sensor network? For Ushahidi Haiti, it was emergencies, public health issues, security threats, infrastructure damage, and natural hazards. Part one is organically producing the data in a structured, usable format, and part two is leveraging it to significantly improve the speed and quality of the response to the event.