crisis

20Feb

Hybrid Skills needed to foster change

Over 10 years ago at Tucows Inc., the communications department included my colleague James Koole, who was a journalist by training. His skills of digital storytelling and technical tinkering fostered the customer experience. Business intelligence, “in house journalists” and data science are now more pervasive in many workplaces. At the data-driven journalism course in Cairo, as part of the Data-Driven Innovation Workshop Week in MENA, I am here to talk about data in research and potential of data-driven innovation. As I prepare my thoughts on how Data-Driven Innovation can affect business growth, I consider why hybrid employees, like Mr. Koole, help. What other hybrid skills are needed and how can we support people’s learning journeys to drive social entrepreneurship?

Data-Driven Innovation in Qatar

In Qatar, there is a growing technical community. The Data-Driven Innovation MENA team asked me to provide an overview of examples of data-driven research and this might apply to business growth. The following are some examples from QCRI’s research and from a few of the local startup community (There are extensive notes):

How can data-driven innovation drive business

In a world that is increasingly focused on entrepreneurship, there is also a parallel stream focused on STEM education. This is a potential mistake to be too focused on silos. If you can tell a better story or design useful data-driven content/information products, this is also core to growth.

Qatar and Doha have a limited number of technical education events. If you are in school, you can join
CMU’s Smartlab and learn data analytics. Qatar Computing Research Institute has a Summer internship program open to local youth considering a career in computer science. If you are an entrepreneur and are able to join a number of the great incubators, accelerators or youth programmes, you might get some data-driven innovation training. Everyone can learn online by, for example, taking Cousera courses, but fostering this ecosystem needs in person engagement and learning opportunities.

In Doha, I hosted a few workshops on Data Analytics, Machine Learning, Social Media Curation and Digital Mapping. The free classes were oversold and included a wide mix of professionals, young startups, students and, even, research colleagues. QCRI will continue to build the knowledge economy sharing skills and technical training. But, I highly recommend a startup focused on training data-driven innovation skills for business. There is indeed a growing market beyond the student body. Change will happen when more senior people are exposed to the techniques and how it can enable their business team to flourish. Organizations also need to continue to provide more technical workshops to augment all the strategy and leadership training. This includes encouraging technical companies to host workshops on how to use the tools and apply to a diverse stream from humanitarian to startups to social entrepreneurship.

What is one quick win for data-driven innovation in Qatar: More technical training and more data journalism skills. What if there was a a Data Driven Startup Handbook and shared curriculum?

Consider this type of future of domain expertise, data-smart employees including Type 2 Data Scientists:

“…require a different kind of data scientist, one that does not have the core technical ability to write code but enough of a general understanding of what can and cannot be achieved using machine learning approaches to effectively evaluate its outputs. This ‘type II’ data scientist does not need an in depth understanding of the code but might lead a team containing data scientists and needs to be able to translate between the business or policy problem and the technical environment. Without some understanding of what these learning systems can and can’t do there is the potential for a lot of poor quality problem solving and the outcomes on society could be very negative. There are examples of courses trying to fill this gap, like the MSc course at Sheffield, targeted at non-data scientists that aims to teach students fundamental data science principles and its application within organisations to support data-driven approaches to problem solving.

(Source: Nesta Report: Machines that Learn in the Wild, 2015.)

2Feb

How Digital Humanitarians Are Closing the Gaps In Worldwide Disaster Response

[Reposted from the Huffington Post, January 28, 2016]

It is now commonplace for people around the world to use social media during emergencies, and the volume of online information coupled with its rapid arrival is becoming increasingly overwhelming to humanitarian organizations. In response, digital humanitarians (individuals who participate in humanitarian relief online) have organized into skilled teams online to decipher the signals from the noise and thus provide accurate data. These teams work in partnership with formal humanitarian organizations using digital forensics, mapmaking, data mining, curation and open dialogue. Communication is now considered a crucial part of aid, and social media is part of this toolset. Even so, privacy, power and access are just some of the complex challenges that digital humanitarians must navigate when using these platforms in their work to help communities in need.

Introduction

Seeking a way to “do something,” more and more people are answering the call to action on social media after each emergency. Digital responders or “digital humanitarians” immediately log on when news breaks about a natural disaster or human-created catastrophe. Individuals and teams “activate” based on skill sets of volunteer and technical communities (VTCs). These digital responders use their time and technical skills, as well as their personal networks in an attempt to help mitigate information overload for formal humanitarian aid in the field. The terms often used to define these contributors in the humanitarian space are remote help, citizen engagement, citizen response, localized community, civil society and global civic technology. Some participants are new to online humanitarian response, but have found a topic or location that drives their passion to get involved.

This surge of action by participants is often just as chaotic as the actual physical emergency response. People are compelled to work, at a dizzying pace, by the fact that many parties involved in first response require valid, urgent and usable data. Focused on the needs of the citizens in affected areas, informal and formal networks collaborate and sometimes collide in an effort to make sense of and identify needs or stories from this user-generated content. With a combination of will and skill, they create updated maps, datasets, information products, and even communities (both online and offline). The global growth of these activities is based on access to information, connectivity and language skills as well as digital literacy levels. These groups are making efforts to become more inclusive while respecting local language, culture and knowledge. The mantra of most digital responders is “support” not “supplant” local citizens, humanitarians and emergency responders.

The role of digital communities in humanitarian response has been well documented in the past few years, from the UN Disaster 2.0 report to the rise of the CrisisMappers Network and beyond. A starting point might be the use of online bulletin boards (BBS) and mailing lists in response to the tsunami in Asia followed by a parallel timeline for most small and large humanitarian and conflict crises since 2004. The tools and volume have changed over time, but the propensity to connect and potentially help occurs after each incident. The fact is that every day there is a local or global emergency happening somewhere (slow onset or immediate), and there is a flood of online communications that follows immediately afterwards. The high volume of news and citizen data saturates online spaces with such speed that accurate reports and priority items can become a blur. This user-generated content (UGC) comes in many forms: texts, photos, aerial and satellite imagery, videos and more. Digital responders learn and refine techniques with each response.

Humanitarian organizations and the citizens they serve are overwhelmed by the speed of change and the onslaught of information. In the five years since the Haiti earthquake, there has been a steady progression of change. Humanitarian groups have sometimes resisted incorporating social media into their information workflows. Often this is due to process changes, a lack of trust, concerns about accuracy and fear of change. People who create user-generated content are often considered outliers and have not yet gained the trust of leaders within official institutions. And having people in affected regions use these tools to help each other or ask for help changes the information flow from one-way to two-way. Humanitarian institutions simply adapt to change at a slower pace. They also have a low capacity to review information outputs and seldom have the funds to incorporate UGC into their processes. Plus, they often do not understand the tools and techniques these online/offline communities use to connect. The conundrum is that UGC and citizens are simply changing faster. As a result, this gap between the two groups is being tested and often fulfilled in new ways.

Across the world there are branded hubs, labs, fellowships, meetings, conferences and research. Governments, international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are all working on various projects. How can these new voices and communities become part of the humanitarian apparatus? From Unicef Innovation to Ihub Nairobi, Kathmandu Living Labs to UN Global Pulse Jakarta, there are many new spaces where solutions have been observed and created. There is a parallel stream with groups like the Code for All community and other civic technology or humanitarian technology/research communities who aim to connect software developers, data scientists and designers to solve hyperlocal issues with official organizations. Code for All has grown from its base in the United States to Japan and beyond. Their goal is to connect local communities and governments with digital technologies and problem solvers for all issues. The intersection of these two movements is inevitable in risk-prone areas.

Digital Response Communities, Their Scope and Effectiveness

The Digital Humanitarian Network consists of many groups, from those that create maps, like Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, and those who curate social information like Humanity Road and Standby Task Force, to those bridging language skills like Translators without Borders. Digital responders coalesce during an emergency to tackle tasks that can be large or small. For instance, over 2,800 people contributed to the Nepal earthquake response by doing small tasks such as using MicroMappers to make quick decisions about text or images. These curated information insights were used by over 250 organizations to make decisions about various needs for their response, including damage assessments and aid distribution. This example shows that UGC can be created by anyone, but someone still needs to parse the data, find the crucial points and match these items to needs and actions. After reviewing the IP addresses of contributors, Qatar Computing Research Institute observed that the majority of these digital MicroMapper helpers were from northern countries.

For the Nepal earthquake response, over 7,500 people contributed to improve OpenStreetMap in a short span of time. OpenStreetMap is the Wikipedia of maps, creating a large free and open dataset that anyone can use. The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (a VTC) creates tools and training to support mapping for humanitarian response and economic development. The Nepal Earthquake response was co-lead by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and Kathmandu Living Labs. Kathmandu Living Labs, started in 2013, creates local data and map solutions and partnerships for Nepal. They have steadily built a local community of mappers trained to use OpenStreetMap, and they have mapped the country. Over the years, they have also built relationships with a range of local partners, from emergency responders to universities. When the Nepal earthquake struck, they lost their office and a day’s worth of work. Meanwhile, remote digital responders in the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) community activated. HOT, with the generous support of partners, obtained both pre- and post-disaster satellite imagery to determine the regions of Nepal that might be affected.

While they are informal, these networks are all driven by the common vision of UGC for humanitarian response. Simply put, they move fast and have the initiative to do what is most needful. For example, the OpenStreetMap Japan Foundation community translated the Guide to Mapping Buildings in Nepal from the Kathmandu Living Labs. Thus one former disaster-affected civic technology community activated to aid another, transferring skills and supporting digital needs. No government or formal institution advised that this was required; people simply self-organized based on digital responder knowledge and the desire to help their digital neighbours. While these processes are not yet seamless, the gap between official and informal is closing with each response.

Three Challenges

1. At the moment, the vast majority of social media is available via public posts. But with huge growth in private messaging tools like WhatsApp, how will digital response incorporate data from platforms like this?

2. In times of crisis, data becomes the lifeblood of managing humanitarian operations. But as access to data increases, how will people safeguard the privacy and security of those who need help?

3. What role should the main social platforms play during disasters? Can these social networks work together more closely to coordinate their responses?


This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and The World Economic Forum sharing insights gained from surveying 5,000 digital media users from Brazil, China, Germany, South Africa and the U.S on the impact of digital media on society. The series is developed in conjunction with the Forum’s Shaping the Future Implications of Digital Media for Society project and the Forum’s Impact of Digital Content: Opportunities and Risks of Creating and Sharing Information Online white paper. The series is running during the Forum’s Annual Meeting 2016 (in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, Jan. 20-23). Read all the posts in the series here.

19Jan

Thank you, Team Aingel

When an emergency happens, lives and homes are affected. People share images and information via social media. There are more data sources available to provide insights, including aerial imagery. All these data items result in information overload. How can technology help address this question of discoverability of key insights for humanitarians? Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) has been tackling this research project on information curation pipeline for over 3 years. Many bright minds have contributed to the project called Artificial Intelligence for Disaster Response (AIDR) which combines machine learning and human computing.

QSTP DEMO Day

QCRI participated in the Qatar Science & Technology Park Accelerator programme from September 2015 – January 2016. We took the prototype of AIDR and spin up AINGEL, a startup idea. Last night was Demo Day and we are happy to share some thanks and details about the project. As you can imagine, working on a startup idea is a steep curve for entrepreneurs and innovators. For the past 6 years, I have been involved in various types of humanitarian technology projects, so being in a ‘startup’ has been a fascinating learning journey. I’ll write more about this topic in the coming weeks. My colleagues will be sure to share more about the next steps for the startup.

We have many people to thank for their hard work, ideas, support and sheer grit to incept, design, research, and test a product. Add to this going through the process of an Accelerator to deliver a demo and pitch.

Thank you!

AIDR and AINGEL Product Development: Carlos (Chato) Castillo, Muhammad Imran, Patrick Meier, Ji Kim Lucas, Meghna Singh, Koushik Sinha, Latika Bhurani, Kushal Goyal, Sushant Dahiya, Sonu Malpani and Aman Agrawal.

Research, Advisal and Operations: Justine Mackinnon, Jaideep Srivastava. Lokendra Chauhan, Peter Mosur, Ibrahim Soltan, Raymond Filippe and Madj Abbar. Graphics by Jaideep Singh and Video by Farthest Star.

QSTP: Pontus All, Salvino Salvaggio, Mohammed Zebian and Haya Al Ghanim. Also, the PR and Events team.

Thanks as well to all our amazing classmates. Keep changing the world and Qatar with your ideas and startups.

ABOUT AINGEL:

Here is a video of our prototype and our slides:

Next steps

Participation in the Accelerator Programme is only the beginning for AINGEL. The team will definitely keep iterating. Any future inquiries should be directed to qcri.org.qa or lokendra AT gmail.com. And, stay tuned for more posts about humanitarian technology and innovation paths.

19Aug

Digital Humanitarians in Qatar

It is World Humanitarian Day today! Humanitarians make a huge difference in the lives of many people around the world. On this day that we honour these amazing people, we are starting a local Digital Humanitarian Community to support their efforts.

Doha skyline

Digital Humanitarians are a growing global network of people aiming to use their technology and social media skills to support humanitarians and affected communities. There are many communities within the Digital Humanitarian Network. Our goal is to encourage more participation from Qatar and the GCC. We will host local community events, training and support. Qatar has a high youth and very technical capable population. It is our hope that more people from Qatar will join and lead within the various communities.

We’ve created a mailing list to help you connect. (digitalhumanitarians-qatar@googlegroups.com ) Join us and stay tuned for more details. Please introduce yourself – your interests and why you are keen to learn.

This community is for you. We will provide spaces for technical and non-technical participation. Getting involved in your world is your journey. Digital Skills learned from Digital Humanitarian activities are directly applicable to your learning and your potential career. Plus, you will meet others from around the world who seek to make a digital difference.

There are a number of active Digital Humanitarians at Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) (based in Doha Qatar). We created Artificial Intelligence for Disaster Response (AIDR) and MicroMappers to help people get involved in the world. Training and events will include data, maps, verification and software techniques. We will invite our local and global friends to help support your learning journey.

Upcoming Events

World Humanitarian Youth Summit

Our first big activity will be joining the World Humanitarian Summit – Global Youth Consultation to be held in Doha on September 1 – 2, 2015. The Reach out to Asia team has been working hard to bring over 450 young people from around the world. There will also be many participants from Qatar. Our team will host a booth at HBKU to share details about our work at QCRI and share how you can be a Digital Humanitarian. Please stop by and visit to learn more!

17Aug

Checking into the next stage of Digital Humanitarians

What does NEXT look like? Often as digital humanitarians, we are in the weeds of tasks. Many of us are still writing about the Nepal Earthquake Response and pondering how to improve and learn. With Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, I have my hands full with the Executive Director hiring process. And, at Qatar Computing Research Institute, we are testing a MicroMappers microtasking translation clicker with our friends over at Translators without Borders.

Last week Aspiration’s Willow Brugh held a casual Digital Humanitarian Checkin. In the conversation, each of the participants provided an update about themselves, their research, their technology and/or their digital humanitarian community. This checkin was special on a few fronts. First, many of us connect during times of crisis when we are super busy leading activations and onboarding new volunteers.

laptop


See the notes from our chats.
Some of the big themes were:

  1. Cross-community collaboration processes and tools
  2. Contributor Training and On-boarding
  3. Potential global meet-up for Digital Humanitarians

We need more regular activities to connect outside of emergencies. Thanks Willow for being the connector.

MicroMappers Global Map - Nepal Earthquake May 5, 2015
(Source: MicroMappers Global Nepal Earthquake response, June 2015. Created by Ji Lucas with Cartodb)

Digital Humanitarians in Qatar

I see blank spots on the map as a need to shift training and engagement. This is already happening, but for the next months, I am going to try to build a program in Doha. There are so many talented digital folks in Doha. I’d like to see them join the Digital communities. Certainly in speaking with some of them, I found a strong interest to learn.

World Humanitarian Youth Summit

If someone has the base digital skills, then they will remix it for local language, culture and needs. Plus, everything you learn is directly applicable to success in your career. Employees want digital savvy staff.

There is a buzz of activity in Qatar leading up the the World Humanitarian Youth Summit to be held in Doha on September 1 – 2, 2015. I’m hatching plans for digital activities to encourage more participation from Qatar residents and hopefully the GCC/MENA regions. Stay tuned.

28Jul

Matter – A Reflection on Volunteering

Motivation and matter: topics that drive me. (I’ve written about Heart and Fractual Matter before.) At Qatar Computing Research Institute, I’m creating programs to make it easier for MENA, GCC and Qatari folks to get involved in Digital Volunteering. The World Humanitarian Youth Summit is coming to Doha, so opportunity is knocking. I’ve also been thinking more about sustainable care-taking of “matter-ness” within the digital communities.

Volunteer motivation reasons frequently narrow down to “Matter” or “Inspired” or “Do Something” or “Knowing I can do something“. Today I got the “matter shivers” again. Tracy Glenn of SIDRA spoke at the Humanitarians of SIDRA event. Sidra is a Doha-based Medical and Research Center.

humanitarians of sidra

Tracy volunteered as a nurse in a Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU) in Rwanda and Palestine. During her time, she assessed and made recommendations to improve processes in the PACU. Her talk incorporated stories and photos from her experience in Jenin (Palestine) with the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. Helping the vulnerable and train local capacity is a gift. Her honest integrity showed in every sentence and photo. By telling little snippets of life in the medical facility, she gave us a window in the healthcare needs in Jenin and the lives of the people she served. Listening to Tracy reminded me of all the other humanitarians in my life who have shared such heartfelt inspiration to volunteer with their skills. I hope that you get hear all their stories more. Healthcare professionals truly have this hardwired in their processes and networks. What can we learn from them? I certainly learned today from Tracy. (Thank you).

********

We’re all here coz we care

Jemilah Mahmoud on WHSummit (July 28, 2015)

Returning to my desk, I started to reflect on how to sustain motivation in a healthy way. As Digital Humanitarians, we go through phases of on/off. With every large response, I am seeing the wear on digital volunteers. Some of the people who gave their digital skills during the Haiti or Christchurch response contacted me just after the Nepal Earthquake and said sorry that they took a break but were ready to do something. Warmly I told each person how happy I was to hear from them.

We are so connected but disconnected some times in how we talk about volunteering. Every interaction is a gift. The human-ness of giving and volunteering is beautiful. We need to keep walking forward in cycles of sustainable patterns. And, when I say sustainable patterns, I mean – our own pace, taking care of ourselves, those we love and those who are allies. The saturation of energy during a response often takes weeks to months to recoup the cicada rhythms of spirit. Each digital organization needs this in their fabric.

The World Humanitarian Summit tweets via #ReShapeAid are a daily read for me. I try to read all the reports. And, I have had the pleasure to review and add some comments on how digital training needs to be part of the youth engagement strategy. But as we build programs and software to really ACTION the feedback of #ReShapeAid, how can we keep that pure sense of “motivation” and “matter” without burning out people. The intense purpose needs sunshine and a hug. I’m not trying to make light of the real focus we need to have. But with joy, the spaces (online and offline) that we create need to have human check-ins and keep humanity. This means inclusive, respectful, locally driven and with a spirit of “Matter” that does not crush the spirit or the action required. I think that digital spaces need to #Reshape too.

***

Dr. Mahmoud’s comment above on the same day as Tracy’s talk got me thinking. There are videos, photos and audio clips all around the internet. Many organizations have this as part of their use case narrative. But, what if there was a massive aggregator of videos, audio and photos on Why Humanitarian Volunteering Matters? Maybe we should start creating these items in all our digital spaces to honour the upcoming
World Humanitarian Day on August 19th this year.

2Jul

Your Next Job could be with QCRI’s Social Computing team

Feeding curiosity and delivering excellence is of utmost importance at Qatar Computing Research Institute. With top research scientists, software engineers and program technologists, QCRI has the pulse of an entrepreneurship environment with the heart of scientific rigor. Computer vision, UAV image processing, social media analysis, wearables, big data and cybersecurity are just some of the topics that teams tackle.

2015 LOGO QF-QCRI

We’re hiring for multiple positions across: Social Computing, Data Analytics, CyberSecurity, Arabic Language Technologies, Distributed Systems, and Computational Science and Engineering.

Start your future here.

Definitely Social

In November 2014, I joined the Social Computing team. It has been a fast paced adventure to learn about all the research projects and formulate programs to foster Social Innovation in Qatar. Often I joke that my role is to add baking soda to research. The opportunity to connect research, entrepreneurship and technology for social good feeds my mind and soul. We are seeking research scientists, software engineers and even post-doctoral students to maintain our momentum. I’ve added two active descriptions. Won’t you join us? Please do ask me questions. And, share with your networks.


Social Computing group researches and builds programmes for: (1) mining social media for sociopolitical, cultural, and behavioral patterns, (2) social media intelligence for news and (3) extracting timely and credible information from social media for crisis response. We incorporate the cross-cutting Social Innovation initiatives which includes research and programmes on resilient cities, humanitarian software, digital humanitarians and youth engagement.

Active Social Computing Roles

Research Scientist

The Principal Scientist is a senior departmental leader within QCRI who is responsible for leading and conducting scientific research work. The Principal Scientist will have primary responsibility for defining the methodology for conducting research and for evaluating research results in order to ensure the highest standards of practice and research quality, while aligning research activities with QCRI’s mission and vision. The Principal Scientist will also possess a strong background in computational social science, behavior mining, visualization, text mining, data mining, machine learning, data management, or information retrieval.

Software Engineer

Experience in the development of data-intensive applications involving the processing of large datasets is required.

Experience dealing with blogs/micro-blogs and other user generated contents is required.
Fluency in Java and at least one scripting language (e.g. Perl, PHP, Ruby or Python) is required.
Familiarity with data mining and/or data warehousing, technologies, a plus.
Relational database experience required, MySQL a plus.
NoSQL database experience required, Redis or Cassandra, a plus.
Experience applying Machine Learning or Natural Language Processing methods, a plus.
Strong communication and collaboration skills; must be fluent in English.

Rank and compensation will be commensurate with experience. Please apply via the QCRI website.

27May

Your Neighbour is Mapping

It has been a month since the Nepal Earthquake occurred and the digital humanitarian response has somewhat slowed. We remain mindful of the lives lost and potential long recovery period. As with every emergency now, global civic tech and mapper communities connect. In this case, our friends and colleagues at Kathmandu Living Labs were at the centre. This was the largest collective response as of yet. Time and analysis will tell us how effective we were and inform the next stages. The number of contributors across organizations with diverse skillsets/offerings ranged from 40,000 with Tomnod, 2800 with MicroMappers with leaders Standby Task Force (Over 170) and over 6000 with Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. We were inspired by the tremendous leadership of Kathmandu Living Labs(KLL) who together with partners like Humanity Road deployed of the most successful Ushahidi deployments for crisis response. KLL also co-lead the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team activation.

It is increasingly evident that the response changed Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team’s (HOT) community. Now that some of us have had some time to rest and reflect, it is only fitting to host a session at State of the Map US on “Your Neighbour is Mapping“. How can we learn and foster civic tech like OpenStreetMap around the world, especially building on the lessons from the Nepal response? And, while we think big, consider neighbourhoods and regions that could be foster the civic tech spirit of OpenStreetMap in their own language, culture and traditions. Add to a discussion how to diminish the mapper gender divide.

State of the Map – US Tickets are going fast (Get yours by June 1st, 2015).

State of the Map – United States – Join us!

State of the Map – US, organized by the OpenStreetMap US team, will be held at the United Nations. There are many sessions about the wider OpenStreetMap community, technology and use cases. HOT members and community contributors will also be leading a number of conversations. Leaders include Dale Kunce, Kate Chapman, Mikel Maron and John Crowley to name a few. We are also planning on hosting a Birds of a Feather (informal chat) about HOT and the community.

Map icon

Together with Ivan Gayton of Medicine Sans Frontieres (MSF) I will be co-hosting a session. We want to spark a conversation on how we think OpenStreetMap’s community can get to the next 1 Million people. Both of us will ask: “what does implementation look like?” (even with the hard questions) There are many OSM and HOT projects around the world each with their own networks and activities. Drawing on his Missing Maps experience, Ivan will cite his lessons from hosting Missing Mapathons and field work in the Democratic Republic of Congo. (Missing Maps is a partnership between HOT, MSF and American Red Cross). As a HOT Board member for the past 3 years, I’ve been engaged in many community maturity and community growth conversations. We need to keep building on this. With some many contributors, how can we improve their experience and keep them engaged? To me, OpenStreetMap changed with the Nepal response. HOT changed. This a great thing. Now, how do we learn and pivot?

Elasticity means Local leads Global

Mapathons from Japan, Brazil, US, to Germany, local leaders in Nepal, and over 6000 contributors globally mapping using pre- and post-disaster imagery were just some of the community highlights from the Nepal response. Add to that all the guides on how to map everything from heliopads to Displaced Persons Camps and very detailed discussions about process, validation, imagery analysis and best practices for onboarding new mappers. HOT has always been an accordion growing for large activations and staying the course for longer term projects. We have learned so much about what we need to be more sustainable. This means everything from better training, software improvements, community microgrants, mentorship, and community development. But the biggest reminder is what makes HOT so special: yet again the local community, in this case, Nepal truly lead and taught the global ‘surge’ support what was needed while collaborating with official humanitarians.

We need to foster local OSM communities and civic tech hubs like Kathmandu Living Labs or HOT Indonesia. And, in doing so, recognize that we have so much to learn and share about global collaboration. It is my theory that much like the open data movement, these large pockets of OSM will alter the fabric to make it truly global. There were some moments during the Nepal Response when I would open my email and gasp with pride at the sheer collaborative generousity of people trying to map for good. The earnest spirit and drive to deliver the best maps to support humanitarians is what drives me to support HOT as their President. So, funders, (warmly) get ready for some phone calls. We need help to keep the momentum. And that we see how the lists of items that the new and long-standing contributors provided deserves consideration.

*******

OpenStreetMap in Qatar

I live in Doha, Qatar. When I moved here I researched the state of “open communities” and made some contacts. Some allies include QMIC, AL Jazeera, IctQatar, Qatar Living and Mada Qatar. At Qatar Computing Research Institute, we also use and create open source software, including OSM. The crux of the issue is that Doha is changing everyday and maps are quickly out of date. But, if there was a strong OSM community then this could be tackled. Countless times trying to explain location with faulty GPS or building names teaches me daily on the true need for OSM to grow here. There are people who want to build businesses on top of the base layer. They want the skills. Some immediate goals are to translate LearnOSM.org needs to be in arabic and begin hosting mapping parties. The good news is that I have located a small map cohort. Come September, we will host Maptime Meetings. Now, Doha does not need HOT for ‘economic development’ like other regions of the world, but Doha’s OSM mapping community will benefit from HOT tools and best practices.

(Map icon: by Mister-Pixel from Noun-Project)

27May

Doha brewing Smart City activities

Driving into the Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP), one is struck with the sweeping architecture reflecting a fast-paced ambition to evolve. There are moments in Doha where you can see the future. Places like QSTP very much demonstrate the active efforts of many to change a city and country. It is only fitting that such a place would host the Smart Cities: Dreams to Reality Tech Talk.

Smart Cities TechTalk panel May252015

(Photo: Dr.Thomas Groegler, Waleed Al Saadi, Mansoor Al-Khater and Abdulaziz Ahmed Al-Khal)

The event opened with Mansoor Al-Khater: Chief Strategy Officer of Ooredoo Qatar (a national telco) asking: How can use the huge amount of data to push economic development? Building on his wide-angle lens vision of Smart Cities, he set that tone outlining the potential of smart city technologies. Examples included using smart city technology to change traffic flows to divert from accidents/volume or notify citizens in case of emergencies. But, he emphasized that Smart cities are not just about the technology. It is a shift in culture and how we interact with our cities.

Mr. Abdulaziz Ahmed Al-Khal, Chief Commercial Officer at Qatar Mobility Innovations Center (QMIC) highlighted some points about why smart cities will matter to the citizens. He asked us how startups can spark from organic ideas to full technical platforms. QMIC is a partner of Qatar Computing Research Institute. In my time at QCRI, I’ve had a chance to meet a number of the staff and review their platforms. There are over 300 sensors on the various streets and roads around Doha. These sensors stream to real-time maps and provide large data insights into traffic flow. This is one of the growing issues as the city population expands faster than the infrastructure build. While QMIC is seeking to build businesses and foster data-driven startups, QCRI is along on this journey to use our data analytics brainpower and ponder how social computing (how humans interact and provide data via social media.).

Doha is a mix of old city and new city, but Qatar is building Lusail from scratch as a Smart City. This is really a long tail plan. You can read about it on the Lusail website. Having driven by this city, I really am more curious now the city in the making will evolve. Engineer Waleed Al Saadi invited people to explore the Lusail progress. I’ll add it to the list right after visiting the Msherieb enrichment centre. This part of Doha is set to be the most wired and sustainable area.

Lastly Dr. Thomas Groegler, Head of the Innovation Center of Siemens, reminded us that with all this technology and dreaming, we need to deeply consider and address how the smart city work will increase the digital divide, improve or decrease accessibility and, most importantly, effect all parts of physical and digital security. Points taken. Truly, it is with these realities that we must be mindful of our decisions and engage citizens.

How does this relate to our work at QCRI?

At QCRI Social Computing, we have two research and development streams that directly intersect with smart city activities: Social Media in Disaster and Resilient Cities. It is exciting to consider how our work can support and measure the national goals. As a digital humanitarian, I see how a network of Digital Qatar could support this emergency chart. While the formal organizations will use sensors and SMS, there is still a need to consider how social media in Qatar would be used during an emergency. This is about preparedness and an engaged citizenery.
Ooredoo on Smart City Emergency Response

Doha has a way to go to improve as we journey down the Smart City Path. Listed as #41 on the Sustainable City Index, there are standards and programmes to build to engage citizens in what they need from their city as well to foster the brightest entrepreneurs to use data to grow businesses to support the needs of various communities. Smart City Doha needs to keep building a civic tech community. There are pockets of amazing social entrepreneurship and technology groups. These just need to be activated more.

20May

Advanced Research and Technology from WGET: ICT Humanitarian Innovation Forum

What are some of the research opportunities in Humanitarian Innovation? What are some of the “bright spots” to advance technology (new or existing)? The Working Group for Emergency Telecommunications (WGET) – ICT Humanitarian Innovation Forum was held in Dubai on April 29 – 30, 2015. While I curated the session, I was unable to attend at the last minute. Colleagues Larissa Fast and Rakesh Bharania kindly lead the interactive workshop about Communicating with Affected Communities. The WGET audience is a mix of technology companies, humanitarians, researchers and governmental (INGO, NGO, national and international) experts. This unique forum provided a chance to really drive conversations across disciplines.

WGET Session Description

Disaster-affected communities are increasingly the source of the “Big Data” that gets generated during disasters. Making sense of this flash flood of information is proving an impossible challenge for traditional humanitarian organizations. What are the next generation needs for actionable research and software in the fields of Social Data, Predictives and New Technology for Humanitarian response, especially focused on communicating with communities? This session will highlight the lessons learned from the Field while engaging participants in small group feedback sessions. Participants will be asked to discuss key topics such as research needs, opportunities and barriers. Suggestions will be documented and serve as an output from the workshop.

ABOUT WGET

UN OCHA created this Storify: Unveiling Digital Aid at the 2015 WGET
Find the WGETForum on Twitter
See the WGET website

WGET  Session

What are some of the opportunities, barriers and research needs to advance technology use for Humanitarian response?

Many of these answers are fairly common for any project: development and humanitarian. I am struck by the missing ‘step ladder’ to solutions. With the World Humanitarian Summit coming, will there be some technical meetings to brainstorm on ‘what does success look like’? Some of the work at Qatar Computing Research Institute, School of Data, Responsible Data Forum, Brck and various social entrepreneurs are tackling these issues. Are these tools and techniques reaching the right people?

I’ve taken the liberty to highlight the key points. The session format provided ‘headline’ topics. While these lists are missing some of the conversational context, it is our hope that it gives you a window into some of the knowledge shared. The next steps are truly up to all of us.

Some of the barriers cited for advancing use of technology include:
  • How they can operate best where countries declare an emergency. When a country says it does not have an emergency, it prevents from responding.
  • Lack of clear problem statement—lack of social data but we don’t know how more of it would solve a problem.
  • Predictive models need to be adaptive to be effective, which increases complexity
  • Funding, Costs
  • Restrictive government policies
  • Regulation/policy
  • No coordination of efforts
  • Trust (between organizations and people to organizations)
  • Decision-making triggers/timelines
  • Variety of platforms – trusted?
  • Connectivity
  • Disrupted networks in disasters, lack of real-time data
  • Energy infrastructure, energy resources, energy/electricity competencies
  • Duplication of efforts
  • Veracity of information
  • Risk of information to the organization
  • Reliability of data
  • Data protection,Data expiration
  • Do we want to use social data? What’s the point?
  • High noise-to-signal ratio
  • No one person(s) who across all organizations is collecting data and knowledge of all going on
  • Knowing information gaps and what is being collected and not
Opportunities in research and advancing technology:
  • Everyone is trying to solve this problem… need a forum where we can share
  • Financing mechanisms based on predictive data/forecast
  • Social media; good platform if we are able to use it properly.
  • Provide insight into an issue
  • Create awareness
  • Feedback mechanisms to better adapt humanitarian response to needs
  • Integration of public social media awareness for self-filtering (?) into preparedness campaigns
  • Move towards demand-driven assistance, especially in acute phase of relief
  • How can we evaluate effectiveness of our interventions.
  • Enhance decision-making
  • Mechanism/triggers for decisions
  • Common tools, analysis to collect intelligence from a variety of platforms
  • Base applications on HXL so that they can be aggregated (?), exchanged, consolidated
  • Share initiatives – communicate to all others so no duplication and extra effort
  • Crisis signal – see areas with coverage of phones etc. Provides useful info
  • To use the new social related applications which we are well known to send live videos of cases that required immediate action (e.g., Snapchat)
  • Using the UAVs to send live videos to people in charge of the humanitarian response
  • Pooling/sharing resources, risk, skills/analysis
  • Provide through experiments
  • Narrative to show need/value, lives saved/lost (feedback (positive/negative)
  • Provision better programmes by reacting to real time data
  • Evaluating effectiveness of our interventions real time
Some Brainstormed ideas:
  • Research: study on impact of tech on community resilience (net effect)
  • Create a humanitarian open-source community to develop tools based on social data
  • Accountability of quality
  • Insecurity of shared information
  • Escalation of information
  • Adaptive, real-time predictive models
  • Integrated social media filters for preparedness programs
  • ICT tech: problem statement, expertise in house (analysis, security), + tools
  • Data transfer agreement
  • Clearing and monitoring mechanisms for social data to make it trustworthy
  • Keep in mind the ethical considerations of ICT use in humanitarian
  • To allow models/analysis and define the way data can be used across agencies or specifically across the cluster

********


Thanks to UN OCHA (Patrick and Amanda) for supporting this session, Larissa and Rakesh for hosting in my stead, and Olly Parsons of GSMA for some great notes. And, thanks to all the participants for driving the conversations.

© Copyright 2016, All Rights Reserved