Humanitarian

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.

(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.

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

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

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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.

17May

Working with and through Volunteers

Alex Rose, Disaster Program Manager for the American Red Cross (ARC) gave an informal talk at Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) about working with and through volunteers. QCRI is very keen to tie our humanitarian software research and development to real world work. Thanks Alex for sharing your work with our staff and summer interns.

As a humanitarian volunteer and staff, he shared examples about volunteer engagement and motivation. Los Angeles is a large city with a high risk of earthquakes. He wove stories of volunteers with examples on how resilient societies like Los Angeles can augment their communities with logistics planning and volunteer engagement. How would Doha prepare for a large emergency? Do we have the community infrastructure to support the official responders? Ironically, during the whole presentation, the fire alarms were being tested in the QCRI Tornado Tower offices. Always be prepared.

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One of my goals in Qatar and the GCC is to create a Digital Qatar or Digital GCC network. We have much to learn from building online communities. Are we supporting healthy ecosystems for people to feel rewarded and motivated? Are we providing enough training and leadership? During the question and answer session, Mr. Rose encouraged both digital and local communities to provide letters of thanks and certificates for training. This is core to community growth and very much a best practice that we can all learn from the ARC. Based on the guest talk, I will be making some refinements to the MicroMappers process to incorporate better engagement.

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Traveling to Doha

At QCRI, we encourage technologists, researchers, software companies and humanitarians to visit our offices and provide a session on your work. We want to encourage learning from practitioners and leaders to share their story. Please do drop me a line and I’ll make the arrangements.

5May

MicroMappers Nepal Response

[Cross-posted from MicroMappers.org, a project that I work on at QCRI]

A MicroMappers silver thread of goodness stitches this great world together. For the Nepal Earthquake response, Digital Humanitarians united from Doha to Bangalore to Phnom Penh to Auckland to Manila to Hong Kong to Vancouver to Buenos Aires to Mexico City to Boston to Stockholm to Bucharest to Nairobi to Capetown. Humanitarians and citizens of Nepal continue their efforts to deliver aid and support the country in the wake of the Nepal Earthquake. Our hearts go out to their important work and long road to recovery.

Over 2800 contributors reviewed tweets and images in the thousands to support humanitarians with information insights (See the full data below). All your ‘clicks’ and ‘decisions’ resulted in a highly curated dataset that was shared and incorporated into damage assessment decision-making by responders.

On behalf of the whole Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) team and our partners the Standby Task Force, UN OCHA and GeoThings, we thank you for every moment you spent reviewing content, every time you shared this project with your networks and every time that you thought: “I can make a small difference in this world.” You took time away from your busy lives and families to help our neighbours who happen to be Humanitarians.

QCRI Senior Software Developer, Ji Kim Lucas, created this map to show the global MicroMappers Nepal Earthquake Response effort. We humbled by the power of community. Thank you!

MicroMappers for Nepal earthquake Response (april 2015) | Create infographics

Media Coverage of MicroMappers

The MicroMappers project storytelling has been lead by my colleague, Patrick Meier. He is a true leader in the Crisismapping and Digital Humanitarian space. If you have not read his book about the growth of Digital Humanitarians, I highly recommend that you do so. It is all our story of how we aim to use technology for good. It is a true pleasure to work at QCRI with Patrick, Ji and the whole Social Innovation/Social Computing team. We are humbled by the 2800 contributors and how the media has embraced this story during such a difficult time for the Nepali people.

24Apr

Board Announcements: PeaceGeeks and Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team

The journey to grow digital technology communities has taken a number of forms in my career. I’ve had the great pleasure to work with some amazing leaders, partners and communities both in a professional and volunteer capacity. I am pleased to share that I have been re-elected to the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team Board of Directors (3rd year) with the role of President of the Board and elected to the PeaceGeeks Board of Directors (1st year). These map and technical communities are part of a larger Digital Humanitarian Network. For both boards, my priorities are strategy,fundraising and community building. I look forward to helping both organizations and communities grow their missions while supporting the beautiful engagement of helping people make a technical difference in this great world.

About Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team [HOT] applies the principles of open source and open data sharing for humanitarian response and economic development.

This is my 3rd year as a member of the HOT Board. As a crisismapper and digital humanitarian, HOT is really a community home for me. I remain in awe of HOT’s potential. The community membership and board have honoured me with the role of President of HOT. As mentioned in my candidate statement, I see this as a critical year for HOT to grow local communities and build infrastructure to support organizational development. The community is so inspiring. This results in my contributing volunteer time beyond the suggested five – ten hours a month. In the coming months, I will speak at the State of the Map – US about “Your Neighbour is Mapping” with my colleague from Medicine Sans Frontieres. We aim to share some thoughts on implementation of local communities.

The HOT Board position is elected by the community membership.

To learn more about HOT, see our wiki page.

About PeaceGeeks

PeaceGeeks empowers grassroots organizations by building technology partnerships to significantly improve or transform their efforts to promote peace and human rights in developing and conflict-affected areas. We see a world where every NGO can leverage technology to achieve lasting peace.

I’m most excited about PeaceGeek’s mission to work with small local NGOs on long-term sustainable projects. They aim to connect the global community to the local one stitching together offline and online techniques. There is so much potential to connect technical company corporate social responsibility programmes to PeaceGeeks’ wider network. Stay tuned as I learn more about PeaceGeeks and explore how I can connect them.

The Board of Director’s position is elected. I had a number of interviews by the team to be sure it was a good fit.

23Apr

Convening Innovation Allies

How can we use advanced computing, human computing and social innovation to have impact in Qatar? Healthy lives, taking care of the environmental, youth engagement, resilient cities, social entrepreneurship and humanitarian response are some of the core Social Computing research activities at Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI)?

On Wednesday, April 15, 2015, QCRI hosted a small forum to discuss social innovation in Qatar. The session consisted of speakers from QCRI and partners as well as some informal discussion groups. Thank you for our guests and participants for this informative conversation.

The Qatar Red Crescent Disaster Management Camp was held in Doha, Qatar from March 31 – April 9, 2015. These are some early observations that I had on the use of technology and the opportunities for future research and collaboration:

Report from the Qatar Red Crescent Disaster Management Camp from Heather Leson

We plan on expanding this dialogue in the future. Until then, your insights will inform both our strategic planning, research agenda and future activity collaborations.

QCRI’s Social Innovation Programme in Qatar is focused on four streams of research and activities:

Smart and Resilient Cities
Remote Sensing for Social Good
Digital Humanitarians
Social Media for Disaster

In the Resilient city discussion group we saw some opportunities with ICTQatar leading open data initiatives, QMIC working with traffic sensor data and the potential of sports data to provide insights into society. Collectively we agreed that we need to know more about resilience city and society ecosystems in Qatar. Some of the barriers included lack of policy and regulation in Qatar, community services need access to the data and
cellular data is hard to share.

The Remote Sensing group spent time thinking about blue sky uses for these tools and techniques. Some of the concepts tie directly into the Resilient City Group with opportunities to use phone traffic sensors, computer vision and drones and uavs for parking. Some of the potential imagery sources include landsat imagery, Planet Labs and Skybox (Google).

The Social Media for Disaster and Digital Humanitarian teams joined forces to delve into opportunities, barriers and new research items. Opportunities included a very diverse community (languages, cultures), engaged youth, access to technology/mobile devices and the sense of belonging in a geographically small but strategic area. The barriers include lack of civil society, language barriers, education levels and the fluidity of communities. Also, there is a need to reframe the concept of volunteering into opportunities for educational and society advancement. Research opportunities included understanding the needs/motivations of people, peer-to-peer transfer of knowledge, community development in Qatar and understanding social responsibility programs in Qatar.

Thanks again to the speakers, guests and my colleagues for a great morning.

13Apr

Communicating at Disaster Management Camp

The 6th Annual Qatar Red Crescent Disaster Management Camp (QRC DMC) successfully united over 300 participants for 10 days of intense practical training. My compliments to the Qatar Red Crescent staff, International Federation of Red Crescent and Red Cross, other trainers/guest speakers and participants for a very professional and often all too realistic training camp. On behalf of Dr. Sofiane Abbar, Dr. Sarah Vieweg and our team, thank you for including Qatar Computing Research Institute in your event.

Participants at the DMC included Qatar Red Crescent Staff, staff of other Red Crescent societies, the Qatar EMS, Qatar Civic Defense, other official entities and volunteers. A portion of the participants were divided into training teams designated by colour code. These groups received training across various humanitarian and emergency scenarios including water and sanitation, shelter, food and nutrition, search and rescue, medical response and communications.Participants were responsible for the activity from their training track for the remainder of the day. The Social Media and New Technology class taught by my co-host, Ali El-Sebai El-Gamal (Qatar Red Crescent), and I held a one hour training for 6 days with 6 different teams. Before and after class, I created online communications, attended scenarios, joined classes and other camp activities. Every day people talked with me about the potential of Digital Humanitarian skills, Qatar Computing Research Institute’s work and best practices of social media during emergencies. So, if students attended the Media and Communications track, they were then responsible for all camp communications for the day (as with all the other tracks.) The Media and Communications track included media handling, communications methods, GPS, Satellite phones, radios and social media. We observed social media and communications training translate practical communications activities during the scenarios. The methodology of learn by doing provided students with a richer experience. The communications teams used their social savvy to practice online verification and human computing (harnessing ‘your network’), they live-tweeted events, crushed rumours and held press conferences with Twitter. They used WhatsApp to relay critical information during scenarios between two emergency sites, thus having the medical center receive updates via radio, phone and a WhatsApp messaging group. Pictures were also sent via WhatsApp by the response team to medical team to help them prepare.

المتحدث الرسمي باسم غرفة العمليات تتحدث للصحافة عن الاستجابة والاحصاءات الأولية #مخيم_الكوارث6 pic.twitter.com/vOTYxD34Ec

— Haneen Suliman (@haneen81) April 7, 2015

See our updated Storify (aggregation of social media) of the Qatar Red Crescent Disaster Management Camp. While the photos include smiling faces, note that we often delayed or obscured social content during some difficult scenarios. After all, the purpose of the camp is not only about communications and storytelling. Some of the participants have previously participated in humanitarian response. Some of the new trainees will be trained more and deployed. On the last day of the QRC DMC, I watched faces of participants and staff knowing full well that they may experience the best and worst of humanity. The teaching moments abound as I consider how to apply this experience to our work at Qatar Computing Research Institute. I have some ideas based on the feedback from staff and participants. Stay tuned on the implementation after I do some reflection and consultation.

Often the scenarios and conversations resulted in participants and staff highlighting ethical issues around these communications tactics. It was fantastic to hear people question issues around social media from privacy, security, access, trusted sources and the best practices. As humanitarians, they will face a wide range of issues so training instincts and debating tools/tactics is so important. The reality is that within a camp such as this it is possible to see just how pervasive new media may be during some emergencies. It is true though that this adds a complexity to their already difficult work. But the point of highlighting these tools and techniques is really training for “IF” social media and messaging becomes a factor in their real field work.

DATA: Disaster Management Camp Participant Use of Social Media and New Technology

Every day I collected a straw poll (informal survey) in my class. I asked people about their use of social media and new technology. Sometimes there were people missing from the groups due to meetings, so the numbers are not exact. However, this gives you a window into the DMC’s community technology use. Thanks to Infogram for the tools to tell this data story. How to use: click on the radio buttons to see the data by group and by type of social media/technology tool.

Qatar Red Crescent | Create infographics

(Photo 1: Said Tijani, Qatar Red Crescent, at the QRCDMC April 3, 2015 scenario, credit: Heather Leson CCBY; Photo 2: Suma (QRC) at the QRCDMC April 7, 2015 scenario).

3Apr

Dispatch: Qatar Red Crescent Disaster Management Camp

On behalf of Qatar Computing Research Institute, I have the honour to be a guest trainer at the 6th Annual Qatar Red Crescent Disaster Management Camp. This 10-day event (March 31 – April 9, 2015) includes training, scenarios and humanitarian keynotes. Participants are from all over the MENA region including students, staff of the QRCS, partner Red Crescent members, UNHCR, IFRC, ICRC, civil defense (various) and special guests.

Over 6 days, I will train small groups on social media, new technology, digital humanitarians and how QCRI is working to make a difference. These slides contain my talking points and extensive notes. As the camp is in Arabic, Ali Moustafa El-Sebai El Gamal of QRCS provided translation. Together we are providing an interactive session. Yesterday due to the sandstorm, there was a power outage. This is a perfect example of always be prepared. I delivered the training without slides. Truly it is always fun to train folks, but it is especially powerful to collaborate with humanitarians. This is my first full Disaster Management Camp. I’ve participated in many digital simulations but this is a great way to learn and share.

Learning by doing

The second reason that I am at Disaster Management Camp is to analyze how participants and staff use software and social media. At QCRI, we are very interested in taking the lessons we learn internationally and supporting Qatar. The Qatar Red Crescent team has been very welcoming. Over the coming months, I will be sharing my embedded research outputs.

Meta Level action

I’m a digital storyteller. Every event, I curate photos, quick vignettes and try to capture the mission and spirit. Together with my colleagues we are using Storify:

Thanks again to Qatar Red Crescent Society for the kind support of Qatar Computing Research Institute.

(photo credit: Amara-photos.com)

23Feb

Getting involved in HFOSS

Humanitarian
FOSS

[Cross-post from Opensource.com: This article is part of the HFOSS column coordinated by Jen Wike Huger. To share your projects and stories about how free and open source software is making the world a better place, contact us at osdc-admin@redhat.com].

Lending a digital hand for humanitarian projects is just a click away. Whether you have five minutes or a few hours, you can make a difference with a variety of HFOSS projects. The level of skills required vary from web search, verification, mapping, translation, training, and open source software development. Along the journey of changing the world, you can meet like minds and hone your skills. The key is to ask yourself: What do I want to do? How can I get started? How can I find the right project and community?

Over the years, Opensource.com has featured a number of articles about HFOSS and digital humanitarianism. We are in an unprecedented time of openness for international governmental organizations (INGOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Citizens and civil society have a place at the table to affect change via digital humanitarian efforts, often using free and open source software.

This primer provides an overview and touches on some amazing projects.

What can I do?

Many of you already contribute to open source projects, or you arrived at Opensource.com to seek a new adventure. When it comes to HFOSS, remember that you can’t break the Internet by trying. There is an element of seriousness and a sense of “matter” which might deter you. Don’t worry, we have a sense of humor and camaraderie like many open source communities.

Digital humanitarian communities vary in size, structure, and focus. There are well-established groups like Sahana Foundation or Ushahidi, as well as the growing Digital Humanitarian Network. Each of these organizations, and many more digital communities, seek your expertise. Sometimes theses groups have full blown “get involved” programs complete with “community task” labeled GitHub repositories, while others are just getting started.

Each community needs seasoned open source friendly leadership, mentorship, and development. Digital humanitarian communities also have more diverse opportunities to do small to large tasks. You do not need to develop code to contribute, though many of the HFOSS projects count on open source ethos and software development to thrive.

This is a quick cheat sheet to show you how you can get involved in HFOSS. The list is by no means complete, but it gives you an idea of how you can make a difference. Keep in mind that some of the communities require only small bits of time (less than 5 minutes to crowdsource or microtask), whereas others can evolve to larger tasks. And, if you are a serial volunteer like me, you can join a board or become an advisor. There is simply no shortage of opportunity. We, the HFOSS organizers, just need to find ways to make it easier for you to get involved.

11 ways to start with HFOSS

Task	HFOSS community
Learn	AIDR, all the projects
Map	MapAction, Ushahidi, MicroMappers, Sahana, Standby Task Force, Google Crisis Response, Crisismappers, Esri, Mapbox, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, GIS Corps and many more
Data	Statistics without Borders, DataKind many of the listed projects
Technology	Disaster Tech Lab, UAViators, Public Lab, Brck
Tell	all the projects
Share	Humanity Road, Veri.ly, CrisisCommons, Info4Disasters and all the projects
Translate	Translators without Borders, all the projects
Reward	Open Badges
Lead	all the projects
Teach	School of Data, all the above projects
Make	Peace Geeks, Geeks without Bounds, all the projects need open source contributors

Each of these groups provide value insights, software-driven products, and information management to support humanitarians. The drive to participate openly and to have all the details shared openly is compelling. The key question becomes: what if the time I spent volunteering on humanitarian responses and/or software could make a difference in someone’s life?

With the Digital Humanitarian Network providing a direct collaboration avenue, this hypothetical question is becoming a possibility. My colleague at Qatar Computing Research Institute, Patrick Meier, recently published a book, “Digital Humanitarians,” all about the rise of these groups. Now is the time to find ways to better connect our efforts with the larger open source and corporate social responsibility programs. If we are collaborating with the official humanitarian groups, how can we better reinforce our partnerships with our big brothers and sisters in open source?

The big dream

This community builders Infogr.am chart should help community managers to think about programs and strategic planning from the point of view of the contributor. It is focused on the types of tasks that people might want to contribute and the suggested time allotment. In reviewing various HFOSS sites, there is not really an up-to-date master index by skills required or types of projects. The onus is really on new upcoming groups and organizations to tap into the larger open source network. There are many established digital humanitarian organizations that need to be added to this wiki. Finding this site has given me homework. If you have any suggestions, please do edit away.

HFOSS organizers need to make is easier to help people get involved. One recommendation that I have is a simple navigator that asks people what they want to do or what they want to give. The aggregator would then help match them to tasks and communities. Think of it as a global Match.com for giving. We would give love to open source organizations, corporations, nonprofits, community-based organizations, and citizens. Truly, this is all hands on deck to make it possible for anyone and any organization to connect. We could tailor it with the code to help people choose their own adventure based on topic, time, location, and their learning/doing/giving path. Really, we need to dream big more and build it.

To find your way in HFOSS, you might hear a talk, see a tweet, then join a mailing list, participate in a working group, or scan a Wiki/website to drill into the types of tasks and contributions you can offer. What if there was a “Hot or Not” or “Ask not” (Mozilla community code) tool that allowed new contributors to find various HFOSS projects based on the contributor’s interests, time available, and skills? This type of user-driven search tool already exists for odesk and LinkedIn, which has the awesome volunteer.linkedin.com.

Now is the time

Humanitarians are at the table with HFOSS. We have a huge opportunity to give back our knowledge and skills to support people around the world. The World Humanitarian Summit is hosting online and in-person consultations to help the traditional organizations move forward. Many INGOs and NGOs are turning to digital humanitarian, civil society, and software organizations to provide input to affect change. There are amazing innovators like Andrej Verity of UN OCHA calling for open humanitarianism. (See the new Open Humanitarianism website for more details.) Your help on these individual HFOSS projects or the larger goals is needed. All you need to do is take the step and ask yourself: “How can I help?” We will welcome you! Every interaction is a gift.

Beginners to
Open Source

A collection of articles about how to get started in open source.

(Photo note: DHN logos from the Digital Humanitarian Network website.)

17Feb

Open Source and Mapping Communities in Qatar?

Everywhere I travel in the world there are open source and mapping communities. Sometimes you just have to ask around to be connected. There is a vibrant technology and innovation community in Qatar and in the Gulf (GCC). But what of communities focused on open source? Mapping? As a new resident of Doha, I am keen to connect with other advocates. Every city and job I have had involves some component of open source or mapping. Plus, I am a bit of a community firestarter known to simply organize a meetup on topics of interest.

At Qatar Computing Research Institute, part of Qatar Foundation and based in Doha, we create open source software for social innovation and humanitarian efforts. Tasked with building an open source ecosystem, I am simply excited to meet like minds and encourage local citizens, especially students to get involved in our work. Two of our open source software projects are used globally: AIDR (Artificial Intelligence for Disaster Response) and MicroMappers. AIDR combines human computing with artificial intelligence to automatically identify relevant information in very large volumes of tweets and text messages (SMS). MicroMappers is a collection of microtasking apps called Clickers used to crowdsource the analysis of tweets, text messages, Instagram pictures, Youtube videos, satellite imagery as well as UAV/aerial imagery. We have been featured in the Guardian, Mashable and more.

Who are the existing open source communities in Qatar and the GCC? Are there any OpenStreetMap, Crisismappers, Digital Humanitarians or simply mappers around? A quick survey shows that Maptime does not exist here yet. That might be my first project once I acclimatize.

Are you in Qatar or the GCC and keen to collaborate on software projects or technology for good? I’ve created this list but I think there are gaps. Please connect me or introduce yourself.

Qatar Open Source and Mapping Communities

This is a rough assessment of the open source ecosystem in Qatar. I’d also be happy to meet allies and folks in the GCC. Help me improve this list.

If you have a contact, even better! My email is heatherleson at gmail dot com. Please feel free to do an introduction.

(Photo: Katara in Doha (November 2014)CCBY)

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