advertisement
Facebook
X
LinkedIn
WhatsApp
Reddit

How big data & “the crowd” is changing disaster relief: interview with a digital humanitarian

When a devastating earthquake of magnitude 7.0Mw hit the small island country of Haiti in January 2010, it destroyed much of the capital city, Port-au-Prince, and killed over 100 000 people. The aftermath left the nation on its knees, with around a million and a half people left homeless.

Haiti was a wake up call for aid agencies and international disaster relief organisations for two reasons. Today, they are still dealing with criticisms that the response to the Haitian disaster was slow, muddled and has failed to rebuild the island nation better than it was before. Despite its proximity to the US and huge amounts of international support, last month saw many retrospective “five years on…” articles published which made for depressing reading. On the anniversary of the earthquake the newly repaired streets of Port-au-Prince weren’t a picture of a nation united by tragedy: rather they were filled with protest rallies and political outcry over endemic corruption and failure of the government to either deliver decent healthcare or behave in a democratic manner.

Patrick Meier, director of social innovation at the Qatari Computing Reseach Institute (QCRI).
Patrick Meier, director of social innovation at the Qatari Computing Research Institute (QCRI).

But there was some good that came out Haiti, says Patrick Meier, who currently works as director of social innovation at the Qatari Computing Research Institute (QCRI). A veteran of Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, the World Bank, the UN and more, Meier’s speciality is in researching and designing systems which are best described as “tech for good”. From crowdsourcing maps of disaster hit regions to drawing up policies for the best use of drones in humanitarian aid, Meier both documents how the digital revolution is transforming aid agencies and is an active actor in developing new tools for more effective disaster relief.

His latest book, Digital Humanitarians: How Big Data is Changing the Face of Humanitarian Response was also published to coincide with the fifth anniversary of Haiti.

Digital humanitarians, by Patrick Meier (PhD).
Digital Humanitarians, by Patrick Meier (PhD).

In it, Meier tells the tale of how international disaster relief organisations have learned to draw on internet tools such as crowdsourcing and big data analysis in order to improve their ability to cope with the chaos which immediately follows natural or man-made tragedies such as earthquakes, tsunamis and war. So when we heard he was in Cape Town for the launch of the book, we had to find out more.

Meier’s own experience of Haiti is a deeply personal one: he begins Digital Humanitarians with the story of how he sat in Boston watching CNN’s initial footage of the quake hoping for a text message from his wife – also a humanitarian worker – who was in the Haitian capital Port-aux-Prince at the time of the quake. The SMS did eventually arrive, but “The anxiety was almost paralysing,” Meier writes, “I needed to focus, to do something—anything. So I launched a digital ‘crisis map’ for the Haiti earthquake with a lot of help from friends, colleagues, and even complete strangers.”

The crisis map maker Meier switched on was Ushahidi, an online tool developed in Kenya two years before in order to map outbreaks of violence in the wake of a general election. Meier, who was born and raised in Kenya and has worked all over Africa, was part of the original advisory board for Ushahidi and helped to guide its development. He and a team of friends began to scour social media and solicit information that would help emergency services and relief workers to find those left homeless, injured or trapped by the quake.

“As daylight returned to the Caribbean the following day,” he writes, “We were overwhelmed by the amount of information being published on social and mainstream media. We had tens of thousands of unread tweets in our Ushahidi inbox and simply couldn’t keep up with the vast volume and velocity of news coming out of Port-au-Prince.”

What made Haiti different to previous crises of a similar scale – like the tsunami in the Indian Ocean six years before – was that this time it happened right next door to the world’s most media literate country, the USA, and in a country which despite being poor boasted near ubiquitous cell phone usage and network coverage.

“Traditionally, humanitarian organisations work in a world of data scarcity, that’s what they’re used to,” Meier explains, talking about the typical information blackout that would have accompanied a disaster ten years ago. Today, it’s relatively easy to get some form of cell network back up and running, and people publish everything they see on the internet, any way they can. “The context of this book is that we see the rise of digital humanitarians as a consequence of too much information. It’s very overwhelming for traditional humanitarian organisations.”

A view from the Haiti crisis map, which records as much information as possible in each geolocated pin.
A view from the Haiti crisis map, which records as much information as possible in each geolocated pin.

Within a short time, Meier’s small Boston-based team had expanded into an international network of volunteers vetting the vast amount of information that was coming through Twitter, Facebook and SMS. They translated text messages from Creole into English, and most importantly created an Open Street Map of the capital based on memory – unbelievably there was no up-to-date map available digitally to guide aid workers to where they were needed. Using Ushahidi, the network of volunteers were able to cross reference need with position and help save lives.

The international outpouring of help was on a scale which Meier had never seen before – and that in itself caused a problem as the flow of information rapidly became “big data”.

“Ushahidi was never designed to solve a big data challenge, good for low velocity, low volumes of information,” he explains, “I often describe Ushahidi as an inbox connected to a map, and we all know the joy of an inbox when we’re overwhelmed with emails. We had hundreds of thousands of unread emails every half a day. We couldn’t make sense of that information.”

In the book, Meier describes how, despite the fact they only got through small amount of the data received – which still amounted to tens of thousands of SMS messages every day – the volunteer network was processing information so effectively that the tools they published were being used by the US Coast Guard and military. Many on the ground were so reliant on the maps they had no idea the people behind weren’t in Haiti, but a global network feeding everything through a makeshift control centre in Boston.

And the response agencies (and military) watched what the Haiti Crisis Mapping team were up to, and visited them to learn how it was done. Meier distinguishes between “digital humanitarians” and aid agencies, but over the years since Haiti the two have been converging. Initially, though, multinational organisations were slow to adopt digital tools: their long-established hierarchies and elite bureaucracies being the very anathema of digital innovation.

Meier is also working with rhino conservation organisations, teaching volunteers how to identify wildlife from UAV photography.
Meier is also working with rhino conservation organisations, teaching volunteers how to identify wildlife from UAV photography.

“Because they aren’t best placed to adapt, [aid agencies] have been a little slow,” says Meier, “But tech savvy digital volunteers around the world want to use new technology to go to the frontlines. It’s young people who are very adept at using social media, unlike the older generation, so they’ve been at the frontline of disaster response.

“And it’s not just social media. It’s satellite imagery and ‘big data’ of all sorts… What struck me during Typhoon Haiyan was just how innovative the volunteers were.”

Haiyan, one of the most powerful tropical storms on record, hit the Philippines in 2013. As with the Haiti earthquake, hundreds of volunteers began sifting through data to help the international response. The location of many of those who signed up to help, however, marked another shift in the way technology has proliferated around the world.

“What really hit home at that point,” says Meier, “Was that more volunteers were from the disaster hit areas. At least half of the volunteers were Filipinos, and ­ this is what we want to happen. When local knowledge is used, the people behind it aren’t going to leave soon like NGOs. Those on the ground are the experts.”

During the Libyan civil war which deposed long time leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Meier says that humanitarian groups on the ground had a steady flow of information no matter what the time of day or night.

“Digital humanitarians have the advantages of being networked and can react quickly,” he explains, “The can be in every timezone, so effectively they don’t sleep. One local rep was astounded by how quickly and continually volunteers were available.”

Meier teaches volunteers how to verify information. A Google image search reveals this photo to be a stock shot of Malta, and therefor suggests the data accompanying it is false.
Meier teaches volunteers how to verify information. A Google image search reveals this photo to be a stock shot of Malta, and therefor suggests the data accompanying it is false.

There are downsides, Meier is the first to admit. Digital humanitarians working without proper training make mistakes – but then so do professionals. Meier cites an example of a Twitter distress call made in the aftermath of the Iquique earthquake which rocked Chile last year. The tweet – which claimed to be sent from the ruins of a flattened building – was false, and wasted precious resources as police dispatched teams to investigate. That didn’t stop it later getting made into a t-shirt sold to raise money for the International Red Cross.

“A bunch of mistakes have been made,” Meier says, “But you learn and adapt. Digital skills like iteration and learning are not incompatible with accountability. What’s interesting is that the more volunteers interact with established organisations, the more they take on best practices like contingency plans and operating plans.

“And we’ve also seen what happens when established organisations take on the practices of the volunteer groups and begin embracing digital tools. Digital humanitarians have really proved themselves repeatedly, and in turn have benefitted from a very small handful of professional  humanitarians who got it and understood it and understood that it was something to embrace and not put down. These, in turn, are able to tiptoe, circumvent and push hard for change within their orgs. They don’t get enough credit, because they’re behind the scenes.”

Even during Haiti, international organisations were developing new technologies fast. The Red Cross, for example, worked with local mobile network Voila to create the Trilogy Emergency relief Application (TERA), which can send SMSes to every network subscriber based on a phone’s location. In Haiti, this was used to inform citizens of food drops and vaccination programs, and it has also been deployed in Sierra Leone to tackle a cholera epidemic in 2013.

Meier’s most important work today seems to be to act as a bridge between digital humanitarians and professional disaster response teams. He helps draw up best practices so that volunteers are effective and don’t burn out, and teaches international organisations how to navigate the pitfalls of big data. An SMS message from someone trapped under a building might be the most relevant thing in the world at the time it is sent, for example, but Meier is more than aware of the privacy issues involved with any large scale data capture.

“Data privacy and privacy are core principles in the humanitarian space,” says Meier, “Cell phone data, personally identifying information ­: these are all key to issues of surveillance. We’ve worked hard with the IRC to update their data policies and help them understand the issues. Asking people if you can use their tweet can be impractical, given the circumstances, so when we were creating a crisis map in the wake of Typhoon Ruby we issued guidance that meant we never showed the raw tweet or SMS, even though it was already in the public domain.”

The field of digital humanitarianism is young, and it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement: but as we’ve learned from the Ebola outbreak last year there’s a long way to go before any response to an international disaster – digital or not – is perfect. Nevertheless, Meier is highly optimistic about the future.

“What’s incredible is that it’s people using everyday technologies to make a difference,” he says, “Especially when we see in the news all the bad things that people do with internet technologies. The media likes to focus on the technology, but that misses the important part of this. It’s about incredible people and incredible volunteers.”

Digital Humanitarians: How Big Data Changes the Face of Humanitarian Response is out now from Taylor & Francis. You can follow Patrick Meier on Twitter here.

advertisement

About Author

advertisement

Related News

advertisement