Stefaan Verhulst

Jenkins A., Croitoru A., Crooks A.T., Stefanidis A. in PLOS: “Place can be generally defined as a location that has been assigned meaning through human experience, and as such it is of multidisciplinary scientific interest. Up to this point place has been studied primarily within the context of social sciences as a theoretical construct. The availability of large amounts of user-generated content, e.g. in the form of social media feeds or Wikipedia contributions, allows us for the first time to computationally analyze and quantify the shared meaning of place. By aggregating references to human activities within urban spaces we can observe the emergence of unique themes that characterize different locations, thus identifying places through their discernible sociocultural signatures. In this paper we present results from a novel quantitative approach to derive such sociocultural signatures from Twitter contributions and also from corresponding Wikipedia entries. By contrasting the two we show how particular thematic characteristics of places (referred to herein as platial themes) are emerging from such crowd-contributed content, allowing us to observe the meaning that the general public, either individually or collectively, is assigning to specific locations. Our approach leverages probabilistic topic modelling, semantic association, and spatial clustering to find locations are conveying a collective sense of place. Deriving and quantifying such meaning allows us to observe how people transform a location to a place and shape its characteristics….(More)”

Book by Geoffrey Rockwell and Stéfan Sinclair: “The image of the scholar as a solitary thinker dates back at least to Descartes’ Discourse on Method. But scholarly practices in the humanities are changing as older forms of communal inquiry are combined with modern research methods enabled by the Internet, accessible computing, data availability, and new media. Hermeneutica introduces text analysis using computer-assisted interpretive practices. It offers theoretical chapters about text analysis, presents a set of analytical tools (called Voyant) that instantiate the theory, and provides example essays that illustrate the use of these tools. Voyant allows users to integrate interpretation into texts by creating hermeneutica—small embeddable “toys” that can be woven into essays published online or into such online writing environments as blogs or wikis. The book’s companion website, Hermeneutic.ca, offers the example essays with both text and embedded interactive panels. The panels show results and allow readers to experiment with the toys themselves.

The use of these analytical tools results in a hybrid essay: an interpretive work embedded with hermeneutical toys that can be explored for technique. The hermeneutica draw on and develop such common interactive analytics as word clouds and complex data journalism interactives. Embedded in scholarly texts, they create a more engaging argument. Moving between tool and text becomes another thread in a dynamic dialogue….(More)”

Sydney Steel at Havard Political Review: “Over the last decade, Africa has experienced previously unseen levels of economic growth and market vibrancy. Developing countries can only achieve equitable growth and reduce poverty rates, however, if they are able to make the most of their available resources. To do this, they must maximize the impact of aid from donor governments and NGOs and ensure that domestic markets continue to diversify, add jobs, and generate tax revenues. Yet, in most developing countries, there is a dearth of information available about industry profits, government spending, and policy outcomes that prevents efficient action.

ONE, an international advocacy organization, has estimated that $68.6 billion was lost in sub-Saharan Africa in 2012 due to a lack of transparency in government budgeting….

The Importance of Technology

Increased visibility of problems exerts pressure on politicians and other public sector actors to adjust their actions. This process is known as social monitoring, and it relies on citizens or public agencies using digital tools, such as mobile phones, Facebook, and other social media sites to spot public problems. In sub-Saharan Africa, however, traditional media companies and governments have not shown consistency in reporting on transparency issues.

New technologies offer a solution to this problem. Philip Thigo, the creator of an online and SMS platform that monitors government spending, said in an interview with Technology for Transparency, “All we are trying to do is enhance the work that [governments] do. We thought that if we could create a clear channel where communities could actually access data, then the work of government would be easier.” Networked citizen media platforms that rely on the volunteer contributions of citizens have become increasingly popular. Given that in most African countries less than 10 percent of the population has Internet access, mobile-device-based programs have proven the logical solution. About 30 percent of the population continent-wide has access to cell phones.

Lova Rakotomalala, a co-founder of an NGO in Madagascar that promotes online exposure of social grassroots projects, told the HPR, “most Malagasies will have a mobile phone and an FM radio because it helps them in their daily lives.” Rakotomalala works to provide workshops and IT training to people in regions of Madagascar where Internet access has been recently introduced. According to him, “the amount of data that we can collect from social monitoring and transparency projects will only grow in the near future. There is much room for improvement.”

Kenyan Budget Tracking Tool

The Kenyan Budget Tracking Tool is a prominent example of how social media technology can help obviate traditional transparency issues. Despite increased development assistance and foreign aid, the number of Kenyans classified as poor grew from 29 percent in the 1970s to almost 60 percent in 2000. Noticing this trend, Philip Thigo created an online and SMS platform called the Kenyan Budget Tracking Tool. The platform specifically focuses on the Constituencies Development Fund, through which members of the Kenyan parliament are able to allocate resources towards various projects, such as physical infrastructure, government offices, or new schools.

This social monitoring technology has exposed real government abuses. …

Another mobile tool, Question Box, allows Ugandans to call or message operators who have access to a database full of information on health, agriculture, and education.

But tools like Medic Mobile and the Kenyan Budget Tracking Tool are only the first steps in solving the problems that plague corrupt governments and underdeveloped communities. Improved access to information is no substitute for good leadership. However, as Rakotomalala argued, it is an important stepping-stone. “While legally binding actions are the hammer to the nail, you need to put the proverbial nail in the right place first. That nail is transparency.”…(More)

Samuel C. Woolley at First Monday: “Over the last several years political actors worldwide have begun harnessing the digital power of social bots — software programs designed to mimic human social media users on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. Increasingly, politicians, militaries, and government-contracted firms use these automated actors in online attempts to manipulate public opinion and disrupt organizational communication. Politicized social bots — here ‘political bots’ — are used to massively boost politicians’ follower levels on social media sites in attempts to generate false impressions of popularity. They are programmed to actively and automatically flood news streams with spam during political crises, elections, and conflicts in order to interrupt the efforts of activists and political dissidents who publicize and organize online. They are used by regimes to send out sophisticated computational propaganda. This paper conducts a content analysis of available media articles on political bots in order to build an event dataset of global political bot deployment that codes for usage, capability, and history. This information is then analyzed, generating a global outline of this phenomenon. This outline seeks to explain the variety of political bot-oriented strategies and presents details crucial to building understandings of these automated software actors in the humanities, social and computer sciences….(More)”

John Markoff at the New York Times: “From a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, aloud pop signals the catapult launch of a small fixed-wing drone that is designed to carry medical supplies to remote locations almost 40 miles away.

The drones are the brainchild of a small group of engineers at a SiliconValley start-up called Zipline, which plans to begin operating a service with them for the government of Rwanda in July. The fleet of robot planes will initially cover more than half the tiny African nation, creating a highly automated network to shuttle blood and pharmaceuticals to remote locations in hours rather than weeks or months.

Rwanda, one of the world’s poorest nations, was ranked 170th by gross domestic product in 2014 by the International Monetary Fund. And so it is striking that the country will be the first, company executives said, to establish a commercial drone delivery network — putting it ahead of places like the United States, where there have been heavily ballyhooed futuristicdrone delivery systems promising urban and suburban package delivery from tech giants such as Amazon and Google….

That Rwanda is set to become the first country with a drone delivery network illustrates the often uneven nature of the adoption of new technology. In the United States, drones have run into a wall of regulation and conflicting rules. But in Rwanda, the country’s master development plan has placed a priority on the use of the machines, first for medicine and then more broadly for economic development….

The new drone system will initially be capable of making 50 to 150 daily deliveries of blood and emergency medicine to Rwanda’s 21 transfusing facilities, mostly in hospitals and clinics in the western half of the nation.

The drone system is based on a fleet of 15 small aircraft, each with twin electric motors, a 3.5-pound payload and an almost eight-foot wingspan.The system’s speed makes it possible to maintain a “cold chain” —essentially a temperature-controlled supply chain needed to provide blood and vaccines — which is often not practical to establish in developing countries.

The Zipline drones will use GPS receivers to navigate and communicate via the Rwandan cellular network. They will be able to fly in rough weather conditions, enduring winds up to 30 miles per hour….(More)”

Kelsey E. Thomas at Next City: “New Orleanians can try their hand at being “mayor for a day” with a new interactive website released by the Committee for a Better New Orleans Wednesday.

The Big Easy Budget Game uses open data from the city to allow players to create their own version of an operating budget. Players are given a digital $602 million, and have to balance the budget — keeping in mind the government’s responsibilities, previous year’s spending and their personal priorities.

Each department in the game has a minimum funding level (players can’t just quit funding public schools if they feel like it), and restricted funding, such as state or federal dollars, is off limits.

CBNO hopes to attract 600 players this year, and plans to compile the data from each player into a crowdsourced meta-budget called “The People’s Budget.” Next fall, the People’s Budget will be released along with the city’s proposed 2017 budget.

Along with the budgeting game, CBNO released a more detailed website, also using the city’s open data, that breaks down the city’s budgeted versus actual spending from 2007 to now and is filterable. The goal is to allow users without big data experience to easily research funding relevant to their neighborhoods.

Many cities have been releasing interactive websites to make their data more accessible to residents. Checkbook NYC updates more than $70 billion in city expenses daily and breaks them down by transaction. Fiscal Focus Pittsburgh is an online visualization tool that outlines revenues and expenses in the city’s budget….(More)”

Steve Lohr at the New York Times: “For years, the federal government, states and some cities have enthusiastically made vast troves of data open to the public. Acres of paper records on demographics, public health, traffic patterns, energy consumption, family incomes and many other topics have been digitized and posted on the web.

This abundance of data can be a gold mine for discovery and insights, but finding the nuggets can be arduous, requiring special skills.

A project coming out of the M.I.T. Media Lab on Monday seeks to ease that challenge and to make the value of government data available to a wider audience. The project, called Data USA, bills itself as “the most comprehensive visualization of U.S. public data.” It is free, and its software code is open source, meaning that developers can build custom applications by adding other data.

Cesar A. Hidalgo, an assistant professor of media arts and sciences at the M.I.T. Media Lab who led the development of Data USA, said the website was devised to “transform data into stories.” Those stories are typically presented as graphics, charts and written summaries….Type “New York” into the Data USA search box, and a drop-down menu presents choices — the city, the metropolitan area, the state and other options. Select the city, and the page displays an aerial shot of Manhattan with three basic statistics: population (8.49 million), median household income ($52,996) and median age (35.8).

Lower on the page are six icons for related subject categories, including economy, demographics and education. If you click on demographics, one of the so-called data stories appears, based largely on data from the American Community Survey of the United States Census Bureau.

Using colorful graphics and short sentences, it shows the median age of foreign-born residents of New York (44.7) and of residents born in the United States (28.6); the most common countries of origin for immigrants (the Dominican Republic, China and Mexico); and the percentage of residents who are American citizens (82.8 percent, compared with a national average of 93 percent).

Data USA features a selection of data results on its home page. They include the gender wage gap in Connecticut; the racial breakdown of poverty in Flint, Mich.; the wages of physicians and surgeons across the United States; and the institutions that award the most computer science degrees….(More)

Joe McKendrick at ZDNet: “Open data is one of those refreshing trends that flows in the opposite direction of the culture of fear that has developed around data security. Instead of putting data under lock and key, surrounded by firewalls and sandboxes, some organizations see value in making data available to all comers — especially developers.

The GovLab.org, a nonprofit advocacy group, published an overview of the benefits governments and organizations are realizing from open data, as well as some of the challenges. The group defines open data as “publicly available data that can be universally and readily accessed, used and redistributed free of charge. It is structured for usability and computability.”…

For enterprises, an open-data stance may be the fuel to build a vibrant ecosystem of developers and business partners. Scott Feinberg, API architect for The New York Times, is one of the people helping to lead the charge to open-data ecosystems. In a recent CXOTalk interview with ZDNet colleague Michael Krigsman, he explains how through the NYT APIs program, developers can sign up for access to 165 years worth of content.

But it requires a lot more than simply throwing some APIs out into the market. Establishing such a comprehensive effort across APIs requires a change in mindset that many organizations may not be ready for, Feinberg cautions. “You can’t be stingy,” he says. “You have to just give it out. When we launched our developer portal there’s a lot of questions like, are people going to be stealing our data, questions like that. Just give it away. You don’t have to give it all but don’t be stingy, and you will find that first off not that many people are going to use it at first. you’re going to find that out, but the people who do, you’re going to find those passionate people who are really interested in using your data in new ways.”

Feinberg clarifies that the NYT’s APIs are not giving out articles for free. Rather, he explains, “we give is everything but article content. You can search for articles. You can find out what’s trending. You can almost do anything you want with our data through our APIs with the exception of actually reading all of the content. It’s really about giving people the opportunity to really interact with your content in ways that you’ve never thought of, and empowering your community to figure out what they want. You know while we don’t give our actual article text away, we give pretty much everything else and people build a lot of really cool stuff on top of that.”

Open data sets, of course, have to worthy of the APIs that offer them. In his post, Borne outlines the seven qualities open data needs to have to be of value to developers and consumers. (Yes, they’re also “Vs” like big data.)

1. Validity: It’s “critical to pay attention to these data validity concerns when your organization’s data are exposed to scrutiny and inspection by others,” Borne states.
2. Value: The data needs to be the font of new ideas, new businesses, and innovations.
3. Variety: Exposing the wide variety of data available can be “a scary proposition for any data scientist,” Borne observes, but nonetheless is essential.
4. Voice: Remember that “your open data becomes the voice of your organization to your stakeholders.”
5. Vocabulary: “The semantics and schema (data models) that describe your data are more critical than ever when you provide the data for others to use,” says Borne. “Search, discovery, and proper reuse of data all require good metadata, descriptions, and data modeling.”
6. Vulnerability: Accept that open data, because it is so open, will be subjected to “misuse, abuse, manipulation, or alteration.”
7. proVenance: This is the governance requirement behind open data offerings. “Provenance includes ownership, origin, chain of custody, transformations that been made to it, processing that has been applied to it (including which versions of processing software were used), the data’s uses and their context, and more,” says Borne….(More)”

By Prianka Srinivasan and Stefaan G. Verhulst *

The Living Library’s Selected Readings series seeks to build a knowledge base on innovative approaches for improving the effectiveness and legitimacy of governance. This curated and annotated collection of recommended works on the topic of data and humanitarian response was originally published in 2016.

Data, when used well in a trusted manner, allows humanitarian organizations to innovate how to respond to emergency events, including better coordination of post-disaster relief efforts, the ability to harness local knowledge to create more targeted relief strategies, and tools to predict and monitor disasters in real time. Consequently, in recent years both multinational groups and community-based advocates have begun to integrate data collection and evaluation strategies into their humanitarian operations, to better and more quickly respond to emergencies. However, this movement poses a number of challenges. Compared to the private sector, humanitarian organizations are often less equipped to successfully analyze and manage big data, which pose a number of risks related to the security of victims’ data. Furthermore, complex power dynamics which exist within humanitarian spaces may be further exacerbated through the introduction of new technologies and big data collection mechanisms. In the below we share:

• Selected Reading List (summaries and hyperlinks)
• Annotated Selected Reading List
• Additional Readings

Selected Reading List  (summaries in alphabetical order)

Data and Humanitarian Response

• John Karlsrud – Peacekeeping 4.0: Harnessing the Potential of Big Data, Social Media, and Cyber Technologies – Recommends that UN peacekeeping initiatives should better integrate big data and new technologies into their operations, adopting a “Peacekeeping 4.0” for the modern world.
• Fancesco Mancini, International Peace Institute – New Technology and the prevention of Violence and Conflict – Explores the ways in which new tools available in communications technology can assist humanitarian workers in preventing violence and conflict.
• Patrick Meier – Digital Humanitarians- How Big Data is changing the face of humanitarian response – Profiles the emergence of ‘Digital Humanitarians’—humanitarian workers who are using big data, crowdsourcing and new technologies to transform the way societies respond to humanitarian disasters.
• Andrew Robertson and Steve Olson (USIP) – Using Data Sharing to Improve Coordination in Peacebuilding – Summarises the findings of a United States Institute of Peace workshop which investigated the use of data-sharing systems between government and non-government actors in conflict zones. It identifies some of the challenges and benefits of data-sharing in peacebuilding efforts.
• United Nations Independent Expert Advisory Group on a Data Revolution for Sustainable Development – A World That Counts, Mobilizing the Data Revolution – Compiled by a group of 20 international experts, this report proposes ways to improve data management and monitoring, whilst mitigating some of the risks data poses.
• Katie Whipkey and Andrej Verity – Guidance for Incorporating Big Data into Humanitarian Operations – Created as part of the Digital Humanitarian Network with the support of UN-OCHA, this is a manual for humanitarian organizations looking to strategically incorporate Big Data into their work.

Risks of Using Big Data in Humanitarian Context

• Kate Crawford and Megan Finn – The limits of crisis data: analytical and ethical challenges of using social and mobile data to understand disasters – Analyzes the use of big data techniques following a crisis event, arguing that a reliance of social and mobile data can lead to significant oversights and ethical concerns in the wake of humanitarian disasters.
• Katja Lindskov Jacobsen – Making design safe for citizens: A hidden history of humanitarian experimentation – Argues that the UNHCR’s use of iris recognition technology in 2002 and 2007 during the repatriation of Afghan refugees from Pakistan constitutes a case of “humanitarian experimentation.” It questions this sort of experimentation which compromises the security of refugees in the pursuit of safer technologies for the rest of the world.
• Responsible Data Forum – Responsible Data Reflection Stories: an Overview – compiles various stories sourced by the Responsible Data Forum blog relating to data challenges faced by advocacy organizations, and draws recommendations based on these cases.
• Kristin Bergtora Sandvik – The humanitarian cyberspace: shrinking space or an expanding frontier? – Provides a detailed account of the development of a “humanitarian cyberspace” and how information and communication technologies have been further integrated into humanitarian operations since the mid-1990s.

Annotated Selected Reading List (in alphabetical order)

Karlsrud, John. “Peacekeeping 4.0: Harnessing the Potential of Big Data, Social Media, and Cyber Technologies.” Cyberspace and International Relations, 2013. http://bit.ly/235Qb3e

• This chapter from the book “Cyberspace and International Relations” suggests that advances in big data give humanitarian organizations unprecedented opportunities to prevent and mitigate natural disasters and humanitarian crises. However, the sheer amount of unstructured data necessitates effective “data mining” strategies for multinational organizations to make the most use of this data.
• By profiling some civil-society organizations who use big data in their peacekeeping efforts, Karlsrud suggests that these community-focused initiatives are leading the movement toward analyzing and using big data in countries vulnerable to crisis.
• The chapter concludes by offering ten recommendations to UN peacekeeping forces to best realize the potential of big data and new technology in supporting their operations.

Mancini, Fancesco. “New Technology and the prevention of Violence and Conflict.” International Peace Institute, 2013. http://bit.ly/1ltLfNV

• This report from the International Peace Institute looks at five case studies to assess how information and communications technologies (ICTs) can help prevent humanitarian conflicts and violence. Their findings suggest that context has a significant impact on the ability for these ICTs for conflict prevention, and any strategies must take into account the specific contingencies of the region to be successful.
• The report suggests seven lessons gleaned from the five case studies:
  • New technologies are just one in a variety of tools to combat violence. Consequently, organizations must investigate a variety of complementary strategies to prevent conflicts, and not simply rely on ICTs.
  • Not every community or social group will have the same relationship to technology, and their ability to adopt new technologies are similarly influenced by their context. Therefore, a detailed needs assessment must take place before any new technologies are implemented.
  • New technologies may be co-opted by violent groups seeking to maintain conflict in the region. Consequently, humanitarian groups must be sensitive to existing political actors and be aware of possible negative consequences these new technologies may spark.
  • Local input is integral to support conflict prevention measures, and there exists need for collaboration and awareness-raising with communities to ensure new technologies are sustainable and effective.
  • Information shared between civil-society has more potential to develop early-warning systems. This horizontal distribution of information can also allow communities to maintain the accountability of local leaders.

Meier, Patrick. “Digital humanitarians: how big data is changing the face of humanitarian response.” Crc Press, 2015. http://amzn.to/1RQ4ozc

• This book traces the emergence of “Digital Humanitarians”—people who harness new digital tools and technologies to support humanitarian action. Meier suggests that this has created a “nervous system” to connect people from disparate parts of the world, revolutionizing the way we respond to humanitarian crises.
• Meier argues that such technology is reconfiguring the structure of the humanitarian space, where victims are not simply passive recipients of aid but can contribute with other global citizens. This in turn makes us more humane and engaged people.

Robertson, Andrew and Olson, Steve. “Using Data Sharing to Improve Coordination in Peacebuilding.” United States Institute for Peace, 2012. http://bit.ly/235QuLm

• This report functions as an overview of a roundtable workshop on Technology, Science and Peace Building held at the United States Institute of Peace. The workshop aimed to investigate how data-sharing techniques can be developed for use in peace building or conflict management.
• Four main themes emerged from discussions during the workshop:
  • “Data sharing requires working across a technology-culture divide”—Data sharing needs the foundation of a strong relationship, which can depend on sociocultural, rather than technological, factors.
  • “Information sharing requires building and maintaining trust”—These relationships are often built on trust, which can include both technological and social perspectives.
  • “Information sharing requires linking civilian-military policy discussions to technology”—Even when sophisticated data-sharing technologies exist, continuous engagement between different stakeholders is necessary. Therefore, procedures used to maintain civil-military engagement should be broadened to include technology.
  • “Collaboration software needs to be aligned with user needs”—technology providers need to keep in mind the needs of its users, in this case peacebuilders, in order to ensure sustainability.

United Nations Independent Expert Advisory Group on a Data Revolution for Sustainable Development. “A World That Counts, Mobilizing the Data Revolution.” 2014. https://bit.ly/2Cb3lXq

• This report focuses on the potential benefits and risks data holds for sustainable development. Included in this is a strategic framework for using and managing data for humanitarian purposes. It describes a need for a multinational consensus to be developed to ensure data is shared effectively and efficiently.
• It suggests that “people who are counted”—i.e., those who are included in data collection processes—have better development outcomes and a better chance for humanitarian response in emergency or conflict situations.

Katie Whipkey and Andrej Verity. “Guidance for Incorporating Big Data into Humanitarian Operations.” Digital Humanitarian Network, 2015. http://bit.ly/1Y2BMkQ

• This report produced by the Digital Humanitarian Network provides an overview of big data, and how humanitarian organizations can integrate this technology into their humanitarian response. It primarily functions as a guide for organizations, and provides concise, brief outlines of what big data is, and how it can benefit humanitarian groups.
• The report puts forward four main benefits acquired through the use of big data by humanitarian organizations: 1) the ability to leverage real-time information; 2) the ability to make more informed decisions; 3) the ability to learn new insights; 4) the ability for organizations to be more prepared.
• It goes on to assess seven challenges big data poses for humanitarian organizations: 1) geography, and the unequal access to technology across regions; 2) the potential for user error when processing data; 3) limited technology; 4) questionable validity of data; 5) underdeveloped policies and ethics relating to data management; 6) limitations relating to staff knowledge.

Risks of Using Big Data in Humanitarian Context
Crawford, Kate, and Megan Finn. “The limits of crisis data: analytical and ethical challenges of using social and mobile data to understand disasters.” GeoJournal 80.4, 2015. http://bit.ly/1X0F7AI

• Crawford & Finn present a critical analysis of the use of big data in disaster management, taking a more skeptical tone to the data revolution facing humanitarian response.
• They argue that though social and mobile data analysis can yield important insights and tools in crisis events, it also presents a number of limitations which can lead to oversights being made by researchers or humanitarian response teams.
• Crawford & Finn explore the ethical concerns the use of big data in disaster events introduces, including issues of power, privacy, and consent.
• The paper concludes by recommending that critical data studies, such as those presented in the paper, be integrated into crisis event research in order to analyze some of the assumptions which underlie mobile and social data.

Jacobsen, Katja Lindskov (2010) Making design safe for citizens: A hidden history of humanitarian experimentation. Citizenship Studies 14.1: 89-103. http://bit.ly/1YaRTwG

• This paper explores the phenomenon of “humanitarian experimentation,” where victims of disaster or conflict are the subjects of experiments to test the application of technologies before they are administered in greater civilian populations.
• By analyzing the particular use of iris recognition technology during the repatriation of Afghan refugees to Pakistan in 2002 to 2007, Jacobsen suggests that this “humanitarian experimentation” compromises the security of already vulnerable refugees in order to better deliver biometric product to the rest of the world.

Responsible Data Forum. “Responsible Data Reflection Stories: An Overview.” http://bit.ly/1Rszrz1

• This piece from the Responsible Data forum is primarily a compilation of “war stories” which follow some of the challenges in using big data for social good. By drawing on these crowdsourced cases, the Forum also presents an overview which makes key recommendations to overcome some of the challenges associated with big data in humanitarian organizations.
• It finds that most of these challenges occur when organizations are ill-equipped to manage data and new technologies, or are unaware about how different groups interact in digital spaces in different ways.

Sandvik, Kristin Bergtora. “The humanitarian cyberspace: shrinking space or an expanding frontier?” Third World Quarterly 37:1, 17-32, 2016. http://bit.ly/1PIiACK

• This paper analyzes the shift toward more technology-driven humanitarian work, where humanitarian work increasingly takes place online in cyberspace, reshaping the definition and application of aid. This has occurred along with what many suggest is a shrinking of the humanitarian space.
• Sandvik provides three interpretations of this phenomena:
  • First, traditional threats remain in the humanitarian space, which are both modified and reinforced by technology.
  • Second, new threats are introduced by the increasing use of technology in humanitarianism, and consequently the humanitarian space may be broadening, not shrinking.
  • Finally, if the shrinking humanitarian space theory holds, cyberspace offers one example of this, where the increasing use of digital technology to manage disasters leads to a contraction of space through the proliferation of remote services.

Additional Readings on Data and Humanitarian Response

• Kristin Bergtora Sandvik, et al. – Humanitarian technology: a critical research agenda. – Takes a critical look at the field of humanitarian technology, analyzing what challenges this poses to post-disaster and conflict environment.
• Kristin Bergtora Sandvik – “The Risks of Technological Innovation.” – Suggests that despite the evident benefits such technology presents, it can also undermine humanitarian action and lead to “catastrophic events” themselves needing a new type of humanitarian response.
• Ryan Burns – Rethinking big data in digital humanitarianism: practices, epistemologies, and social relations – Takes a critical look at the use of big data in humanitarian spaces, arguing that the advent of digital humanitarianism has profound political and social implications, and can in fact limit information available following a humanitarian crisis.
• Kate Crawford – Is Data a Danger to the Developing World? – Argues that it is not simply risks to privacy that data poses to developing countries, but suggests that “data discrimination” can affect even the basic human rights of individuals, and introduce problematic power hierarchies between those who can access data and those who cannot.
• Paul Currion – Eyes Wide Shut: The challenge of humanitarian biometrics – Examines the use of biometrics by humanitarian organizations and national governments, and suggests stronger accountability is needed to ensure data from marginalized groups remain protected.
• Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, Jake Kendall and Cameron F. Kerry – Enabling Humanitarian Use of Mobile Phone Data – Analyzes how data from mobile communication can provide insights into the spread of infectious disease, and how such data can also compromise individual privacy.
• Michael F. Goodchild and Alan Glennon – Crowdsourcing geographic information for disaster response: a research frontier – Explores how though volunteered geographic data may be messy and unreliable, it can provide many benefits in emergency situations.
• Raphael Horler – Crowdsourcing in the Humanitarian Network – An Analysis of the Literature – A Bachelor thesis which explores the increasing use of crowdsourced data by organizations involved in disaster response, investigating some of the challenges such use of crowdsourcing poses.
• Gus Hosein and Carly Nyst – Aiding Surveillance – Suggests that the unregulated use of technologies and surveillance systems by humanitarian organizations create systems which pose serious threats to individuals’ rights, particularly their right to privacy.
• L. Jacobsen – The Politics of Humanitarian Technology: Good Intentions, Unintended Consequences and Insecurity – Raises concerns about the rise of data collection and digital technology in humanitarian aid organizations, arguing that its unquestioned prominence creates new structures of power and control, which remain hidden under the rubric of liberal humanitarianism.
• Mirca Madianou – Digital Inequality and Second-Order Disasters: Social Media in the Typhoon Haiyan Recovery – Taking the effects of Typhoon Haiyan as a key case study, this paper investigates how digital inequalities and an unequal access to data can exacerbate existing social inequalities in a post-disaster environment.
• Sean Martin McDonald – Ebola: A Big Data Disaster. Privacy, Property, and the Law of Disaster Experimentation – Analyzes the challenges and privacy risks of using unregulated data in public health coordination by taking the use of Call Detail Record (CDR) data during the Ebola crisis as a key case study.
• National Academy of Engineering – Sensing and Shaping Emerging Conflicts: Report of a Joint Workshop of the National Academy of Engineering and the United States Institute of Peace: Roundtable on Technology, Science, and Peacebuilding – Building on the overview report of the United States Institute of Peace workshop examines what opportunities new technologies and data sharing provides for humanitarian groups.
• Mary K.Pratt – Big Data’s role in humanitarian aid – A Computer World article which provides an overview of Big Data, and how it is improving the efficiency and efficacy of humanitarian response, especially in conflict zones.
• Bertrand Taithe Róisínand and Roger Mac Ginty – Data hubris? Humanitarian information systems and the mirage of technology – Specifically looks at visual technology and crisis mapping, and big data, and suggests that there exists an over-enthusiasm in these claims made on behalf of technologically advanced humanitarian information systems.
• Linnet Taylor – No place to hide? The ethics and analytics of tracking mobility using mobile phone data – Examines the ethical problems associated with the tracking of mobile phone data, especially in low or middle-income countries.
• UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA) – Big data and humanitarianism: 5 things you need to know – Briefly outlines five issues that face humanitarian organizations as they integrate big data into their operations.
• United Nations Global Pulse – Mapping the Risk-Utility Landscape of Mobile Data for Sustainable Development and Humanitarian Action – Reports on a Global Pulse project (done in partnership with Massachusetts Institute of Technology) which aimed to find how aggregated mobile data can be maximized to protect privacy and provide effective support to crisis response.
• The Wilson Center – Connecting Grassroots to Government for Disaster Management: Workshop Summary – Summarizes the key points drawn from a two day Wilson Center workshop, which investigated how new technologies could engage whole communities in disaster management.

* Thanks to: Kristen B. Sandvik; Zara Rahman; Jennifer Schulte; Sean McDonald; Paul Currion; Dinorah Cantú-Pedraza and the Responsible Data Listserve for valuable input.