Quickbits December 2007
- The November issue of Scientific American carries an article by Sheri Fink entitled “The Science of Doing Good” [purchase required, unfortunately]. Full disclosure: I was interviewed for the article. Initially I wasn’t convinced that this was going to be much good (sorry, Sheri!) but I was wrong. It moves between different areas - refugee registration, GIS, human rights, and so on - quite smoothly, while communicating the main obstacles that we face without making excuses. As an overview, it hits most of the initiatives in the sector that are accessible to general readers, so it should engage a wide audience and give them a pointer towards the area that might interest them the most. This is A Good Thing.
- “Mapping for Better Accountability in Service Delivery” [pdf] by Katharina Welle is the latest ODI Briefing Paper. The paper uses WaterAid’s work as a case study to demonstrate how the use of mapping can be turned into a policy tool. Although the paper was actually funded by WaterAid, it’s an interesting approach to emphasise that gets away from the “cool” factor of mapping.
- The latest Peace IT newsletter [pdf] is just out from Crisis Management Initiative, with articles on a range of recent developments including Humanitarian FOSS and the Global +5 Symposium. Again, this is a very nice overview of some interesting projects, although not much in the way of analysis, so be prepared to follow up on specific projects.
- NPR carries an interesting audio segment on the Reverse 911 service. From their blurb: “The Reverse 911 communication system was given the lion’s share of credit for successful and fatality free evacuations from San Diego County’s wildfires a month ago. But the program may not have been as effective as previously thought.” The clip is still pretty positive about the concept, but once again it seems that the cheerleaders for technology may have underestimated the reality on the ground.
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