humanitarian.info

An email from CEO Eric Rasmussen tells me that INSTEDD is finally flying in radar (and apparently I’m mixing metaphors, unsure of whether INSTEDD is a whale or a plane). In his words,

InSTEDD has been invisible, a rumor and a ghost, for the few past months, but we surfaced today in a media call with Google.org in the launch of their first-ever Initiatives.

I’ve known Eric virtually for a couple of years, although we’ve never managed to actually meet in person. He’s a very solid choice for CEO – his thinking on civil-military affairs was always more lateral than I expected for somebody in his position, and I think that it reflected his willingness to listen and learn from others. That open attitude will be the single most important tool in INSTEDD’s box, at least in its early days, and in fact that’s why they are only launching now – for the last few months, the team has been travelling around meeting with various actors and hearing out what their needs might be.

If you don’t know anything about INSTEDD, I recommend that you visit the website, as it gives you the right flavour. It’s moved away from Larry Brilliant’s 2006 talk at TED and morphed into something that’s somehow broader yet less ambitious (a good combination if you can manage it). Yet I still harbour doubts about how successful it will be, doubts which don’t have anything to do with the goodwill or competence of the staff (or the fact that they’ve got a ton of funding behind them, not least from Google.Org).

Where do my doubts come from?  I’ll freely admit that part of my concern is rooted in my essential antipathy towards advice from experts (yes, including myself – it keeps me on my toes); part of it is based on my lack of faith in the power of technology to save us from ourselves; and part of it is linked to my sense that the entire system of disaster response has been built with a fundamental flaw at its foundation, and trying to make it more effective may simply be throwing good money after bad.

Having said that, INSTEDD’s philosophy is healthy.  It’s not proposing overarching systems that will solve the whole set of problems in one go, but a piece-by-piece approach that addresses key problems in the field as they arise.  So I welcome their launch, and I definitely welcome their presence on the scene – it’s definitely healthy for the sector to have more non-traditional actors bringing some new perspective.

And new tools, of course!  INSTEDD will be releasing any tech tools it develops, and it looks like on an open source basis (more specifically, the MIT license).  First out of the gate is a GeoSMS system, which is built on a bunch of existing Google tools and some GeoRSS.  And yes, we hope to discuss how Sahana might fit into these developments…

Immediately after we launched the Darfur layers, somebody pointed out that Google Earth isn’t accessible in Sudan. It’s not because of the Sudanese government (for a change) but because of US sanctions – much more detail at the Export Law Blog, and of course at Ogle Earth. This was something that I had mentioned earlier in the development of the project, but hopefully more people now realise how much OFAC sanctions affect very basic humanitarian projects.

A couple of other interesting Google Earth humanitarian projects are also out there, using the tools in slightly different ways. A new paper on Genomic Analysis and Geographic Visualization of the Spread of Avian Influenza (H5N1) is accompanied by a kmz file from the Society of Systematic Biologists that shows the spread of Avian Flu – not just over space, but over time as well, which creates a startling visualisation of the spread pattern. More information is at Physorg.com.

The Earth is Square blog has add-ons for both World Wind and Google Earth, showing Mogadishu Refugee Migration based on statistics from UNHCR. Yes, I know – it’s UNHCR, the agency with a tendency to make numbers up. Still, the project is an interesting one – there’s a wiki page that acts as a portal with background, screenshots and downloads. Chad at TEiS says, “This add-on is just as important as the Crisis in Darfur layer in Google Earth. Maybe even more important because fewer people seem to know about what is happening in Somalia”, but I think that they’re equally important in spreading the word and showing what can be done with this approach.

Blimey, look what InterAction have gone and done – a GoogleMaps mash-up showing member agency capacity to respond to avian flu!

Check out the Avian Influenza Capacity Map – it’s nicely done, focused on a small number of pilot countries. One question I do have is: how can we use encourage the member agencies to use this as a planning tool, and not just as visibility for their projects? I’d be interested to hear thoughts about how useful it could be to prepare for the coming flupocalypse.

Hat tip to Mark Hammersley. Plus, I wish I hadn’t made up the word flupocalypse.

More blog magic from a man who uses the same WordPress template as me! Declan Butler is a journalist, writes a lot for Nature magazine, with a particular interest in disasters and a particular particular interest in GoogleEarth. Most recently, he’s posted a great piece on building maps in GoogleEarth for tracking Avian Flu – you can read it here.