Those crazy jokers at the UN Joint Logistics Centre have just released version 2.0 of the UN Spatial Data Infrastructure for Transport database schema, based on feedback received since last September’s release and developed with WFP and Ithaca (good to see that partnership being productive). This version covers an XML schema, the schema documentation, template databases and emergency assessment forms. The main main changes in version 2.0 include:

1. “Light” and “Comprehensive” UNSDIT packages. The most significant change has been the packaging of a “Light” subset of the Comprehensive UNSDIT package to better match information requirements in sudden-onset emergencies.

Now this is a very smart idea indeed. When you’re doing the emergency response end, the last thing you want is to wade through a massive amount of barely-relevant data or fill out a single field in a 400-field db. A light version makes a lot of sense - I’d be interested to know what the process was for deciding what what was included and what wasn’t.

2. “Light” UNSDIT Assessment forms. The same concern guided the choice to release an assessment package narrowed to the minimal set of information requirements of a sudden onset emergency response.

An even smarter idea. This is something that should be adopted by all the clusters, not just logistics.

3. ESRI Personal Geodatabase and Shapefile template databases. UNSDIT template databases aligned to version 2.0 of the UNSDIT schema are made available through this release as ESRI Personal Geodatabase and Shapefile to better serve for partners operating within an open source environment.

And it gets smarter still!

Some additional news worth reporting: UNJLC is planning to offer a Web Mapping/Reporting and a data download service at some point, which will be a considerable step forward (and hopefully be more useful than GeoNetwork is currently - jpeg maps of goat distribution, anybody?).

Short notice, but the Humanitarian Futures Programme will be hosting a seminar on Wednesday 25 June at King’s College, London. Focus is on satellite imagery and its future uses by the humanitarian community in monitoring natural hazards, climate change and health. If you’re around London, it should be interesting - plus, free lunch! Come on, everybody likes a free lunch, especially in London.

Speaker:Professor Bhupendra Jasani, King’s College London
Wednesday, 25 June 2008
Time: 12.30-14.00
Venue: King’s College, London, main Strand Campus
Cost: Free, Lunch provided

Jesse Robbins and Mikel Maron spoke at Where2.0 on Disaster Technology. Streaming video is a bit of a non-starter on my shonky internet connection, but both of these guys have an interesting take on the sector. They’re both technology evangelists, but minus the utopianism that makes my fists itch. A platform like Where2.0 is fantastic for getting the word out and (hopefully) engaging more people in the process of development for humanitarian action.

Here comes the requisite word of warning: for many people the politics of humanitarian assistance (both international and organisational) don’t appear on their radar. If we want useful tools to come out of this sort of forum, we have to communicate the political realities that technology will bump up against. Myanmar is a case in point; there’s a lot of activity (as per my earlier post) but the dots just aren’t joined up, and this needs to stop.

I used to think that this was just a phase that we were going through; then I thought that it was a naturally occurring state that we had to work around; then I realised that the endemic problems of co-ordination that we have were emergent properties of the system; but now I’m not sure what I think. Maybe I should leave the thinking to other people for a while.

Anyway, watch the video. You’ll enjoy it. They’re American, you know.

Rich Treves blogs on Google Earth design, and his ideas are solid (I particularly like his post on 2005 - 2015: the Lost Decade of Neo-Geography?). A recent interest in humanitarian applications, and some discussions with people like Nigel Woof of MapAction, have lead him to develop TMapper, a thematic mapping tool for Google Earth. Needless to say, this is exactly the sort of thing that I was looking for in Bangladesh (and would doubtless be useful for Myanmar, ahem).

Now, I haven’t been able to play with this yet, because my shonky mobile internet connection means that the download is too large and difficult. However from the description this looks like a first step in making Google Earth more versatile, which can only be a good thing. I’m slightly worried by the .NET dependency, and I worry that perhaps this might end up falling between two stools - too complicated for non-GIS folk to easily use, and too lightweight for GIS folk to feel comfortable with.

Nobody’s perfect, however, and at least this is something we can test. Thanks to Rich for giving this some thought and putting in the time - he’s looking for feedback, so if you want to play around with TMapper, let him know.

• MapAction and BrightEarth both feature in an article in the Independent entitled “Mapping the disaster zones” - how they think up the intensely creative titles for these articles, I just don’t know. Interesting enough, but these articles always leave me with a sense that the writer just doesn’t get it - apparently “Within 48 hours: The latest field information is combined with accurate 1:5,000,000 “base maps” to form the first complete maps of disaster-zone data”, which is news to me.

• At the bottom of the press release Intel, Grameen Announce Joint Business Venture to Fuel Social and Economic Development Opportunities Empowered by Technology, we learn that Intel have teamed up with NetHope to develop new solutions for the field, the first (and possibly last) of which is the Aid Station, a “rugged, purpose-built, low-cost technology platform suitable for use in harsh, remote locations”.

• Jon Thompson sends me links to two initiatives which mainly force me to ask the question “Why?” NGO Post and Commkit are both well-intended, but both seem to be hell-bent on reinventing the wheel. If Digg works, why not just create an NGO channel on it rather than build an entirely new NGO version of it? If you need “a humanitarian communications platform that is autonomous (works with very little infrastructure) and accessible (anyone can use it)”, then why not use the internet with Sahana running on it? OTOH, it’s standard NGO practice to reinvent the wheel, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised - however if anybody can shed any light on either of these, I’ll be more than happy to revise my opinion.

• Development Gateway have launched two new dgCommunities - one for Disasters Prevention and Response and one for Stabilization & Reconstruction, both with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. This partnership seems to have emerged out of CSIS giving up on the idea of launching their own community, the Hub, which explains the inclusion of S&R (terminology which the US military loves and the humanitarian community does not). I’ve nothing against community sites, but I’m waiting to see one in this sector which works as a community (particularly following my own experience with AidWorkers Network).

• The OLPC XO2 is announced. Quoth OLPC news:

On top of that it seems as though a new UN Millennium Development Goal is in the works. The press-release quotes Nirj Deva, Member of the European Parliament, as saying: “One Laptop per Child and the XO laptop are crucial to the fulfillment of the proposed UN Ninth Millennium Goal: to ensure that every child between the ages of 6 and 12 has immediate access to a personal laptop computer by 2015.”

Somebody shoot me. Or better still, send me more news for this section.

So it all kicked off in Myanmar this week, except that it didn’t, because the military regime has managed to bungle the response to Cyclone Nargis. We could get into a long discussion about the whys and wherefores, and there’s some frightening talk about the “right to respond” over-riding sovereignty, but let’s stay focused on technology. At least it’s relatively non-controversial, except that it isn’t, because Myanmar is one of those places where internet access is a non-starter, where satellite telephones are essentially illegal and where the technology infrastructure (e.g. suppliers and maintenance) is close to zero. What that means is that we’re going to be extremely limited in what we can do on the ground. So what is happening?

• A Sahana instance is being set up for the use of anybody who needs it, with the support of INSTEDD and possible uptake by NetHope members.
• Direct Relief International have done up a KMZ file of health facilities in-country, based on the WHO 2002 Global Health Atlas.
• OCHA are prepping a HIC to support the existing Myanmar Information Management Unit, who have already put out some W3 maps. UPDATE: MapAction have also deployed in support of OCHA and have maps available on their website.
• UNOSAT have also got their sat on with a KMZ file of the cyclone path and the usual satellite mapping.
• Ditto ITHACA, who have released a series of satellite maps showing the impact of Nargis.
• ReliefWeb’s info stream on Cyclone Nargis is of course like drinking water from a hose, with their map filter probably most useful.
• The WorldWideHelp blog roars into action with all the news that’s fit to blog.
• A couple of the mailing list discussions that I’m on are talking about ways in which we might leverage cellphone and/or satellite phone communications if they become available, particularly for tracking relief and relief personnel.
• Digital Globe and Geo-Eye have hopped the NASA satellite for an updating KML layer on the cyclone.
• Microsoft apparently have a team on standby to deploy the refugee tracking software that was developed for Kosovo (no reference yet). Microsoft are focused on supporting the HIC, and are ready to respond to other requests from the humanitarian community.
• Telecoms sans Frontieres are also on standby out of Bangkok, waiting for access to free up.
• Also Infoworld points out that - with regards to early warning - IT didn’t fail Myanmar, people did.

I’m nowhere near being deployed for this one (particularly as the government apparently is still refusing entry to foreign aid workers), but all of this makes me feel that we’re headed in the right direction. However until the government lets agencies start doing their jobs with less restrictions on movement and communications, we’re not going to see the benefits - another example of how the technology can be rendered much less useful when the political environment isn’t supportive. I leave you with the words of Surin Pitsuwan, Secretary-General of ASEAN in his speech last Thursday:

In spite of the technology that we have, in spite of the power that we have, in spite of the network that we have, we still lose lives needlessly… So it is more than just the power of technology, it is more than just the transformation of society through technology, it is certainly a shift in paradigm here in the minds of our people and particularly our leaders. Because if you don’t have that shift, millions and billions of dollars worth of technology cannot deliver effective, timely relief to people when they need it most, because we have reservations about opening up our borders for cooperation, because we have hesitation about cooperating with the outside world, because we have mistrust of the outside world.

Word reaches me that Dennis King, one of my favourite commenters, put this blog on the big screen at the ISCRAM 2008 conference. I was supposed to be there this year, but once again wasn’t able to make it. So to anybody visiting this blog from ISCRAM, welcome - I hope you find it somewhat useful, and I promise there’ll be some more substantial posts later this week! I hope the conference goes well - why aren’t any of you liveblogging it?

In the meantime, you might be interested to read a blog post called Mapping Genocide: Google Earth and Darfur - it’s a well-researched, well-written introduction to some of the recent developments in online mapping for human rights. It’s not without problems, though, and so I think that’s what I’ll write about later this week… so you’d better come back, eh?