humanitarian.info

Quite a long time ago, I posted the story of a starving tribesman who emailed a bunch of people to try and get assistance. The Economist has finally caught up, as it opens this article on technology in humanitarian relief with a similar story.

“MY NAME is Mohammed Sokor, writing to you from Dagahaley refugee camp in Dadaab. Dear Sir, there is an alarming issue here. People are given too few kilograms of food. You must help.”

A crumpled note, delivered to a passing rock star-turned-philanthropist? No, Mr Sokor is a much sharper communicator than that. He texted this appeal from his own mobile phone to the mobiles of two United Nations officials, in London and Nairobi. He got the numbers by surfing at an internet café at the north Kenyan camp.

The rest of the article then pretty much re-treads my blog (ahem) in an overview of some of the big issues in the sector. Unsurprisingly it focuses on the easy stuff – hardware, particularly telecoms – and misses the more interesting issues. In a single paragraph the article does identify some ways in which improved telecommunications have improved relief operations:

Now, when an emergency occurs, the first people on the ground are often computer geeks, setting up telephone networks so other aid agencies can do their stuff. Donors keep track of supplies on spreadsheets and send each other SMS messages: this road has been attacked by bandits, that village cut off by floods. Transport agencies announce helicopter flights by e-mail. Aid providers can find out where exactly on an incoming ship their medical supplies are, saving hours hanging round the docks. Aid donors find it easier to locate the victims of disaster; and victims queue as eagerly for mobile-phone access as they do for food.

As a result, the organisation of aid is changing.

Well, quite – except that the changes started ten years ago, there’s a whole new set of changes on the way, and we still haven’t solved the problems created by the last set. So what does the article say about all this?

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One of the projects I’m involved with (as a Board member and general layabout) is HumanLink, the brainchild of Jonathan Thompson. Jonathan decided that not enough is being done to develop technology solutions for the field, and decided to use his expertise and connections to set up an organisation to do just that. That new HLink website is now up and running (and looks good – well done, guys!) and we recently had a link in from the smart fellows at Ogle Earth, with a few links on to some new imagery in Tagzania. Good news all round, and hopefully the momentum behind HumanLink will build from here to expand the service delivery.

(Jonathan and Jeff Allen have also been playing around with Clark Connect, a Linux server gateway which I didn’t know much about previously, but looks interesting as a way of providing connectivity over low bandwidth.)

Interesting news from Gregg Swanson of Humaninet, who recently attended a simulation exercise held by ADRA in Indonesia. (Incidentally, the ADRA Indonesia home page is funny as hell for all the wrong reasons, mainly due to the font.) Gregg has written a series of blog posts about the experience on the Humaninet blog, as well as an accompanying article at their ICT Features page. It sounds as if the exercise went really well, so congratulations to all involved!

On another page Gregg has written 12 reasons why relief organisations should conduct simulations. There’s some useful ICT-related findings on that page, but I was more interested in those 12 reasons, because we’re discussing a similar project for the ECB agencies – to do an inter-agency simulation either at HQ or field levels. I’m going to quote all 12 reasons here, and not just to pad out this blog post either – they’re genuinely useful:

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