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DisasterTech at eTech 2008

Paul Currion — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 18:09:54 +0000

The O’Reilly Emerging Technology conference is another one of these confabs that I watch from a distance, filled with a mixture of awe and dread. (Awe at the sheer brainpower that you can see in the many presentations, and dread at what might happen next.) This year, Jesse Robbins and Mikel Maron gave a presentation on DisasterTech to the poor and huddled masses that attended, updating some of their earlier thoughts on areas such as SMS, open source and distributed approaches.

Now I like Jesse and Mikel, and I agree with the lines along which they’re thinking, but when I see slides that say “225,000 deaths preventable with existing technology”, I start to worry about whether the expectations of those poor and huddled masses from the technology world are being raised just a little too high… but I’d rather wait until I can hear the audio rather than just read the slides.

One point they did make that’s worth picking up (because as far as I know, this is the first time it’s been explicit) is that disaster technology tends to follow this pattern:

Disaster
Ad Hoc Adaptation
Championship
Iterative Improvement

That’s pretty accurate – most of the more interesting developments of the last few years have followed that model. However there are definitely problems with Championship – not as a concept, but in terms of where to target your “championing” efforts.

I believe that most technology dissemination in this sector isn’t through organisational adoption – there’s just too much autonomy at the local level – but through word-of-mouth. Somebody sees something working, tries it out and takes it forward (or not) – but only within their particular part of their organisation. What this might mean is that we need to take a viral approach to this, rather than seeking to get management (i.e. top-down) approval, particularly if we want to reach smaller groups on the ground.

With that in mind, we have to be anthropologists as well as technologists. Cultures are different, communities are different and people are different; what “works” in terms of viral dissemination in the US is simply not going to work in Bangladesh. It’s not just the technology that has to adapt to these different environments; it’s us as well. Hopefully the start-up jockeys at the conference realise that…

The Long Last Mile

Paul Currion — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:28:04 +0000

Courtesy of Nuwan on the humanitarian-ict mailing list, I just watched “The Long Last Mile” on YouTube. Produced by Television for Education – Asia Pacific, it describes the project by LIRNEasia to evaluate Last-Mile Hazard Information Dissemination. Some useful points in an accessible format – redundancy in communication technologies, identification of key responders, community engagement in the process, the importance of simulation exercises for learning, and so on. Only 12 minutes long, it’s definitely worth watching. Plus, YouTube! Web2.0! Etc, etc.

Click here to view the embedded video.

OpenStreetMap and the next disaster, Part 1

Paul Currion — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 12:51:32 +0000

I’ve corresponded with Mikel Maron for a while now, interested particularly by the work that he’s been involved with introducing Wikis into the UN. However his first love is geospatial and his favourite project is OpenStreetMap, which is a free editable map of the whole world that can be viewed, edited and used in a collaborative way from by anybody, anywhere.

Mikel has been thinking about how this type of approach might be used in disaster response, and he recently gave a presentation at the State of the Map event in Manchester in which he outlined his thoughts so far – you can hear a podcast of his talk, view the slides that accompanied it and read the notes from it. Mikel acknowledges that he’s not an expert, and while there’s a lot of things that I agree with him about, there’s also a lot of assumptions built into his talk.

From Mikel’s notes:

In 2005, the Southeast Asian Tsunami caused destruction on a scale beyond comprehension. And Katrina later in the year showed that no country, however developed, is beyond disaster… And my thought, and many people’s thought, was that these shiny tools from the web were ideally suited to a distributed response to disaster, where a hierarchical one was failing.”

The assumption that the usual (“hierarchical”) response to these disasters was failing is quite a big one. The Tsunami Evaluation Coalition found that the initial response to the tsunami by the international community was actually quite effective – it was the longer-term reconstruction work that has failed. I will agree that the hierarchical federal system in the US clearly failed during Katrina – and although its defenders will argue that the failure was political, and that the system itself works just fine, I would counter that any system that doesn’t take into account the politics of disaster response is simply setting itself up to fail when a large-scale disaster strikes.

One thing that is true, however, is that in any disaster, most of the support is provided at the local level by local actors, often outside the formal response itself. We’ll get back to that, but the main gripe that Mikel has – and it’s an entirely valid one – is that data is frequently inaccurate and out-of-date. It’s worth quoting this part at some length:

My friend Jesse Robbins… headed down and helped lead the set up of a relief operation, not too far from where this bridge on US Route 90 had been completely destroyed. However, the Red Cross was giving evacuation directions to cross this bridge, so loads of cars would stop at the edge of this pennisula with confused drivers. Jesse phoned the Red Cross multiple times to complain the bridge wasn’t there anymore .. and they responded “but that can’t be — it’s still in Google Maps!”

The root problem was that the Red Cross was giving out inaccurate information based on what they thought was a credible source: Google Maps. It’s not the job of the Red Cross to maintain accurate datasets on road infrastructure, but they do have an obligation to be reasonably sure that the information that they provide is reasonably accurate. Naturally, over-stretched Red Cross volunteers were going to rely on whatever they could find – in this case, Google Maps, which is a perfectly reasonable choice.

On a practical level, Google Maps will be unable to update their data as quickly as disaster response requires, simply because that’s not the way in which maps gets updated. No matter what source Google Maps uses, all of these magical online map services rely on the not-so-magical process of somebody actually doing the mapping, and to confirm a major change such as the destruction of a bridge requires an official survey. (Google Earth is a different matter, as remote sensing imagery can be updated almost immediately – for the right price.)

Despite the fact that OpenStreetMap can be updated much more quickly than Google Maps – a volunteer could submit a more recent update on the condition of (for example) that bridge – why should I trust OpenStreetMap more than Google Maps? While I might be able to tell if their information is more timely than Google Maps (by checking the date stamp to see when the information was submitted), I have no guarantee that their information is more accurate or reliable than Google Maps, particularly if that information could have been submitted by anybody.

This is because my interest in that bridge during a disaster response is not knowing where the bridge is (the geospatial component) but what its status is. The example Mikel gives is of the complete destruction of the bridge, which is a simple binary choice (destroyed/not destroyed); but what if the bridge is intact but can no longer bear its full load due to structural damage? That might mean it can be used as an evacuation route for cars, but not for heavy trucks bringing supplies into the area. Getting that wrong will just compound the problem, but it requires somebody who knows what they’re looking for to submit the information.

So what does OpenStreetMap need in order to be more credible than Google Maps? It needs input from professionals who can make informed judgements about issues about humanitarian needs, logistical issues, security information – all the things that the aid agencies already do. I agree with a lot of what Mikel says about how an approach like OSM’s can offer more transparency in the delivery aid, which is something we desperately need. By the same token, the hopes of Mikel and others is that technology can flatten the hierarchical approach and help beneficiaries to meet their own needs better (effectively removing the need for outside assistance).

However an open and distributed system is vulnerable to abuse from unexpected quarters. I believe that beneficiaries need to be more involved in gathering data and have more access to data that’s relevant to them – but I’m also aware that they are not disinterested parties. We might think that information submitted by a community leader about the needs of a village affected by an earthquake is going to be more accurate than that submitted by an NGO volunteer – but the community leader has an interest in exaggerating his village needs to maximise the amount of assistance they get, a phenomenon which those working in the field are familiar with.

Mikel’s arguments for OSM (and other distributed approaches) do have a lot of merit, but I think they conflate two separate but related problems. The first is making aid agencies more effective and transparent, and the second is empowering beneficiaries through technology. Both of these are valid objectives that we need to work for, but they might need different approaches to be achieved – while some of my colleagues (such as Michael Howden) believe that Web2.0 (which includes initiatives like OSM) can bridge the two sides, I’m still not convinced.

Of course, this discussion is nowhere near finished yet…

The Right to Know

Paul Currion — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 19:20:06 +0000

The Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery wins the award for UN office with the most unwieldy title. Forget about UN reform, the real issue is giving all these initiatives names that actually make grammatical sense.

However the Office of the… well, they’ve published a really interesting report on the role of public information in accountability measures, called The Right to Know (pdf file). Once again, I’m several months late, since this was published in October. Sue me.

The report takes a wide-ranging look at the issues linking information and accountability, which has also been identified by the Tsunami Evaluation Coalition, the excellent IFRC World Disasters Report 2005 and my own article for the Humanitarian Practice Network.

The basic message is we need to invest more in the transmission of information to the people most affected by disasters. No surprises there, but this report goes into the practical details a little more than the others mentioned above, and is definitely worth the time.

Disaster Prediction, Social Networking Boosted by Geo-Data Feeds

Paul Currion — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 15:12:24 +0000

National Geographic carries an interesting short article entitled Disaster Prediction, Social Networking Boosted by Geo-Data Feeds, looking at how geoRSS can make sharing spatial data simpler, quicker and more useful.

The article deals with prediction rather than response, and the question of how geoRSS might improve disaster response is still open. The obvious one is data sharing from needs assessments or situation reports, but that goes back to the problem that most people don’t really understand the role of spatial data – let alone set up their mobile phone as an automatic GPS ping, like Tim Hibbard in this article.

What it’s about is changing peoples attitudes towards spatial data – making them realise its value – and offering them the tools to work with that data more effectively. If we can do that, we can let the end users define what they need, and maybe develop it themselves – which some are already doing with Google Earth. So maybe it is about their mobile phones after all….
Hat tip to Mikel Maron.

D-TRAC is 1 year old!

Paul Currion — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 15:09:21 +0000

Happy birthday to Saundra and all the staff at D-TRAC! Below the radar, D-TRAC have been doing a lot of legwork in terms of practical NGO accountability. Focused tightly on post-tsunami Thailand, they provide a physical focal point with dedicated staff working on support to the NGO community.

One of the things that their work demonstrates is that it takes a lot of resources to reach even a basic level of co-ordination – which in turn raises the question of how to expand this type of work to have a wider reach. They’re now looking at how they can open offices in other countries, providing the same field-focused services.

Tracking organisations has been one of D-Trac’s big concerns, and we’ve been talking about whether Sahana might be adapted to their needs. The news that OCHA is going to throw open their Who’s doing What Where application to the community might make it possible for us to collectively develop a W3 system that can be implemented across the entire humanitarian community on an open platform.

5 Years of Information Management for Humanitarian Operations

Paul Currion — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 16:23:35 +0000

Five years ago, I wrote an article for Humanitarian Exchange, published by the ODI Humanitarian Practice Network, entitled “Learning from Kosovo: the HCIC Year One.” It was the first thing I’d written about information management, and it was right at the start of my learning curve in this field.

I thought it would be interesting to update that article, and revisit some of the issues that it raised. So in the latest issue of Humanitarian Exchange, you’ll find another article, this time entitled “A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing: five years of information management for humanitarian operations.”

I packed in more points than I probably should have, so it’s quite a dense piece, but it’s probably summed up by these two sentences:

Five years ago, I believed that better information management would enable better management overall. Yet it is hard to determine whether all this activity has actually improved the provision of humanitarian assistance, since there are no clear criteria for measuring their impact.

The good news includes more partnerships, sometimes between agencies, but also with the private sector; the bad news includes a lack of leadership in this area, particularly given the recent implementation of the cluster approach by the UN. The most important point I wanted to make, however, is one that I’ve mentioned before. I’m going to repeat it now, because it seems to me to be important enough:

We are public organisations, funded by public money, working for the public good. In the interests of accountability, all information that we gather in the course of our work should also be public. The only qualification that should be made to this is if that information might in any way endanger the safety or security of beneficiaries or staff. Without the free flow of information, the process of coordination is crippled, and we all must take responsibility for this.

So I guess that’s my new mantra.

Also interesting this month is an article by Jeremy Shoham of the Emergency Nutrition Network and NutritionWorks. The article, “Information is a prerequisite, not a luxury“ expands on the importance of information management in the context of Food Security. Although he makes the case for what I would say is an overly ambitious system, the article is an excellent overview of some current thoughts in food security (along with a jab at the bias towards food aid, which thankfully is starting to diminish).

The Stockholm Challenge Award

Paul Currion — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 15:50:04 +0000

The Stockholm Challenge is a well established global networking program for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) entrepreneurs for over ten years. It continues to be a leader in demonstrating how information technology can improve living conditions and increase economic growth in all parts of the world. One of the main features of the Stockholm Challenge is the ICT prize, the Stockholm Challenge Award, which has attracted over 3000 projects over the years.

This year, Sahana is a finalist for the Award. They don’t have a Disasters category, so we’re in the Health category, which is a little bizarre. But it’s a great recognition of all the work that the Sahana team has put into the project over the last year.

Also nominated from the humanitarian sector are a couple of familiar names. The Fritz Institute has been nominated for their Humanitarian Logistics Software, and the guys at RisePak have also been nominated for their earthquake response work last year.

Congratulations to everybody, although I probably won’t be able to make it to the awards ceremony in Stockholm on 11 May….

Thoughts, One Year after the Tsunami

Paul Currion — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 14:59:25 +0000

It was impossible to avoid the tsunami last week, even if one wanted to. I spent a while thinking about what I wanted to post, since my original intention for this blog was to focus on information management in humanitarian operations, not to speak more generally about the humanitarian sector. But there’s a lack of other bloggers discussing humanitarian issues, so I guess this will have to do. (Incidentally, if anybody knows any humanitarian bloggers, please send me links!)

While remembering the dead is important, our own thoughts should be with those who survived. As usual, media focus on the tsunami one year on was fairly weak, and has now almost completely disappeared. (Interestingly, coverage of the Pakistan earthquake has also been quite poor, despite the fact that we’re now in the middle of the winter that almost everybody agrees we have failed to address in time.)

The tsunami coverage that there has been in the UK has generally been quite good, but split into two stock articles. One type covers the plucky (white) survivors, especially if they’ve returned to Thailand or Sri Lanka. If I read another article about how a bunch of holidaymakers helped to rebuild a Thai village near their resort, I may become enraged.

The other type – normally a feature article – covers the plucky (non-white) survivors, most of whom are still waiting for somebody to come and rebuild their village, which happens not to have been located close to a resort – bad luck! The general tone of these articles is that there a lot of people waiting around for their houses to be rebuilt, which is pretty accurate.

In December, the Fritz Institute has released its survey of Recipient Perceptions of Aid Effectiveness [PDF file], a multi-country focus group study conducted 9 months after the tsunami. There are no revelations in the study, but it is a useful contribution to the debate that the Tsunami Evaluation Coalition provides the framework for.

The headline findings can be summarised as follows:

The initial response (i.e. the first 48 hours) was overwhelmingly local – but there are still problems with international organisations not listening to local voices.
Satisfaction with services provided varied widely from location to location – but interestingly tended to even out after 60 days, irrelevant of location.
Livelihoods are still not back to normal, and permanent shelter continues to be the main problem.

The first point confirms what a lot of other studies have shown; the second point is far more interesting, as it’s the first time I’ve seen a large-scale survey like this based on “customer satisfaction” with services. Normally we evaluate against our internal (weak) project indicators, and I’d like to see more evaluations based on recipient satisfaction. However neither of these points have an impact on the current situation, and there’s not much we can do about them in the context of the tsunami.

The third point does require action. Neither of them has seen the amount of progress that they need to fully recover from the tsunami, let alone pursue the spurious ‘recovery plus’ policy that was aired in the middle of 2005. (It’s so spurious, I’m not even going to provide any links to explain what it means.)

There are clear practical constraints, not least of which is the fact that it’s damnably difficult to build that many houses (over 200,000 across the region, mainly in Aceh and Sri Lanka); in the UK, the government is on the rack over the construction of just 29,000 new homes. The international community can justifiably claim that various political obstructions have prevented more progress, although these complaints become weaker over time; if there are obstructions, we need to find better ways to work with or around them.

Things look more positive in Aceh, with the recent peace deal bearing dividends, while Sri Lanka appears to be sliding back towards war. Here, the international community needs to make more effort, since the war in Sri Lanka has been a curse to everybody in the country, holding back economic development even before the tsunami.

But if we reach the two-year anniversary without fixing the problems that the Fritz Institute study identifies… well, it will be as embarrassing as the recent anniversary of the Lessons from the Rwanda experience, when we all sat down and realised that, in 10 years, we really hadn’t made much progress in fixing all the things we knew were wrong with the system.

p.s. Happy New Year!

Baseline Magazine in May

Paul Currion — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 16:15:59 +0000

This is fairly old news, but Baseline magazine went tsunami-crazy in May, with three articles on how ICT was used in the tsunami response. I particularly liked the inappropriate “Tidal Wave of Problems” title – sensitivity obviously not the strong point of their editorial team.

A Tidal Wave of Problems

It’s difficult to land planes when there’s cows on the runway. No, really?

World Food Programme: Wave of Support

I’m not entirely sure that WFP’s roll-out was quite as fast as this article makes it out to be:

Unfilled Promise

They managed to get a very long article out of how the latest technology tested by the military wasn’t actually used at all in the tsunami response.

Notwithstanding my criticisms, it’s good to see this kind of work getting coverage, even if a lot of articles out there are just rewrites of agency press releases. Baseline did a good job covering some of the less visible aspects of the response, and hopefully we’ll see more of the same in future.

Incidentally, if anybody has any other stories on these sorts of issues, send them my way.

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