humanitarian.info

In 2009, the 6th ISCRAM is going to be held in Göteborg, Sweden, from May 10-13. This conference series goes from strength to strength, and although I can’t be as involved as I’d like to be, I’m very proud to have been involved with these guys. So, the paper submission system for ISCRAM2009 is now open and you should start thinking about submitting. The deadline is Sunday January 11, 2009, and they’re looking for both Academic Research Papers and Practitioner Presentations.

GENERAL TRACKS AND SPECIAL SESSIONS

Papers for ISCRAM2009 cover all aspects of information systems for crisis response and management, broadly defined but still related to the 10 general tracks, and may take the form of completed research papers, research-in-progress papers as well as practitioner presentations.

• Humanitarian Actions and Operations
• Collaboration and Social Networking
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Geo-Information Support
• Intelligent Systems
• Standardization and Ontologies
• Research methods
• Technologies, Tools and Demos
• Open-track

In addition to the above general tracks, there is also 18 special sessions covering specific aspects of this domain. Please have a look at at the ISCRAM Community website for detailed information of the tracks and special sessions CFPs – you can also join the ISCRAM Facebook group.

The links are coming fast and furious this month – it must be something to do with the US elections…

• I was busy with work when Ushahidi launched their alpha version, just in time for a test run in DRC. Hopefully lots of lessons learned will come out of that one, lessons that will be relevant not just to Ushahidi but other projects as well.
• An interesting article in Science Daily on Collecting Health Data in Areas with No Power Supply – in this case, Sierra Leone. Useful insights into the specific problems of poor countries, although it’s not strictly speaking about “no power supply”, it’s about a broader lack of physical and – more importantly – institutional infrastructure. I want to know more about the actual system involved – any details, Jeff?
• Another interesting article on how Sahana emerged from the Indian Ocean tsunami, Does it take a disaster to understand the power of open development? Now I think that this narrative needs some tweaking in order to keep it relevant, nearly 4 years after the event (hard to believe it’s been so long), but this is a good opportunity to point you to TalkSahana, for all your… erm, Sahana Talking requirements.
• It’s all Sahana all the time, isn’t it? I wouldn’t be doing my job (well, it’s not really a job) if I didn’t announce the great news that Sahana will be the basis for OpenEvSys, a human rights violation reporting tool; and that Respere will be the company developing the software. Congratulations are due on all sides, particularly as this means that we add another member to the Humanitarian Open Source community.
• The Google Flu Trends website goes up, using search terms to track the progress of flu. Now this is an interesting supercruncher sort of project which could form the basis of a tracking system – but only in countries where internet access is sufficiently deep and local-language content available.
• Finally (unless somebody sends me yet more links) Crisiswire has just launched. As a Web2.0 aggregator for crisis-related information, it’s the sort of project that I need to be persuaded about – but it looks like they’ve designed it well, which is always a good start.

• Shelter Centre unleash their new website upon the world. Finally a humanitarian website that’s highly-functional, well-designed and thinks hard about the community – in this case the shelter sector (obviously). Give it a spin, and kudos both to the Centre and to Development Seed for a job well done.
• NetHope gets some play in the NYT, in an article entitled Wiring Disaster Areas to the Outside World. Nice enough, but nothing that hasn’t been said before, which leaves me wondering why it’s appearing now?
• You’ve read the BBC World Service Trust Report Left in the Dark, and now you can meet the Project Managers at an HPN Event at 12.30-2.00 on 4 December in London. No online links (yes, HPN are that backward) but you can reserve a space by emailing hpn <at> odi <dot> org <dot> uk. Sadly I won’t be attending, so please ask a reasonably informed question on my behalf.
• Is the obvious avenue for Aid Workers Network the street called Facebook? I’m not convinced, for a number of reasons, but it’s nice to see the sector trying these things out. However we seem to be back to flogging the old dead horse with debates about the platform… Also worth joining – Humanitarians for Fashion.

I previously wrote about Imogen Wall’s post-tsunami report The Right To Know: The Challenge of Public Information and Accountability in Aceh and Sri Lanka, which laid out the case that there is a right to information in the same way as there is a right to shelter. The Red Cross World Disasters Report 2005, picked up on this theme and extended it to the technology, demonstrating that “Information and communications technology must be recognised as a form of aid in itself.” Both of these reports were entirely correct, yet the humanitarian community has largely failed to address their conclusions. No surprises there.

Wall has now published (via BBC World Service Trust) a policy briefing that recapitulates and updates her original points, entitled Left in the dark: The unmet need for information in emergency response (PDF) and an accompanying article entitled After Disaster: Information for Life. While I might disagree with some of the solutions she proposes (if you think I ever agree 100% with anybody, you obviously haven’t been reading this blog long enough…), these reports should be on the shelf not just in every communications and public information unit, but all programme units as well – a reminder that our work is not just about providing food, water, shelter, but about enabling beneficiaries to regain control over their own lives.

• Tactical Technology have just released their new publication, Maps for Advocacy: an introduction to Geographical Mapping Techniques (available to order or as a PDF). As always from TT, this is a slick product that focuses on case studies to show what’s possible, touches on all the issues without being overwhelming and should help people to be more effective in using maps.
• Tactical Tech have obviously been very busy, because that’s not all. They’ve just introduced a new pack called Mobile-in-a-box – interesting post by Patrick on the role this package can play for NGOs. Have I mentioned that Patrick’s a great blogger and you should be reading him regularly?
• CartONG held their first Forum on Geomatics for Humanitarian Services to encourage the development of a more effective network of GIS practitioners in the community. A complete report is available (French and English pdfs) and CartONG seem to be committed to following up through UNGIWG, looking at building spatial data infrastructure for camp management.
• MobileActive held their annual textfest in New York – MobileActive08 fully covered at the official blog,  MobileActive’s blog and YouTube channel. As always, the wide-ranging discussion ranged widely, with a panel on Mobiles in Disaster Relief, including this video presentation:

From Bartel:

We have been working in the past few months on the development of ISCRAM LIVE, an “ISCRAM 2.0” dynamic site gathering and publishing content that is being posted on popular “web 2.0” websites by ISCRAM members. The ISCRAM LIVE website is at http://www.iscram.org/live .

ISCRAM LIVE currently interfaces with slideshare, youtube, flickr, twitter, delicious and Facebook, and collects (on a daily basis) all posts on these sites that are tagged with the word “ISCRAM”. I would now like to ask you for your help and a bit of your time in the coming week and try out ISCRAM LIVE in the coming week (say until October 16), by posting and tagging items on these sites that you think are relevant or of interest to the ISCRAM Community – blogs, pictures, tweets, slides, videos and del.icio.us bookmarks.

Now: this was what we were hoping for with the ICT4Peace website. The problem was two-fold – the original web designers couldn’t deliver web2.0 (admittedly it was 4 years ago…) and there wasn’t a community around the concept. ISCRAM now has both of these, so the question is – what’s the magical x-factor that will make this take off? I’m doing my bit – TAG!