Digital humanitarianism Paul Conneally

the humanitarian model has barely

changed since the early 20th century its

origins are firmly rooted in the analog

age and there is a major shift coming on

the horizon the catalyst for this change

was the major earthquake that struck

haiti on the twelfth of january in 2010

haiti was a game-changer the earthquake

destroyed the capital port-au-prince

claiming the lives of some 320,000

people rendering homeless about 1.2

million people government institutions

were completely decapitated including

the presidential palace I remember

standing on the roof of the Ministry of

Justice in downtown port-au-prince it

was about two meters high completely

squashed but the violence of the

earthquake for those of us on the ground

in those early days it was clear for

even the most disaster hardened veterans

that Haiti was something different Haiti

was something we hadn’t seen before but

hate he provided us with something else

unprecedented Haiti has allowed us to

glimpse into a future of what disaster

response might look like in a

hyper-connected world where people have

access to mobile smart devices because

out of the urban devastation in

port-au-prince came a torrent of SMS

Texas people crying for help beseeching

us for assistance sharing data offering

support looking for their loved ones

this was a situation that traditional

aid agencies had never before

encountered we were in one of the

poorest countries on the planet but

eighty percent of the people had mobile

devices in their hands and we were

unprepared for this and they were

shaping the aid effort outside Haiti

also things were looking different tens

of thousands of so-called digital

volunteers were scouring the internet

converting tweets that had already been

converted from texts

and putting these into open source maps

layering them with all sorts of

important information people like crisis

mappers and openstreetmap and putting

these on the web for everybody the media

the aid organizations and the

communities themselves to participate in

and to use back in Haiti people were

increasingly turning to the medium of

SMS people that were hungry and hurting

or signaling their distress we’re

sticking their need for help on street

sides all over port-au-prince

entrepreneurs sprung up offering mobile

phone charging stations they understood

more than we did people innate need to

be connected never having been

confronted with this type of situation

before we wanted to try and understand

how we could tap into this incredible

resource how we could really leverage

this incredible use of mobile technology

and SMS technology we started talking

with a local telecom provider called

voila which is a subsidiary of trilogy

international we had basically three

requirements we wanted to communicate in

a two-way form of communication we

didn’t want to shout we needed to listen

as well we wanted to be able to target

specific geographic communities we

didn’t need to talk to the whole country

at the same time we wanted it to be easy

to use out of this rubble of Haiti and

from this devastation came something

that we call terror the trilogy

emergency response application which has

been used to support the aid effort ever

since it has been used to help

communities prepare for disasters is

used to signal early warning in advance

of weather-related disasters it’s used

for public health awareness campaigns

such as the prevention of cholera and

it’s even used for sensitive issues such

as building awareness around

gender-based violence but does it work

we have just published an evaluation of

this program and the evidence that is

there for all to see is quite remarkable

some seventy four percent of people

received the data those that were

intended to receive the data

seventy-four percent of them received it

ninety-six percent of them found useful

eighty-three percent of them took action

evidence that it is indeed empowering

and seventy-three percent of them shared

it the terrorist system was developed

from Haiti with support of Engineers in

the region it is a user appropriate

technology that has been used for

humanitarian Goods to great effect

technology is transformational right

across the developing world citizens and

communities are using technology to

enable them bring about change positive

change in their own communities the

grassroots has been strengthened to the

social power of sharing and it are

challenging the old models the old

analog models of control and command one

illustration of the transformational

power of technology is in kabira kabira

is one of Africa’s largest slums it’s on

the outskirts of Nairobi the capital

city of Kenya it’s home to an unknown

number of people some say between

250,000 and 1.2 million if you were to

arrive in Nairobi today and pick up a

tourist map kabira is represented as a

lush green National Park devoid of human

settlement young people living in kabira

in their community with simple handheld

devices GPS handheld devices and SMS

enabled mobile phones have literally put

themselves on the map they have collated

crowd-sourced data and rendered the

invisible visible people like Josh and

Steve are continuing layer information

upon information real-time information

tweeted and texted onto these maps for

all to use you can find out about the

latest impromptu music session you can

find out about the latest security

incident you can find out about places

of worship you can find out about the

health centers you can feel the dynamism

of this living breathing community they

also have their own news network on

youtube with 36 thousand viewers at the

moment

they are showing us what can be done

with mobile digital technologies they’re

showing that the magic of technology can

bring the invisible visible and they are

giving a voice to themselves they’re

telling their own story bypassing the

official narrative and we’re seeing from

all points in the globe similar stories

in Mongolia for instance where thirty

percent of the people are nomadic SMS

information systems are being used to

track migration and weather patterns SMS

is even used to hold herder summits from

remote participation and if people are

migrating into urban unfamiliar concrete

environments they can also be helped in

anticipation with social supporters

ready and waiting for them based on

estimates knowledge in Nigeria open

source open source SMS tools are being

used by the Red Cross community workers

to gather information from the local

community in an attempt to better

understand and mitigate the prevalence

of malaria my colleague Jason Pete who

runs this program tells me it’s ten

times faster and 10 times cheaper than

the traditional way of doing things and

not only is it empowering to the

communities but really importantly this

information stays in the community where

it is needed to formulate long-term

health policies we are in a planet of

seven billion people five billion mobile

subscriptions by 2015 there will be

three billion smartphones in the world

the UN broadband Commission has recently

set targets to have broadband access and

fifty percent of the developing world

compared to twenty percent today we are

hurtling towards a hyper-connected world

where citizens from all cultures in all

social strata will have access to smart

fast mobile devices people are

understanding from Cairo to Auckland

that there are new ways to come together

there are new ways to mobilize there are

new ways to influence a transformation

is coming it needs to be understood by

the humanitarian structures in the

humanitarian models

the collective voices of people needs to

be more integrated through new

technologies into the organizational

strategies and plans of actions and not

just recycled for fundraising and

marketing we need to for example embrace

the big data the knowledge that is there

from market leaders who understand what

it means to use and leverage big data

one idea that I’d like you to consider

for instance is to take a look at our IT

departments they’re normally back room

or basement hardware service providers

but they need to be elevated to software

strategists we need people in our

organizations who know what it’s like to

work with big data we need technology as

a core organizational principle we need

technological strategists in the

boardroom who can ask and answer the

question what would Amazon or Google do

with all of this data and convert it

into humanitarian good the possibilities

the new digital technologies are

bringing can help humanitarian

organizations not only ensure that

people’s rights to information is net or

that they have their right to

communicate but I think in the future

humanitarian organizations will also

have to anticipate the right for people

to access critical communication

technologies in order to ensure that

their voices are heard that there truly

participating that they’re truly

empowered in the humanitarian world it

has always been the elusive ideal to

ensure full participation of people

affected by disasters in the

humanitarian effort we now have the

tools we now have the possibilities

there are no more reasons not to do it I

believe we need to bring the

humanitarian world from analog to

digital thank you very much

you