New media: Potential for the ICRC

Good progress: Nargis to Japan• Based, inter alia, on UN Reliefweb media monitoring, from 4 to 25 May 2008

(Nargis) and 12 January to February 2010 (Haiti earthquake)

– Greater emphasis on ICTs and information provisioning as part of relief efforts on the ground.

– Greater emphasis on collaboration and coordination between UN, NGOs, government and military

– For Haiti, the global scale of volunteerism was far greater and more diverse than Nargis.

– Many more CiM providers for Haiti, rapid deployment. Nargis only had UN OCHA’s HIC platform.

– Mobiles and web visualisation central to Haiti response. Telecoms didn’t come into play post-Nargis.

Old relief information model

Ground truth / Event

Aid worker

Members states / Media

Agency / UN system

New aid information networksEven refugees are empowered using mobiles

Event / Issue

Aid worker

Witness Citizen media

Agencies / UN system

Members states /

Global / Local audiences

What lessons for ICRC ?Enduring technical challenges

• Inadequate sense making: systems are islands of information, leading to unnecessary duplication, fragmentation and significant frustration

• Proprietary data formats: which leads to information lock-in and data scatter

• Accountability: plethora of actors leads to multiple decision making points, with no clear crumbtrails

• Coordination: lack of information sharing mandates, despite available ICT platforms

Enduring ethical challengesHow to be sensitive to trauma ?

• Disaster-affected communities remain largely passive recipients of information. Where is the resilient, sustainable tech that gives them voice?

• Using disasters to field test new ICTs, services and platforms is to use victims as test subjects. Mercenary, marketing and other parochial considerations trump sensitivity to trauma.

• It is often unplanned as to how ICTs deployed soon after a disaster will be sustained over the long term. Cost, culture, leave behind & sustainability considerations are important.

• Who owns the data ? Private enterprises or the ICRC ?

Still overdue

• The development and up-to-date population of easily accessible datasets with essential information shared across UN and other aid agencies, to help prepare for, mitigate and recover from disasters.

• Interoperability still an issue

UN CiM strategyLed by UN ASG / CITO and supported by us

• Vision: “Recognising the need for credible, accurate, complete and timely information for managing crises, the United Nations, working collaboratively with its stakeholders, strives to improve crisis information management capabilities to protect people, property, human dignity and the environment affected by crises.”

• UN CITO, in cooperation with ICT4Peace Foundation and representatives from DPA, DPKO, DFS, DESA, OCHA, OICT, UNHCR, UNDP, UNICEF and WFP created CiMAG

• UN CiM strategy part of UN core ICT strategy (A/65/491)

ICT4Peace crisis information wikiswiki.ict4peace.org | Responding to need / gap

ICT4Peace crisis information wikis

• Wikis created in 2010 for Haiti earthquake, Chile earthquake, Gulf Oil Spill, Kyrgyzstan humanitarian crisis, Pakistan floods. In March 2011, at the request of Standby Volunteer Task Force, a wiki was created for Libya Uprising. In general all the wikis contain,

• Comprehensive curated list of crisis information including UN OCHA situation reports, comprehensive briefing kits from Reliefweb, ETC sit reps and other vital information

• Key background documents, including converting Office 2011 docs to Google Docs (e.g. 3W information)

• Curated links to Twitter feeds, Facebook groups, Flickr photos and other social media sites

• Comprehensive list of mapping resources from Google and other sources

• Google Translate based translations of key vernacular resources including media

some ideas for ICRCfrom web based social networks and platforms

Matrix plugin for Ushahidi Source reliability / Information probability

Leverage private enterpriseUse the reach and power of volunteers using private enterprise platforms

Leverage social networkingAdapt FamilyLinks database to access social networking reach

Leverage innovationUse the reach and power of new groups with shared goals

Leverage UN systemUse the reach and power of UN system, e.g. UNICEF Innovation

Leverage image recognitionUse the reach and power of image recognition for refugee databases

Leverage image recognitionUse the reach and power of image recognition for refugee databases

Leverage image recognitionUse the reach and power of image recognition for refugee databases

Harness infographics for IHL awarenesshttp://www.noupe.com/inspiration/stunning-infographics-and-data-visualization.html

Use ‘serious games’ for outreachAgainst All Odds, developed by UNHCR

Against All Odds, is an online serious game that was developed by UNHCR to teach adolescents about the plight of political refugees. This forty-five minute web-based game is targeted for children in middle and high school

www.ict4peace.org