The International Conference of Crisis Mappers (ICCM) was held this November in Nairobi, Kenya, at the African Headquarters of the UN. An impressive mix of mappers, innovators, volunteers, aid agencies, donors, private sector representatives and students made for an interesting set of conversations.
The theme of this year’s conference was ‘Innovation, inside and outside of Africa’. The focus of the Crisis Mappers group is to bring together people who have the skills through their work, or voluntarily, to work with mapping technologies, data and information in crisis and disaster situations with the ultimate aim of improving the response efforts on the ground.
With recent events; Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, and much closer to Nairobi – the terrorist attack on Westgate Mall in October, there was plenty of scope for active discussion. The opening remarks of Co-founder Patrick Meier can be found here and are really worth a read in setting the scene.
Philippines
Following the catastrophic impact of Typhoon Haiyan just weeks before the conference, the work of volunteers in the response was acknowledged at ICCM. Countless members of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) spent hours adding detail to the maps of the Philippines to aid the response on the ground. Lists were drawn up to suggest where people focused their efforts and tutorials helped first timers get to grips with the open source software. The Standby Task Force activated hundreds of volunteers, along with other members of the Digital Humanitarian Network. Hundreds took part in social media tagging on Micro-mappers run by the Qatar Computing Research Institute, grading levels of damage in geo-located tweets sent in the aftermath of the Typhoon. By grading levels of damage, areas which often would not have been assessed on the ground could be prioritised for attention. The data used to create this information is only made possible through mobile devices.
The keynote speech was given by Andrej Verity, head of Emergency Information Management Response at UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance, who is currently deployed in the Philippines. Andrej addressed the conference via video link and spoke of the critical need to continue providing high levels of information, to meet the needs of those working on the ground. Receiving his message from the disaster zone emphasised the critical role that information generated and communicated by those in this community is playing. A collection of maps and info-graphics created during the response efforts can be found here:
The GSMA Disaster Response publication ‘Towards a Code of Conduct: Guidelines for the Use of SMS in Natural Disasters’ was highlighted during the conference as an example of the type of effort needed to ensure technology is used responsibly in the wake of disaster. The recently published World Disasters Report was also highlighted for its focus on technology in responding to disasters.
Westgate Mall
With many of the attendees at the conference Nairobi based, and many more of us having spent time working in the city, the Westgate attacks felt they had struck very close to home. A number of people in attendance had lost friends or relatives. Yet the response of the community to immediately work to see how tech could be used to help was powerful, with people sifting through thousands of social media updates, and over the following days working to see how tracking and cell-broadcast type systems could be better used to coordinate an exchange of information between those caught up in the attacks and their loved ones. A team at Ushahidi started working on the prototype ‘Ping’ as well as a system that would allow blood donation information to be more efficiently handled. Numerous other ideas were generated over the following weeks. The Kenyan Red Cross spoke of the difficulties of monitoring ‘instant and on the scene reporting’ of events on Twitter – the battle of verifying reports, censoring information which could benefit the attackers – issues which highlight both the potential difficulties and advantages of the use of social media in times of crisis. The mobility and popularity of such platforms are made possible by their mobile application.
Mobile as a key tool
With Typhoon Haiyan and the Westgate Mall attacks still fresh in our minds, the focus ‘Innovation, inside and outside of Africa’ couldn’t have been better suited. The ICCM is a chance to take stock of the work being undertaken around the world, using a combination of technologies to improve the exchange of information – all with the aim of increasing our ability to respond effectively to crisis and disaster on the ground. Many of these technologies are supported directly or indirectly by mobile networks. The role of the mobile industry in facilitating the crowdsourcing of information during crisis is key as mobile continues to be the tool of many in creating and sharing information in the aftermath of disaster.
Notes:
Videos from the 2013 conference will be uploaded here in due course: http://crisismappers.net/video