THE FUTURE OF DISASTER RISK RESPONSE IN THE WAKE OF THE DIGITAL HUMANITARIAN SPACE

Today, not only can you donate cash to support those affected by disasters, you can also donate a few minutes of your time to support the relief efforts on the ground thanks to new humanitarian technologies and platforms orchestrated by a network which brings together a diverse set of individuals from the humanitarian, development, human rights, policy, technology, and academic communities.

This network catalyzes communication and collaboration between a wide range of different communities with the purpose of advancing the study and application of crisis mapping worldwide. Popularly known as the International Conference of Crisis Mappers [ICCM], it once again brought hundreds of humanitarians together at the United Nations Office in Nairobi [UNON] on November 18 – 22, 2013 discussing and plotting ideas for the future of humanitarian response in a conference tagged “Humanitarian Technologies – In and Out of Africa”.

The Crisis Mappers network was launched in October 2009 at the first International Conference on Crisis Mapping (ICCM 2009) in Cleveland, Ohio. These annual conferences facilitate collective engagement and dialogue that helps construct the boundaries of this emergent new discipline. At the conference, participants also brainstorm how to solve real problems and initiate projects that help advance this new field.

Throughout the year, the network facilitates continuing virtual interaction among its members.Participants engage through webcasts, create and browse profiles, email their needs through the dedicated mailing list, write blogs, and share other announcements with the group. “We in the CrisisMappers community have the luxury of having learned a lot about digital humanitarian response since the Haiti Earthquake; we have learned important lessons about data privacy and protection, codes of conduct, the critical information needs of humanitarian organizations and disaster-affected populations, standardizing operating procedures, and so on” said Patrick Meier, the co-founder of the Network, in his keynote welcome address.

This year, the ICCM started with a preconference site visit to SiSi ni Amani and Spatial Collective, which allowed participants to observe first-hand how GIS, mobile technology and communication projects operate in informal settlements, covering a wide range of topics that include governance, civic education and peace building. As learning as become part of the ICCM, the second day was observed at the iHub, where different kinds of training were observed throughout the day. Facilitators from ESRI, Open Street Maps, MapBox, CaerusGeo, Ushahidi took participants through creating maps using the different platforms, and likewise lessons learnt from various initiatives that have been used on the platform. The short messaging service [SMS] and mobile security training stream was anchored by Frontline SMS and Tactical Technology Collective, showing how humanitarians have been deploying the platform to create social change and the security implications. The team from Open Knowledge Foundation [OKF] was able to curate their school of data training with some participants, while the knowledge stream was lead by Internews.

Angela Oduor leading the Mapping Stream session at the iHub 

On November 20, 2013 the main conference started at the UNON, Gigiri with the traditional ICCM Ignite talks showcasing great digital humanitarian works, forward – thinking concept and ideas, with recent research and findings within the network. This was followed by a panel that led the discussion mixed with a reflection on the Westgate Mall attack in September in Nairobi. Philip Ogola of the Red Cross in Kenya confirmed that the social media played a big role in getting situation awareness during crisis; Angela Oduor of Ushahidi, a non government technology outfit in Kenya showcased how the ushahidi platform was used in reaching out to a number of families during the siege. As technology is becoming the future to response, IBM’s Charity Wayua discussed how technology will continue to be deployed in response to siege such as that of the Westgate. At the end of the discussion, it was noted that technology played a big role in creating situation awareness during the Westgate attack, nevertheless co-ordination using this technology still remains a challenge, which in the near future will be tackled.

ICCM 2013 participants at the UNON conference room

As part of the day’s event, the tech fair became a side attraction at the conference room lounge. The fair brought together technology tools and events that have or will shape humanitarian response. Presentations at the fair included the Artificial Intelligence for Disaster Response by the Qatar Computing Research Institute; NGO Aid Map by Interaction; location-based web and mobile software by Azavea; The Walk to Mali project by Earth Hour Nigeria; Mobile data collection in Somalia by mFieldwork; Security issues for everyday digital by Tactical Technology Collective and ESRI showcasing its various GIS platforms. The day went into a closing session with UNOCHA’s Information Management officer – Andrej Verity giving the keynote of the conference, live via Skype from the Philippines. He highlighted the importance of the work of digital humanitarians in helping first responders on the ground, especially since the beginning of the devastating 300km/hr typhoon Yolanda that struck the Philippines. “We have witnessed a paradigm in the way humanitarians all around the world now respond to crisis and disasters since 2009 till this present moment, just this morning, the head of OCHA –Valerie Amos, has been presented verified situation updates of the Philippines, this data, gathered by the various digital humanitarians over the past few weeks will help hasten how our responders on the ground respond to needs of the people in the Philippines” said Andrej

The following day witnessed roundtable sessions about Big data with Anahi Ayala of Internews reiterating that Big data or data becomes useless if the people cannot make use of it, Emmanuel Letouze of the University of California affirmed that Big data has no half life, and remain available while Jon Gosier advised that leveraging on Big data is important especially if an organization can define what is willing to do with it. Another session discussed CrisisMapping for Conflict Management with Sisi ni Amani’s Rachael Brown sharing how they have combined mobile technologies with community engagement in creating conflict situation awareness in Kenya, while Peter Nwamachi from the Kenya’s government steering committee on peace building and conflict management corroborated the importance of collaborating with Sisi ni Amani to respond and build peace among communities. Helena Puig shared lessons learnt from using crisismapping for peace building in several developing countries. Analyzing information from Hard-to-Access areas, the third and last session for the day saw Christophe Billen of the People’s Intelligence challenging the crisismapping community to be cautious of information that is been put up in the public domain, while Nat Walker of the Liberia Early Warning group mentioned the importance of testing different tools and community engagement in providing early warnings to government institutions in Liberia.

The last day of the conference were dedicated to self organized sessions by USAID, Google, Openstreetmap, Humanitarian Innovation Fund; United State, State Department; OKF; ICT for Justice. It witnessed an amalgamation of ideas in improving workflows for different organization, mapping party for the Philippines and Central African Republic, and the importance of Open data, Big data in Crisis mapping.

Participants at the Digital Humanitarian Summit

ICCM over the years have witnessed the emergence of the Digital Humanitarian Network [DHN] which is a network that coordinates different organization that help responds to disasters, and also connect their output in meeting the needs of the traditional first responders, humanitarian organizations on the ground. The DHN had its 2 day summit at the 88mph on Ngong Road, also in Nairobi. Organizations present at the summit included Geeks Without Bounds, GISCorps, Stand By Task Force [SBTF], UNOCHA, Google, Humanitarian Openstreetmap (HOTOSM), Connected Development [CODE], Red Cross Kenya, Crisis Cleanup, Save the Children Kenya and a list of others. The summit allows for a reflection on the activation and workflow of all the DHN and also external admissions into the network. The summit ended with the clear roles for specific workflow for different member organization, the start of local physical meet ups, new volunteer engagement workflows and new mechanisms in admitting prospective members.

In developed and developing countries, people are connecting through technology at an accelerating pace, with technologies that have more computing power than NASA used to send a man to the moon. Leveraging on these technologies, this new space called “CrisisMappers” continue to evolve and increasingly informing the world, thus making connected self reliant communities to affect the delivery of humanitarian aid. Overtime, this space present a fundamental shift in how we can respond to disaster risk management programs and intervene in disaster situations especially in Nigeria, and the West African region that has experienced more disasters in recent times. Traditional disaster management organizations have started embracing these changes and are reorienting their approaches around the essential objective of helping people to help themselves – Our disaster management organizations too should take a cue from this community as it holds great promise for the future, even as the space recognizes its pitfalls and the fact that progress has not always been smooth – a challenge that will be figured out during the ICCM 2014 in the New York City!  

ABUJA IN TIME AND SPACE: HOW TO BECOME A CITIZEN CARTOGRAPHER

How many organizations do you reach in Lagos in 5hours? “I manage to do three, if it’s on the mainland and two if it’s towards or on the Island” replied our focal point in Lagos. So what about Abuja “I always do 2 in 1hour, so I reach 10 in 5hrs, however, getting the exact location or address remains the biggest challenge. Even most of the popular on-line yellow pages don’t have a recent and reliable data of important places in Abuja, same with the popular Google maps!” narrated our focal point in Abuja.

Participants at the Google NYSC Lagos Mapup engaged
in Ground truth activities

By the end of 2012, Google Map Maker will have data to cover about 5million unique miles, in 3,000 cities on every continent! Including Antarctica. One of the greatest contributors to these massive data is Google Map users – I mean me and you, and we keep populating the maps every day. Abuja is not an exception. Nevertheless, am being told several times, that “the location of that pub isn't right on Google Maps”, that “there are now five new schools on that avenue, but we do not have them on our list as gotten from Google Maps”. Recently, a friend on facebook posted “Please can anyone help me with the direction to a nearby hospital around Cadastral A7,  my child just had a deep cut”, and a student from one of the universities asked me “why won’t Google have my building on Google Maps?”

Mappers doing a ground truth of images from Google Maps
Students of  the University of Ibadan Mapping their campus  

These are some of the issues the Google Map Maker Mapup tagged the “Abuja Mapping Party” tends to solve. In 6 days, starting from January 26 - February 2, 2013 (Find programme of activities here)  we hope to have mapped about 9,000 points which include roads, pubs, offices, schools, hospitals, gas stations, parks and other point of interest within Wuse II, Wuse Zone 1-7, Jabi, Utako, Life Camp and the largest estate in West Africa – Gwarinpa. The event will give you an opportunity to show/share your local knowledge by mapping places in Abuja, exchange ideas and win while having fun.  The Abuja mapping party will show participants how to map different places, draw roads, add categories and discuss other features. This will enable them become citizen cartographers and improve the quality of maps and local information. If you will like to join us, kindly register here  and don’t forget to come with your back bags, coffee cups, plug – outlets and your computer devices.

Mappers at the Google/NYSC Lagos MapUp Event

The event hopes to make particularly Abuja, a smart city, a better mapped city with relevant and recent local information such as roads, schools, hospitals, banks, hotels, police stations and such other important places entered by you, having local knowledge. We will be looking out for the youngest and oldest mapper amongst us, as such we invite children, students, geo-spatial experts and people from all works. “Google Map Maker Souvenirs’ and refreshment will be available, and a certificate of participation will be given to all participants at the end of the event” affirmed Adepoju Emmanuel, a Google Map Maker advocate and ambassador.

CITIZEN REPORTING AND THE LAGOS TRAFFIC CROWDMAP

Lagos state, the smallest in Nigeria, has a population of 17 million out of a national estimate of 150 million. The UN estimates that at its present growth rate, Lagos state will be third largest mega city the world by year 2015 after Tokyo in Japan an Bombay in India.

Out Of the overwhelming population, Metropolitan Lagos, an area covering 37% of the land area of Lagos State is home to over 85% of the State population. The state has become the economy center of Nigeria.

Current demographic trend analysis revealed that the State population growth rate of 8% has resulted in its capturing of 36.8% of Nigeria’s urban population (World Bank, 1996) estimate at 49.8 million people of the nation’s million population. The implication is that whereas country population growth is 4/5% and global 2%, Lagos population is growing ten times faster than New York and Los Angeles with grave implication for urban sustainability and especially traffic in the state.

The Lagos Traffic Map hopes to account for the appalling situation that inhabitant and motorists go through everyday; helps to give out early warnings to air, water and road users; and helps emergency managers in coordinating and managing mishaps. The Lagos Traffic Map is a two months pilot project that is been coordinated by the ihumanitarian group in Nigeria and some SBTF members in Nigeria. The ihumanitarian group are volunteers from Nigeria that uses the internet, their laptop and mobile phones to help co-ordinate emergencies and help disseminate early warning

THE LAGOS FLOOD AND BEYOND: GETTING IT RIGHT IN DISASTER PREPAREDNESS AND EMERGENCY RESPONSE

In the wake of July 10, 2011, Lagos was greeted with a torrential rainfall of about 300m that resulted into flood of about 1000mm to 1200mm. Still battling with that, the Calabar Flood struck, displacing thousands of people. All were forecasted by the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NIMET);that became the beginning of Lagos floods and became a disaster when it claimed the lives of no fewer than 31 persons (as reported by Vanguard, July 15, 2011) including a 5year old that was drown.

Most definitely, this will not be the last of disasters we will be experiencing in Lagos, and perhaps, some other vulnerable states in Nigeria. Even as the unverified news of a 20-meter high tide tsunami heading towards the coast of Lagos, Lome and Accra, following an offshore quake in Malabo circulates round the disaster risk response world.

Consequently, We might need to ask ourselves, if we are prepared for natural disasters in Nigeria? and if we are, how fast do we respond to all these disasters, we call emergency management. With the head of the senate recently reiterating the need for emergency response managers to quickly and hastenly develop disaster response techniques - Perhaps, its time to take a cue from the Haiti Earthquake, the Negris Cyclone, the Alabama Tornadoe, the Pakistan Flood, and the recent Japan Earthquake.

Analytically, the world is changing, and we now live in a "state where a traditional framework and several experimental approaches existed in parallel — a period when the explanatory power of the old system wanes while some inchoate new system explores and codifies the methods that are strong enough to begin replacing the old ones" as Thomas Kuhn defined Paradigm Change in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The working tools that are now been deployed before, during and after disaster is the growing Virtual Technology Communities (VTCs) that we call "humanitarian technologists".

These new breeds are experts who are most often technical professionals with deep expertise in geographic information systems,mapping, web development and database management, social media, and/or online campaigns - they apply their skills to some of the hardest elements of disaster risk communities. They include the international Network of Crisis Mappers, Google Map Maker, Ushahidi, The Global Earth Observation - Catastrophe Assesement Network (GEO-CAN), The SBTF ( Stand by Task Force), Crisis Commons, Random Hacks of Kindness RHoK.

Quite notably, is the fact that VTCs will never replace the current institutional

frameworks of Nigerian Meteorological Agency(NIMET), National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and its state agencies,and other humanitarian organizations, but crisis response and other elements of the disaster risk management cycle are approaching a state resembling a shift in paradigm. It is pertinent for these organizations to start bulding capacity in this vein, and look for ways to collaborate with professionals that uses this technology, those in Nigeria and in diaspora. Because the penetration of Internet and Mobile Technology is escalating everyday in our Country, it will be a shift to a new direction to leverage on their potentials, for which these new technologies are been used.

EMERGENCY/CRISIS MANAGEMENT AND CROWDSOURCE MAPPING IN NIGERIA

Emergency management (or disaster management) is the coordination and integration of all activities necessary to build, sustain and improve the capability for disaster prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. It is the continuous process by which all individuals, groups and communities manage hazards in an effort to avoid or ameliorate the impact of disasters resulting from the hazards. And, effective emergency management relies on thorough integration of emergency plans at all levels of government and non-government involvement.

Nigeria has continued to witness a series of embarrassing disasters and emergency situations that are largely human-induced from post-election violence, youth militancy, communal clashes, religious conflicts, fire outbreaks, road accidents, kidnapping and robberies. The magnitudes of the carnage usually overwhelm response agencies responsible for tackling and mitigating the situations.

The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) as the coordinating organ for response agencies becomes the major attraction, even when its staffs on humanitarian duties survives attacks from warring parties, cases which have been seen during the Jos ethnic crisis, communal clashes between villages. It could be said that with NEMA in place in Nigeria, we have had the problem of coordination with local disaster management, during pre and post emergencies and disasters and because disasters are always localized, all the five phases of emergency management – prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery depend on local structures, which are not effective, to succeed.

Nevertheless, emergency management and coordination has shifted from grounds men to the use of technology to co-ordinate emergencies and humanitarian services. In recent years, advancements in technologies have made it possible for virtual communities such as OpenStreetMap, Ushahidi, Sahana, CrisisMappers, Virtual Disaster Viewer, Google MapMaker and INSTEDD to provide increasing support to disaster preparedness and emergency response efforts. A feat that has helped in managing crisis in Libya using the Libya Crisis Map, was used in co-ordinating humanitarian affairs in Haiti and in the Alabama Tornadoes and a list of others.

With disasters been prevalent in Africa, it is most important that we begin to look at leveraging on these technologies, thus leading to capacity building in this area, which in some months will start, no thanks to crisismappers members that are resided in Nigeria. Our Strength lies in the number of Nigerians that uses mobile technologies in communication escalating every day. We hope to create crisis camps in each state, which might comprise of disaster emergency officers, especially in states, Information Technology professionals, social entrepreneurs and volunteers.