SMERST keynote, April 2013

1. Scaling Crisismapping
Sara-Jayne Farmer
Change Assembly

2. WHERE WE’VE BEEN: WHY

3. Why

4. Broken Systems
• Communities
• Processes
• Tech
• Innovation

5. (Some of) What Broke
• Crisis Data
– Remote vs Ground disconnect
– Crisis vs Development disconnect
– Deployment lead overload
• Development Data
– Broken data formats, access, coverage, standards
– Ignored data sources
– Human vs Data disconnect
• Communities
– Stovepipes, fiefdoms, imperialism, finding…

6. I’ve tried to help fix that from…
• CrisisCamp London
• Crisiscommons projects
• Standby Task Force
• Humanity Road
• United Nations – EOSG/ Global Pulse
• Ushahidi developers
• (pacifist) military system design
• NY VOST
• Crisismappers NYC
• ICT4D London
• ICCM
• Humanitarian systems consultancy
• Also been in one tornado, two hurricanes, snowstorms, floods, 1 nuclear
alert, 1 conflict, 1 cold war, but never as an on-the-ground responder

7. WHERE WE’VE BEEN: CRISIS DATA

8. Typical Workflow

9. Find…

10. Listen…

11. Estimate…

12. Geolocate…

13. Erm… you also need a map…

14. Analyse

15. Use

16. WHERE WE’VE BEEN:
DEVELOPMENT DATA

17. Typical Workflow
Websites:
HTML, XLS,
CSV,APIs etc
CSV stores
(online and
offline)
Partially-
filled
spreadsheet
Completed
spreadsheet
DNA
Scrapers
& APIs
Template
Creator
Volunteer
Researchers
Analysts

18. Data Access
Online, under an open license
Structured (e.g. Excel, not PDF)
Non-proprietary (e.g. CSV, not Arcgis)
URI / API (so people can point at it)
Linked to other data (to give context)

19. Clean

20. Standardise
DR Congo in Data.UN.Org:
• “Congo, Democratic Republic of the”, “Congo Democratic”,
“Democratic Republic of the Congo”, “Congo (Democratic Republic
of the)”, “Congo, Dem. Rep.”, “Congo Dem. Rep.”, “Congo,
Democratic Republic of”, “Dem. Rep. of Congo”, “Dem. Rep. of the
Congo”
DR Congo in common standards:
• “Democratic Republic of the Congo” (UN Stats), “Congo, The
Democratic Republic of the” (ISO3166), “Congo, Democratic
Republic of the” (FIPS10, Stanag), “180” (UN Stats), “COD”
(ISO3166, Stanag), “CG” (FIPS10)

21. Analyse

22. Use

23. WHERE WE’VE BEEN:
KNOWLEDGE SHARING

24. Knowledge Aggregators

25. Knowledge Aggregators

26. Knowledge Aggregators

27. Connectors

28. Specialisations

29. Training

30. Technologies
• Hackathons (H4D2, RHOK, Space Apps Challenge)
• Open source codebases
(Ushahidi, Sahana, Taarifa, ckan, OpenStreetMap etc)
• Commercial software
(ESRI, Google, dropbox, skype, Crowdflower, ning, sparkrelief, re
covers.org, many startups etc.)
• Academic experiments (e.g. TweakTheTweet)
• I.e. code and work from many of you…

31. Evolving Technologies

32. AT THE SAME TIME: BIG DATA

33. Enthusiastic Sponsor

34. Knowledge Aggregators

35. Specialisations & Embedding

36. Industry & Tool Maps

37. Formal (Free) Training

38. Knowledge Sharing

39. Targetted Volunteering

40. AT THE SAME TIME:
CITIZEN SCIENCE

41. Grassroots Communities

42. Communities of Communities

43. Mixing Communities and Commerce

44. WHERE WE’RE GOING

45. These things are good
• Crisismapping established as a field
• Talented individuals have new routes into humanitarian
work
• Academic and VTC communities formed
• Healthy open-source software environment
• Changed UN from broadcast to (partly) listen
• Added surge capacity and social media analysis to crises
• Encouraged other communities-for-good

46. But Some Differences
• No big publisher-sponsors
• Less focus on grassroots capabilities
• European communities still disconnected
• Little formal training
• Almost no meetups
• No visible benefits to companies (but insurance?)
• Few volunteer reward systems
• Unformed markets for systems and services
• Very little knowledge curation
• No “in a box” kit for countries/ cities/ communities

47. What could we do?
• Catalogue what we have
– Encourage visible knowledge aggregators
– Map what we have (e.g. Mendelay, tools, companies)
– Populate datastores
• Apply data & citizen science business patterns
– Adjust patterns to our environment
– Check what's there, what's missing, what's unique

48. e.g. these patterns
• Build better connectors
– Reach out to stakeholders
– Make the commercial case for mapping
– Create and equip local communities
– Embed mappers in organisations
• Understand roles
– Describe specialisations
• Build better tools
– Fit tools to people’s problems
– Create tools for non-specialists
• Etc.

49. e.g. Build better EU Connectors
• NGOs
• Emergency services
• Military
• Academics
• Local organisations
• Local people
• Hackers
• VTCs
• Etc.

50. e.g. Reach out to Stakeholders
• Map the stakeholders
• Make the commercial case for mapping
• Embed mappers in organisations
• Create and equip local communities
• Start meetups
Etc.

51. e.g. Describe Specialisations
• Turksourcer
• Specialist volunteer
• Community lead
• Designer
• SMEM specialist
• Etc.

52. sara@changeassembly.com
@bodaceacat
www.ChangeAssembly.com
www.opencrisis.net
www.overcognition.com
icanhazdatascience.blogspot.com
www.meetup.com/crisismappersnyc