Digital Humanitarianism and Networked Crisis Support
Saturday 19 October 2013
Time: 12:00 – 15:00
Venue: Lecture room Marken 37, KHiB, Bergen, Norway
Arranged by: KHiB EVU and The Hub Bergen
Speakers: Brendan O'Hanrahan (Standby Task Force), Justine Mackinnon
(CrisisMappersUK), Svend-Jonas Schelhorn (Heidelberg University)
Panel; As above –plus Angela Odour - Community Developer Liaison, Ushahidi, Kenya (via
Skype).
Facilitator: Per Aarvik, assistant professor at KHiB, visual communication
Program:
12:00 Introduction and welcome
12:10 Jus Mackinnon – Introduction to digital humanitarians and micro mapping
12:30 Brendan O’Hanrahan – Collaboration and mapping the Khartoum floods
12:50 Svend-Jonas Schelhorn – Crisis Mapping in research and education
13:10 Fascilitating conversations
13:20 Break – coffe & baguette – mingling with new and interesting people
14:00 Angela Oduor (Nairobi) on Skype: presentation of Uchaguzi
14:10 Panel: Questions, discussion and next steps
14:50 Jus Mackinnon - Summary
15:00 End
Description
Digital Humanitarians is a wide description of individuals and NGOs using digital tools for
collaboration, mapping, analyzing or data-mining for humanitarian purposes and in
humanitarian contexts. They typically engage for humanitarian crises, natural disasters,
democracy projects, human rights monitoring or disaster preparedness. There are digital
tools, procedures and ethical questions they all have in common.
Among these groups there is a wide array of levels concerning engagement, skills and ways
to organize. The level of engagement spans from a "like" on a Facebook page, re–tweeting
messages, signing petitions or tagging images - to drawing actual maps, mining the net for
information, analyzing vast amounts of data or trying to automate some of the timeconsuming tasks involved.
A rapidly expanding volunteer base around the globe call themselves Digital
Humanitarians.
This may be the first seminar presenting such working methods in Bergen, Norway.
Digital Humanitarianism
This seminar is aimed at you who wish to get an introduction to possibilities connected to
digital tools for online volunteering – and for those who simply wonders: What are those
tools – and how does these people work? KHiB wish to follow up with practical workshops
to enable designers, artists, humanists or researchers to gain knowledge on a field in rapid
development.
Brendan O'Hanrahan - Vegetation ecologist, Standby Task Force
Brendan has been deeply involved in crisis mapping since volunteering for the
libyacrisismap project in early 2011. He has a lifelong interest in politics and history –
particularly in North Africa and the Middle East. When it comes to crisis deployments, he
frequently specialises in the geolocation side – reflecting his (equally lifelong) obsession
with maps and the names we use on those maps. His work often requires GIS skills and he
enjoys having good geodata sets to tackle - though he is by no means a tech specialist.
Most recently, he has been involved with helping local volunteers respond to the floods in
the Sudan, as well as elections in Cameroon and Kenya and an earthquake in Pakistan.
Outwith his digital humanitarian activism, Brendan is an Irish vegetation ecologist based in
NW Scotland.
Justine Mackinnon – Founder of JusTech, Community leader for Ushahidi.
Previous Airfield manager at London Heathrow Airport, managing the airfield on a day to
day basis, including writing the emergency orders and contingency plans for the airfield.
Acted as silver command during incidents. Was involved in designing and implementing
the bi annual emergency exercises to be issued with the aerodrome licence awarded by
CAA. Other affiliations: Co founder CrisisMappersUK; Community leader for Ushahidi;
Member Humanity Road; Member CrisisMappers.net; Founder JusTech (empowering
women to use emerging technology for disaster preparedness, reactionary disaster
management, in under developed and crisis hit countries); Member of UNWomenUK;
Writing paper on global com and control post disaster incl tech and vol groups.
Last year was awarded the Presidential (U.S) gold medal for humanity and volunteering
services. Her day job is consultant on varying subjects including lean six sigma, change
and behavioral operational management.
Svend-Jonas Schelhorn - Research ass. Univ Heidelberg, Germany
Graduate Research Assistant, University of Heidelberg. His main focus is on GIS, remote
sensing, natural hazards research and last but not least in disaster-risk-management. He
dedicates his academic career to advancing the frontiers of volunteered digital
humanitarianism. He is fellow in the ASA scholarship program, which is dedicated to
sustainable development and global learning. Within the context of this program he spent
4 months in the Philippines in 2011 working for a German state agency for international
development in their Disaster Risk Management section. His experiences there made him
focus his interest far more towards disaster risk management.
Angela Oduor - Angela Oduor is the Community Developer Liaison at Ushahidi, based in
Nairobi, Kenya. Her work involves building and growing the Ushahidi technical community,
as well as mentoring members of Ushahidi’s open-source developer ecosystem. She
started off as an intern with Ushahidi before joining the team full time in August 2011 as a
developer, building web applications on the Ushahidi platform, and providing technical
Digital Humanitarianism
support to users of Ushahidi’s cloud based system, Crowdmap. She graduated from
Strathmore University with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Information Technology, where
she discovered her deep interest in web and mobile technologies.
She is also a co-founder and member of AkiraChix, a non-profit organization that aims to
develop a successful force of women in technology in Africa through training, mentorship
and networking.At AkiraChix, she serves as the content manager, keeping the AkiraChix
community up to date with their activities.
Per Aarvik – Assistant professor at KHiB, Digital Volunteer for Amara, TED, SBTF
In courses and projects at KHiB he focus on digital communities, contact and collaboration
across different expert-groups and territories and on the consciousness related aspects of
the net – ”beeing” and acting elsewhere than where our body is located. He engages in
online networks within crisismapping and humanism, and does experiments on digital
prescence in his research. He claims that the fun side of interaction design is the
interaction between real people. He previously worked within database development, web,
Quality Enhancement, building projects and journalism.
Readings:
If you like to inform yourself on the theme before the seminar, please do so!
Humanitarianism in the Network Age
https://docs.unocha.org/sites/dms/Documents/WEB%20Humanitarianism%20in%20the
%20Network%20Age%20vF%20single.pdf
Digital Humanitarianism