Event Report: Digital Humanitarians

I attended the Digital Humanitarians event at New America, which focused on Patrick Meier’s new book about how to make sense of “big data” during disasters. The book is a collection of stories, but Meier focused on the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, which is what started the digital humanitarian movement.

            Meier was a graduate student at Tufts University when the earthquake struck. His wife and friends were in Haiti at the time, so he began using tweets and other posts on social media that included geographic locations to search for them. Working with a group of other students, Meier brought together a full-fledged citizen science disaster response team, none of whom had any experience with this type of data collection.

The team monitored various social feeds, mapping and validating information received. They published their map online, and at the time, only half of Port au Prince was available on Google Maps, making it very difficult to georeference messages. The Director of FEMA retweeted it saying it was the most up-to-date and comprehensive map available. They received an email from the Marine Corps saying that they used the map “every second of every day” and it saved hundreds of lives. By crowdsourcing the information, they were able to make it available to the disaster relief teams in real time, instead of several days or weeks after the disaster.

Next, the team set up a texting line for Haitians in need, since between 60 and 70 percent of Haitians had mobile phones at the time. They used Facebook to recruit people who spoke the Haitian Creole language to translate the texts. As texts came in, volunteers on social media would categorize the severity of damage for that location—either requests for help, infrastructure damage, or population displacement. This made it easier to track exactly what type of assistance was needed and where.

Later, Meier created a “wordle” image using all of the words from the texts, and surprisingly, the words please and thank you were some of the most commonly used. Meier explained that this was really powerful to him—that even in the state of despair, humanity still exists.

Meier went on to explain how the Digital Humanitarian movement has improved since the earthquake in Haiti. They now have an artificial intelligence system that can tag up to 2 million photos and tweets per hour. They have a Verily platform that helps to verify the accuracy of images. They use social media to ask yes or no questions about pictures—like, was this photo taken in Haiti?—to end the mindless retweeting and spreading of rumors, and get people to use their critical thinking skills to do something good.

I thought this event was especially relevant to our class. It helped to address the struggle with clicktivism, as the digital humanitarian effort is a way that people can make a real difference with the click of a button, instead of simply feeling accomplished for clicking. Additionally, Meier noted that previously, if you had mentioned crowdsourcing at the UN, you looked like an idiot. The UN has come a long way, and they even suggested crowdsourcing during a typhoon.

I highly recommend watching the webinar from this event, and definitely suggest reading the book. Meier was a captivating speaker, and the story is incredible. It’s especially refreshing to hear about how mindless clicks online can be turned into useful information for people working on the ground in the aftermath of a disaster. During the discussion, Meier was asked why he thought so many people responded in these situations, and his answer was that people want to help, but you need to provide them with a simple, ethical way to do so.

Website: http://www.digital-humanitarians.com

View the webinar of the event: https://www.newamerica.org/international-security/digital-humanitarians/