Background
Crisis mapping initiatives, information communication technology, and early warning systems have the potential to prevent mass atrocities, mitigate the effects of natural disasters, strengthen international aid agency coordination, improve resource allocation, develop timely policy, and help us evaluate current humanitarian practices. All of the required technology, data-gathering methods, and analytical frameworks exist currently - with many experts in each area residing at Harvard University. HHI is creating a community of practice to catalyze a discussion between disparate groups of experts in a sustained forum that will refine crisis mapping tools and promote best practices to save lives.
About the Program
HHI is largely recognized as the principal founder of the Crisis Mapping field as it is know today. Launched in 2007, HHI's Program on Crisis Mapping and Early Warning (CM&EW) set out to connect an active community of Crisis Mappers and to formalize the field of Crisis Mapping. Between 2007 and 2009, HHI's Program documented best practices and lessons learned through the lens of new technologies and methodologies. In the process, HHI consulted and interviewed some 300 leading scholars, humanitarian practitioners, software and technology experts and important policy makers across numerous fields of expertise including:
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The vision of HHI's Crisis Mapping and Early Warning Program is the development of fully global, real-time and geo-referenced crisis monitoring platform for conflict prevention and disaster management. This public platform would integrate real-time data from mobile technologies, satellite and aerial imagery, global environmental sensors, information from the Internet and crowd-sourced data. The platform would also leverage the cutting edge in the field of data visualization and dynamic spatial analysis to identify patterns of crises for humanitarian response and thereby serve as a decision-support system. The ultimate purpose of crisis mapping is to provide individuals with access to information that can better inform their decisions in times of crises.
Current Projects
Today, HHI continues to play a pivotal role in defining the future of Crisis Mapping and Early Warning by catalyzing dialogue across several fields of expertise to accelerate learning in humanitarian response, digital technology and computational methods. HHI and John Carroll University (JCU) are the co-founders of the International Network of Crisis Mappers (INCM), a professional network that officially launched in October 2009. In addition, HHI and JCU are co-organizing the First Annual International Conference on Crisis Mapping (ICCM) to be held in October, 2009. The goal of this conference was to bring together the most engaged practitioners, scholars, software developers and policymakers at the cutting edge of crisis mapping to define the future of the field. HHI will be hosting ICCM 2010.
- Humanitarian Sensor Web, in partnership with USHMM: HHI has partnered with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) to develop a crisis mapping platform for UN field-based agencies. Called the Humanitarian Sensor Web (HSW), the platform enables humanitarians in the field to map humanitarian infrastructure and events of interest in real time to improve situational awareness. The SensorWeb also leverages mobile technology and social networking to enable networked communication and decision-making. The platform was officially launched at the first International Conference on Crisis Mapping (ICCM) and is set to be piloted in Liberia and the DRC.
- Monitoring and Evaluation, in partnership with Ushahidi: HHI was an early partner of Ushahidi’s and continues to collaborate with the initiative to help improve their crisis mapping platform. At present, the two organizations are exploring the possibility of HHI carrying out a full impact evaluation of the Ushahidi platform.
- Humanitarian Early Warning System, in partnership with WFP: HHI and WFP partnered on the development of the Humanitarian Early Warning System (HEWS), phase 2. HHI acted as an independent sounding board to provide conceptual and strategic guidance on the design of this second phase.
Current Research
- Advanced and Integrated Computational Methods for Crisis Mapping: Headed by Justyna Zander, this research projects seeks to leverage advanced computational methods for crisis mapping analysis and real-time simulation for scenario building.
- Satellite Imagery for Global Crisis Monitoring and Patterns Analysis: This new research project seeks to identify current and future opportunities regarding the use of satellite and areal imagery for global crisis monitoring and crisis mapping analytics.
- Crisis Mapping Analysis of Angolan Civil War: Headed by Jen Ziemke, this research project seeks to push the field of crisis mapping forward by testing new visualization tools and geospatial analytical techniques to identify patterns in conflict.
Published Reports
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Applied Technology to Crisis Mapping and Early Warning in Humanitarian Settings By Patrick Meier and Jennifer Leaning, September 2009. The purpose of this Working Paper Series on Crisis Mapping is to briefly analyze the current use, and changing role, of information communication technology (ICT) in conflict early warning, crisis mapping and humanitarian response. The authors demonstrate that ICTs have the potential to play an increasingly significant role in three critical ways by: facilitating the communication of information in conflict zones, improving the collection of salient quantitative and qualitative conflict data, and enhancing the visualization and analysis of patterns. |
Crisis Mapping Blog
More information on HHI's applied research and the wider crisis mapping community can be found on Patrick Meier's blog: iRevolution.
Crisis Mapping & Early Warning Team
HHI's Program brings together some of the world's most forward thinking and accomplished experts in the field of Crisis Mapping and Early Warning:
Jennifer Leaning, MD, SMH | Co-Director of Crisis Mapping Program
Patrick Meier, PhD (abd) | Co-Director of Crisis Mapping Program
Gregg Greenough, MD, SMH | Director of Research
Justyna Zander, MA, PhD | Crisis Mapping Fellow
Jen Ziemke, MA, PhD | Crisis Mapping Fellow