Digital Humanitarians

How Big Data Is Changing the Face of Humanitarian Response

By: Patrick Meier

Narrated by: Trevor White

The overflow of information generated during disasters can be as paralyzing to humanitarian response as the lack of information. This flash flood of information—social media, satellite imagery, and more—is often referred to as Big Data. Making sense of this data deluge during disasters is proving an impossible challenge for traditional humanitarian organizations, which explains why they’re turning to Digital Humanitarians. Who exactly are these Digital Humanitarians and how do they make sense of Big Data?

Digital Humanitarians: How Big Data Is Changing the Face of Humanitarian Response answers this question. Digital Humanitarians are you, me, all of us—volunteers, students, and professionals from the world over and from all walks of life. What do they share in common? They desire to make a difference, and they do by rapidly mobilizing online in collaboration with international humanitarian organizations. In virtually real-time, they make sense of vast volumes of social media, SMS and imagery captured from satellites and UAVs to support relief efforts worldwide. How? They craft and leverage ingenious crowdsourcing solutions with trail-blazing insights from artificial intelligence.

This book charts the sudden and spectacular rise of Digital Humanitarians by sharing their remarkable, real-life stories, highlighting how their humanity coupled with innovative solutions to Big Data is changing humanitarian response forever. Digital Humanitarians will make you think differently about what it means to be humanitarian and will invite you to join the journey online.

©2021 Taylor & Francis (P)2021 Routledge

Critic reviews

"Patrick Meier is a passionate evangelist for the power of big data to help us respond to natural disasters and other crises. He is also a careful scholar who thinks deeply about the limits and potential dangers of data-centric approaches. His book offers both inspiration for those around the world who want to improve our disaster response and a set of fertile challenges to ensure we use data wisely and ethically."—Ethan Zuckerman, Director, MIT Center for Civic Media and author of Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection

"I dare you to read this book and not have both your heart and mind opened. Patrick Meier writes compellingly about his first-hand accounts of people around the world working together to help disaster victims through advanced computing solutions." —Leysia Palen, Associate Professor and Director of Project EPIC—Empowering the Public with Information during Crises, University of Colorado, Boulder

"Something very like the fog of war afflicts crisis response. On the ground, simply knowing what is wrong — who is suffering? where is the danger? — is both critical and difficult. In Digital Humanitarians, Patrick Meier, a scholar and practitioner of crisis response, shows us how simple digital tools, built and staffed by a worldwide network of volunteers, are providing faster and more comprehensive data for disaster response efforts. Working from examples like the Haitian earthquake and the Arab Spring, Meier shows how tools from artificial intelligence to aerial drones, and techniques from crowdmapping to distributed fact-checking, are helping to dispel some of that fog."—Clay Shirky, Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, New York University and author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations