Archive of posts with tag 'Humanitarian'
Community Impact 2019 →
December 23, 2019 • #Donayle put together this summary of what we’ve accomplished this year through our Fulcrum Community initiative. Some great stuff here:
During Cyclones Idai and Kenneth, Team Rubicon’s Medic team went to Mozambique with Fulcrum in hand and served over 1,000 injured during those cyclonic episodes, using our tools to document and communicate those injuries to the World Health Organization.
Our NetHope partners responded to the Colombia-Venezuela border crisis with internet connectivity and communications support, restoring communication for thousands of displaced families while using Fulcrum to share installation information.
Instead of fireworks, an earthquake shook Searles Valley, California on the Fourth of July, and Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) was there, conducting damage assessments and reporting dangerous conditions to first responders using Fulcrum.
Learning from Disaster →
August 21, 2019 • #Through Fulcrum Community, we’ve been working with the team from NetHope to support their needs in responding to disasters around the world. In their work, they help first-responders in humanitarian crises around the world with connectivity and communications when it’s knocked out — cellular coverage, phone communications, and internet access.
This week they’re hosting an event in the hills of central California, mocking up a disaster scenario to experiment in how relief organizations can embrace technology and collaborate with one another.
The DRT event is conducted over a five-day period with trainers from CiscoTacOps, emergency.lu, Ericsson Response, Facebook, and Redline Communications. The first three days of each module focus on theory and practical hands-on training on NH deployed network, P2P, power, VSAT, mobile SatCom and TVWS solutions.
The participants from Google, Facebook, AWS, and Team Rubicon all go through the classroom training and are then deployed to operate in a 48-hour emergency Simulated Exercise (SIMEX). Participants employ NetHope’s mobilization procedures as in a “real-life” emergency to determine how well they can apply the recently learned technical skills in the field while submerged in austere living conditions.
Joe is out there from our team to give the rundown on how Fulcrum can be deployed in disaster environments, as we’ve helped with dozens of times around the world. It’s cool to see this engagement with our tech for such positive work.
Assisted Tasks for OpenStreetMap →
May 30, 2019 • #The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team has been working on an experimental version of the Tasking Manager tool that incorporates deep learning-assisted mapping projects.
The OSM community has long been (and still largely is) averse to machine-based mapping, as it’s counter to the founding ethos of the project being “created by mappers, where they live.” But if the project is to survive and still see adoption and usage in commercial applications, there has to be effort to improve the depth of coverage and refresh rate to stay competitive with the commercial providers like Google and HERE. They’re out robotically and mechanically mapping the world trying to actively remove humans from the loop.
It’s good to see HOT taking after work done already by Facebook, Mapbox, and Development Seed to combine ML capabilities with OSM to improve the map at scale.
Humanitarian Exchange Language →
April 22, 2019 • #Last week I learned about HXL, a “data markup” standard to help humanitarian orgs more easily share and combine datasets. Datasets from different producers or agencies may actually contain the same type of data — admin boundary codes, population counts, geolocations — but with nonstandard column headings. Merging and combining datasets like this means breaking out the metadata documents (if they exist), renaming columns, and ETLing the data into a usable form. The HXL standard means an agency can insert an extra row with a hashtag-like identifier for what’s in that column. So things like:
- #adm1 +code
- #loc +name
- #population
Each of these has a consistent definition, so authorities providing data can make sure their stuff aligns with a preexisting standard for interoperability. Agencies like the IOM, USAID, and Red Cross are already supporting it. I’m interested to see what we can do here with Fulcrum Community.