Aldo Benini was writing about and developing humanitarian information management before I even started my professional career. I’ve always respected his work and was always saddened that we didn’t have more chances to work together. I’ve just discovered that his website makes nearly all of his research is available, including his latest work on Linking [...]...
Those crazy jokers at the UN Joint Logistics Centre have just released version 2.0 of the UN Spatial Data Infrastructure for Transport database schema, based on feedback received since last September’s release and developed with WFP and Ithaca (good to see that partnership being productive). This version covers an XML schema, the schema documentation, template [...]...
Short notice, but the Humanitarian Futures Programme will be hosting a seminar on Wednesday 25 June at King’s College, London. Focus is on satellite imagery and its future uses by the humanitarian community in monitoring natural hazards, climate change and health. If you’re around London, it should be interesting - [...]...
Jesse Robbins and Mikel Maron spoke at Where2.0 on Disaster Technology. Streaming video is a bit of a non-starter on my shonky internet connection, but both of these guys have an interesting take on the sector. They’re both technology evangelists, but minus the utopianism that makes my fists itch. A platform like Where2.0 is fantastic [...]...
Rich Treves blogs on Google Earth design, and his ideas are solid (I particularly like his post on 2005 - 2015: the Lost Decade of Neo-Geography?). A recent interest in humanitarian applications, and some discussions with people like Nigel Woof of MapAction, have lead him to develop TMapper, a thematic mapping tool for Google [...]...
MapAction and BrightEarth both feature in an article in the Independent entitled “Mapping the disaster zones” - how they think up the intensely creative titles for these articles, I just don’t know. Interesting enough, but these articles always leave me with a sense that the writer just doesn’t get it - apparently “Within 48 hours: [...]...
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Digital Divide,
knowledge management,
Web,
Emergency Telecommunications,
olpc,
NetHope,
Communities,
AidWorkers Network,
BrightEarth,
Development Gateway,
Intel,
MapAction,
GIS,
Private Sector,
geospatial
So it all kicked off in Myanmar this week, except that it didn’t, because the military regime has managed to bungle the response to Cyclone Nargis. We could get into a long discussion about the whys and wherefores, and there’s some frightening talk about the “right to respond” over-riding sovereignty, but let’s stay focused on [...]...
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ngo,
blogs,
United Nations,
Burma,
Sahana,
Cellphone,
Co-ordination,
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cyclone,
Web,
Emergency Telecommunications,
Nargis,
Remote Sensing,
GIS,
Logistics,
Media,
Humanitarian,
geospatial
Word reaches me that Dennis King, one of my favourite commenters, put this blog on the big screen at the ISCRAM 2008 conference. I was supposed to be there this year, but once again wasn’t able to make it. So to anybody visiting this blog from ISCRAM, welcome - I hope you find it somewhat [...]...