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Information Technology: Best Practices and Recommendations SMART Technical Meeting, June 24, 2005 Dennis King US Department of State Humanitarian Information Unit.
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Information Technology: Best Practices and Recommendations SMART Technical Meeting, June 24, 2005Dennis KingUS Department of StateHumanitarian Information Unit
The Humanitarian Information Unit serves as a US Government interagency office to identify, collect, analyze and disseminate unclassified information critical to USG decision makers and partners in preparation for and response to humanitarian emergencies worldwide, and promote best practices in humanitarian information management.
Collaboration and knowledge management • Humanitarian information comes from a wide variety of organizations – UN, IOs, governments, donors, NGOs, academia • Humanitarian information comes from a variety of sources – websites, internal reports, e-mails, databases, imagery, media, etc. • Critical information needs to be continuously retrieved, selected, organized and disseminated for operational use • Communities of Interest should be created to make critical data and information available to those who need it
Collaboration Tools • A virtual local area network to share data/information regardless of organization or location • All members can upload and download information of interest to the community • Common repository of documents, maps, imagery, emails, lessons learned • Calendar, contact lists, discussion groups, info requests • Health professional community of practice collaborate on issues and share information
Critical Humanitarian Information Needs • Certain critical data/information is always needed by decision makers and humanitarian organization personnel • Locating, extracting, filtering and synthesizing this information is difficult due to dynamic overload of information • When multi-source data is standardized, it can be retrieved, pooled, verified, compared and used for analysis
Data/Text Mining Tools • Advanced search engines for mining websites and databases • The more standardized the data, the easier it is to extract the critical data • Data/text mining also useful for identifying gaps in information
Visualization • Examples: Graphs, pie charts, timelines, Geographic Information Systems/maps • Visualization enhances narrative information, • Visualization facilitates analysis, understanding and presents a “common operating picture”
Geographic Information Systems • Requires geo-referenced data (lat/longs, sub-national administrative areas, baseline physical features) • Permits geo-spatial analysis – visualize the relationships between humanitarian indicators and geography, demography, political/national boundaries, etc. • HIU Project – Emergencies Without Borders
54% 40% 30% 15% 5% Interpolated HIV Prevalence adjusted for Pop Density Interpolated HIV Prevalence model based on more than 1,200 sentinel surveillance sites that have reported HIV prevalence among pregnant women. Multiplying the interpolated HIV prevalence times the adjusted population distribution provides a rough estimate of number of people living with HIV per square kilometer and shows concentrations of people living with HIV.
Areas and Incidents of Conflict and DisplacementIn 2004 So Far in 2005
Complex Emergency Affected Areas and Refugee Camps in Africa in 2004 Complex Emergency Affected Areas 2004
Populations at Risk Information Project • Aims: • Develop means to improve the estimation and management of sub-national demographic information for countries with poor or unavailable data • Elevate awareness of this critical information need • Participants: • Department of State, USAID, Census Bureau, HHS/CDC,NASA, NOAA, USGS, and others
Populations at Risk Information Project • Two parallel activities (August 2005 – 2006): • NRC Study: The National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences will engage the science community to study the use of science and technology to better estimate and manage sub-national population data. • Prototype Country Decision Support Packages: Geographic Information System (GIS)-based models developed for Mozambique, Mali, and Haiti will provide a basis for exploring the integration and application of disparate types and quality of information to crises scenarios involving climate, conflict, or infectious disease.
Best Practices • Don’t over-promote the technology/tool, demonstrate the use and value with products and services • Emphasize the importance and value of standardized data and meta-data (source, date, location, etc.) • Employ visualization to represent complex data, display patterns and relationships, and present a common operating picture
Thank You Dennis King State/INR/GGI/HIU Kingdj2@state.gov