UN Needs Your Help Tagging Crisis Tweets for Disaster Response
8 November 2013, Geneva, Switzerland: Typhoon Yolanda is the one of the strongest storms ever recorded. A new UN OCHA activation of the Digital Humanitarian Network (DHN) calls for volunteers to help with media monitoring and mapping around the typhoon. The following text is taken from the DHN website. The ICT4Peace Foundation strongly urges you to participate and help to the extent you can.
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The Standby Task Force is officially deploying in response to a Digital Humanitarian Network (DHN) request from UN OCHA to assist with media monitoring and mapping for Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan), a super typhoon due to make landfall in the Philippines at 01:00 UTC on Friday, November 8th. Please consider contributing your time to this new deployment! You do not need to be a member of the SBTF, you simply need to follow the steps below and log into Skype.
Activator: UN OCHA via DHN
Deployment timeframe: 21:00 UTC, Thursday, November 7 – 22:00 UTC, Sunday, November 10.
Platform: The deployment will use the MicroMappers platform that the SBTF are testing and the Ushahidi map platform. Regarding MicroMappers, this deployment is open to anyone with an internet connection; no previous training or SBTF membership is required. Regarding the Ushahidi map, we will need SBTF volunteers with experience in using Ushahidi.
STEP 1: Please sign up for the deployment and indicate your availability here:
http://tinyurl.com/n2d9vd9
STEP 2: We will add you to the Skype chat window for the deployment called Typhoon Yolanda – Palau General Chat. Please check this Skype window for further instructions and link to the platform for the deployment.
Deployment Leads:
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
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Follow ICT4Peace on Facebook here - http://facebook.com/ict4peace
Download a report on the use of Information and Communications Technologies for peacebuilding (ICT4Peace), with a Preface by Kofi A. Annan, former Secretary General of the United Nations here.
An updated version of this report, with critical analysis on current policies and practices of ICTs in peacebuilding and crises was published in early 2011. Published in collaboration with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and GeorgiaTech, Peacebuilding in the Information Age: Sifting Hype from Reality can be read here.
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ICT4Peace took root with pioneering research on the role of ICTs in preventing, responding to and recovering from conflict in 2003 and lead to the adoption of Paragraph 36 by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis in 2005 which recognises “...the potential of ICTs to promote peace and to prevent conflict which, inter alia, negatively affects achieving development goals. ICTs can be used for identifying conflict situations through early-warning systems preventing conflicts, promoting their peaceful resolution, supporting humanitarian action, including protection of civilians in armed conflicts, facilitating peacekeeping missions, and assisting post conflict peace-building and reconstruction".
The ICT4Peace Foundation works to promote the practical realisation of Paragraph 36 and looks at the role of ICT in crisis management, covering aspects of early warning and conflict prevention, peace mediation, peacekeeping, peace-building as well as natural disaster management and humanitarian operations.
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