Olafsson kicks off crisis informatics speaker series
by Jason Frederick, College of IST student
On October 3, Crisis Informatics, a new SRA course that examines technology related to emergency and disaster response, kicked off its speaker series by videoconference with Gisli Olafsson. Olafsson is the emergency response director of NetHope, a consortium of non-governmental organizations whose mission, according to its website, is to improve “collaboration among international humanitarian organizations.” The event, hosted by Crisis Informatics class, was open to everyone in the Penn State community.
Olafsson began the talk by explaining that technological change in the humanitarian response field is taking place and must be embraced rather than feared. He described the cluster model that arose out of humanitarian reform efforts and stressed the need to do things in new ways. Today, hundreds of organizations end up operating within a single cluster. Olafsson stated, “That’s the definition of insanity.”
Based off of wikinomic and macrowikinomic concepts, Olafsson presented seven principles important for improving the aging humanitarian structure. The principles discussed include: innovation, collaboration, openness, interdependence, integrity, self-organization, and sustainability.
Olafsson stressed the importance of innovating in order to save money and be more efficient. Just back from a refugee camp in Somalia, he explained that the current method of printing vouchers for food is expensive. Rather than paying $1.60 to print one voucher, mobile payment methods should be implemented. Olafsson commented that “over 63% of the refugees have mobile phones.” He also explained the inefficiency of rapid assessment forms. The need for change was quite clear, especially after he posed the question, “What’s rapid about asking 110 questions of a person?”
Referencing Dennis Mileti, director of the Natural Hazard Center in Colorado, Olafsson said, “When disaster strikes, the organizations tend to fight for the attention from the media and the public. They start fighting turf battles and try to utilize this particular disaster to prove their importance and existence and so forth.” In order to overcome such political issues, change needs to start at the level of the individual within these large humanitarian organizations. Olafsson explained that the humanitarian community needs to move from the outdated cluster model to a more self-coordinated model, a model of “assigning tasks based on prioritization.”
In an age where connectivity is no longer a limiting factor, there needs to be more openness and transparency. Not only would this allow for increased efficiency, but it would also allow others, such as those from the academia, to find “new and more efficient ways of addressing the issues that we [the humanitarian community] are facing,” according to Olafsson.
After the presentation, attendees had the opportunity to ask questions. Many insightful questions were asked including one question regarding our reliance on infrastructure when network activity drastically increases. Olafsson answered, “As most you know, on the 11th of March this year, there was a huge earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The interesting part about the mobile phone system infrastructure, at the time, was voice stopped working, SMS stopped working or got delayed, but the IP communications on the phones—worked perfectly.” Such information gave attendees much to think about. Prior to questions, Olafsson left attendees with the following: “We’ve got to remember that the organizations doing humanitarian work today are not going to change by themselves. It’s through you, and others like you, that this change must happen.”
