The Open Humanitarian Initiative aims to improve information sharing and management capacity during disaster response through two key streams: 1) Developing technology solutions like data standards, a sharing platform, and visualization tools. 2) Building capacity through training, digital volunteers, and research innovation. This unique initiative focuses on collaboration, leveraging existing investments, utilizing a broad community including the private sector and governments, and having a flexible funding and governance model. Bringing together such a diverse set of partners is seen as critical to the initiative's success.
A Dynamic Delphi Process Utilizing a Modified Thurstone Scaling Method: Colla...Connie White
In an extreme event or major disaster, very often there are both alternative actions that might be considered and far more requests for actions than can be executed immediately. The relative desirability of each option for action could be a collaborative expression of a significant number of emergency managers and experts trying to manage the most desirable alternatives at any given time, in real time. Delphi characteristics can satisfy these needs given that anyone can vote or change their vote on any two options, and voting and scaling are used to promote a group understanding. Further utilized with Thurstone’s Law of Comparative Judgment, a group decision or the range of acceptability a group is willing to consent to, can be calculated and utilized as a means of producing the best decision. A ubiquitous system for expeditious real-time decision making by large virtual teams in emergency
response environments is described.
A Dynamic Delphi Process Utilizing a Modified Thurstone Scaling Method: Colla...Connie White
In an extreme event or major disaster, very often there are both alternative actions that might be considered and far more requests for actions than can be executed immediately. The relative desirability of each option for action could be a collaborative expression of a significant number of emergency managers and experts trying to manage the most desirable alternatives at any given time, in real time. Delphi characteristics can satisfy these needs given that anyone can vote or change their vote on any two options, and voting and scaling are used to promote a group understanding. Further utilized with Thurstone’s Law of Comparative Judgment, a group decision or the range of acceptability a group is willing to consent to, can be calculated and utilized as a means of producing the best decision. A ubiquitous system for expeditious real-time decision making by large virtual teams in emergency
response environments is described.
Originally put together for The Club of Budapest\'s "Design Me A Planet" conference, this PowerPoint presentation summarizes not only what The Memnosyne Foundation is about, but how integral philanthropy can be implemented in general.
In other words, it explains what differentiates Integral Philanthropy: Traditional philanthropy seeks to alleviate a symptom. Integral Philanthropy views an individual project as a systemic remedy- The people’s transformation into Conscious Cultural Creators, (people who have become consciously aware of how their choices are creating their current culture economically, spiritually, environmentally, etc.), via the project, is the permanent empowerment sought.
Presented by Adele Waugaman, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative Fellow & Independent Consultant. October 15, 2012. Washington, D.C. "DC Design Week: Design for Disaster Relief," held in partnership with AIGA DC.
Communication as aid: Giving voice to refugees on the Thai-Burma borderVictoria Jack
This presentation was delivered at the University of Oxford Refugee Studies Centre international conference in 2014. The theme of the conference was "refugee voices".
The presentation provides an overview of my PhD research project, which explores the role of communication between aid agencies and refugees in camps on the Thai-Burma border. The project investigates the impact of communication in assisting refugees to cope with life outside the nation state. The findings suggest two-directional information flow is key to the designing communication strategies that will be most effective in assisting refugees in a camp environment.
To inform the PhD project I conducted an extensive fieldwork trip in 2013, during which I stayed in several refugee camps on the Thai-Burma border and conducted 80+ interviews with refugees and aid workers.
Slides for a talk given at Lean Impact Summit in Washington DC, March 26th, 2014. It is about bringing the concepts of the lean methodology into the humanitarian response world.
Great Tohoku Earthquake - 3/11 Remembrance Speech in Seattle Gisli Olafsson
Tuesday, March 11th, 2014, marks the third anniversary of the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that hit the Tohoku-Oki region of Japan causing one of the deadliest and most destructive disasters in the country's history. The environmental, social, and economic impacts of this historic disaster will be felt for decades.
This talk (see notes) was given at an event in Seattle to remember this day and some of the things we learned from it.
Originally put together for The Club of Budapest\'s "Design Me A Planet" conference, this PowerPoint presentation summarizes not only what The Memnosyne Foundation is about, but how integral philanthropy can be implemented in general.
In other words, it explains what differentiates Integral Philanthropy: Traditional philanthropy seeks to alleviate a symptom. Integral Philanthropy views an individual project as a systemic remedy- The people’s transformation into Conscious Cultural Creators, (people who have become consciously aware of how their choices are creating their current culture economically, spiritually, environmentally, etc.), via the project, is the permanent empowerment sought.
Presented by Adele Waugaman, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative Fellow & Independent Consultant. October 15, 2012. Washington, D.C. "DC Design Week: Design for Disaster Relief," held in partnership with AIGA DC.
Communication as aid: Giving voice to refugees on the Thai-Burma borderVictoria Jack
This presentation was delivered at the University of Oxford Refugee Studies Centre international conference in 2014. The theme of the conference was "refugee voices".
The presentation provides an overview of my PhD research project, which explores the role of communication between aid agencies and refugees in camps on the Thai-Burma border. The project investigates the impact of communication in assisting refugees to cope with life outside the nation state. The findings suggest two-directional information flow is key to the designing communication strategies that will be most effective in assisting refugees in a camp environment.
To inform the PhD project I conducted an extensive fieldwork trip in 2013, during which I stayed in several refugee camps on the Thai-Burma border and conducted 80+ interviews with refugees and aid workers.
Slides for a talk given at Lean Impact Summit in Washington DC, March 26th, 2014. It is about bringing the concepts of the lean methodology into the humanitarian response world.
Great Tohoku Earthquake - 3/11 Remembrance Speech in Seattle Gisli Olafsson
Tuesday, March 11th, 2014, marks the third anniversary of the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that hit the Tohoku-Oki region of Japan causing one of the deadliest and most destructive disasters in the country's history. The environmental, social, and economic impacts of this historic disaster will be felt for decades.
This talk (see notes) was given at an event in Seattle to remember this day and some of the things we learned from it.
Heather Blanchard, Co Founder of CrisisCommons, presentation at the Fleming Europe's 2nd Annual Geospatial Conference (http://www.flemingeurope.com/aviation-and-defence-conferences/europe/2nd-annual-geospatial-intelligence-summit)
Big Data for Development: Opportunities and Challenges, Summary SlidedeckUN Global Pulse
Summary points from UN Global Pulse White Paper "Big Data for Development: Opportunities & Challenges." See: http://www.unglobalpulse.org/BigDataforDevelopment
Improved Risk information to support sound policy/decision making processes –...Global Risk Forum GRFDavos
Jo SCHEUER1, Carlos VILLACIS2, José Guadalupe OSUNA MILLÁN3, Regina BELOW4, Jiahong WEN5, Amod DIXIT6
1UNDP-BCPR; 2UNDP-GRIP; 3Government Baja California State, Mexico; 4CRED; 5GRIP-CERAM Shanghai; 6NSET-Nepal
A presentation I gave as part of a Disaster Leadership course at Tulane University in New Orleans. This presention is about the importance of good information management and how technology, especially social media can play a role.
How Technology is Changing Disaster ManagementGisli Olafsson
A presentation given in Taiwan on how technology is affecting the field of disaster management.
Smart use of technology is disrupting the way we prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. Ever increasing computing power allows for more complex prediction and forecasting to be done, enabling better early warning systems to be developed. Human and electronic sensors are now able to provide disaster managers with information about the situation on the ground in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. Explosive growth in mobile phone ownership also enables citizens to become active participants in the disaster response process instead of being simply receivers of assistance. Social networks and mobile platforms allow communities to coordinate their own response and recovery effort, often faster and more efficient than the government can. In this session, we will discuss how we disaster managers can harness these changes instead of fearing them.
The Crisis Leader - The Art of Leadership in Times of Crisis - 1 hour versionGisli Olafsson
A talk accompanying the book The Crisis Leader (available on Amazon - http://bit.ly/TheCrisisLeader) which discusses the art of leadership in times of crisis. The author uses his experience of 20 years responding to disasters around the world.
Slides for a talk I gave at EMEC - the conference of the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) European Conference. It focuses on the use of digital volunteers by emergency management organizations
Humanitarian Response in Times of Mass Collaboration and Networked IntelligenceGisli Olafsson
Slides to a talk I gave at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. In this talk I look at how digital age technologies, like social media, are revolutionizing the way humanitarian response will be conducted in the future. I explore the role of technology and information sharing in humanitarian response and look at how crowdsourcing, mass collaboration, volunteer & technical community self-organization, and "information to the edge" will push totally new approaches into this space.
Webcast available at: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/humanitarian-response-time-mass-collaboration-and-networked-intelligence
Information Management Course - Dissemination and DisplaysGisli Olafsson
Training session which was part of the EU Information Management Course in Madrid, October 2010. This session is about disseminating information and especially how to utilize effectively displays in the operation center.
A talk on the rise of digital disaster responders following the Haiti earthquake. Explains the different ways to use the crowds to help out. First to be given in Iceland on October 22nd, 2010.
Talk given at Disaster Leadership course taught by University of Tulane in New Orleans. Session is on the applied aspects of disaster response theory and uses Haiti USAR response as case study.
LF Energy Webinar: Electrical Grid Modelling and Simulation Through PowSyBl -...DanBrown980551
Do you want to learn how to model and simulate an electrical network from scratch in under an hour?
Then welcome to this PowSyBl workshop, hosted by Rte, the French Transmission System Operator (TSO)!
During the webinar, you will discover the PowSyBl ecosystem as well as handle and study an electrical network through an interactive Python notebook.
PowSyBl is an open source project hosted by LF Energy, which offers a comprehensive set of features for electrical grid modelling and simulation. Among other advanced features, PowSyBl provides:
- A fully editable and extendable library for grid component modelling;
- Visualization tools to display your network;
- Grid simulation tools, such as power flows, security analyses (with or without remedial actions) and sensitivity analyses;
The framework is mostly written in Java, with a Python binding so that Python developers can access PowSyBl functionalities as well.
What you will learn during the webinar:
- For beginners: discover PowSyBl's functionalities through a quick general presentation and the notebook, without needing any expert coding skills;
- For advanced developers: master the skills to efficiently apply PowSyBl functionalities to your real-world scenarios.
PHP Frameworks: I want to break free (IPC Berlin 2024)Ralf Eggert
In this presentation, we examine the challenges and limitations of relying too heavily on PHP frameworks in web development. We discuss the history of PHP and its frameworks to understand how this dependence has evolved. The focus will be on providing concrete tips and strategies to reduce reliance on these frameworks, based on real-world examples and practical considerations. The goal is to equip developers with the skills and knowledge to create more flexible and future-proof web applications. We'll explore the importance of maintaining autonomy in a rapidly changing tech landscape and how to make informed decisions in PHP development.
This talk is aimed at encouraging a more independent approach to using PHP frameworks, moving towards a more flexible and future-proof approach to PHP development.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 4DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 4. In this session, we will cover Test Manager overview along with SAP heatmap.
The UiPath Test Manager overview with SAP heatmap webinar offers a concise yet comprehensive exploration of the role of a Test Manager within SAP environments, coupled with the utilization of heatmaps for effective testing strategies.
Participants will gain insights into the responsibilities, challenges, and best practices associated with test management in SAP projects. Additionally, the webinar delves into the significance of heatmaps as a visual aid for identifying testing priorities, areas of risk, and resource allocation within SAP landscapes. Through this session, attendees can expect to enhance their understanding of test management principles while learning practical approaches to optimize testing processes in SAP environments using heatmap visualization techniques
What will you get from this session?
1. Insights into SAP testing best practices
2. Heatmap utilization for testing
3. Optimization of testing processes
4. Demo
Topics covered:
Execution from the test manager
Orchestrator execution result
Defect reporting
SAP heatmap example with demo
Speaker:
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
Accelerate your Kubernetes clusters with Varnish CachingThijs Feryn
A presentation about the usage and availability of Varnish on Kubernetes. This talk explores the capabilities of Varnish caching and shows how to use the Varnish Helm chart to deploy it to Kubernetes.
This presentation was delivered at K8SUG Singapore. See https://feryn.eu/presentations/accelerate-your-kubernetes-clusters-with-varnish-caching-k8sug-singapore-28-2024 for more details.
Neuro-symbolic is not enough, we need neuro-*semantic*Frank van Harmelen
Neuro-symbolic (NeSy) AI is on the rise. However, simply machine learning on just any symbolic structure is not sufficient to really harvest the gains of NeSy. These will only be gained when the symbolic structures have an actual semantics. I give an operational definition of semantics as “predictable inference”.
All of this illustrated with link prediction over knowledge graphs, but the argument is general.
The Art of the Pitch: WordPress Relationships and SalesLaura Byrne
Clients don’t know what they don’t know. What web solutions are right for them? How does WordPress come into the picture? How do you make sure you understand scope and timeline? What do you do if sometime changes?
All these questions and more will be explored as we talk about matching clients’ needs with what your agency offers without pulling teeth or pulling your hair out. Practical tips, and strategies for successful relationship building that leads to closing the deal.
"Impact of front-end architecture on development cost", Viktor TurskyiFwdays
I have heard many times that architecture is not important for the front-end. Also, many times I have seen how developers implement features on the front-end just following the standard rules for a framework and think that this is enough to successfully launch the project, and then the project fails. How to prevent this and what approach to choose? I have launched dozens of complex projects and during the talk we will analyze which approaches have worked for me and which have not.
2. Disaster response continues to be rated as “poor” with the lack of
information flow cited as one of the main reasons
Inter Agency RTE* of the Response Major Reasons Cited by RTE
“The difficulties encountered in
“The response to the Haiti Earthquake in establishing an appropriate
2010 was a missed opportunity to system for collecting and
translate the quick setting up of cluster analyzing data in order to provide
coordination and the availability of decision‐makers with information
substantial resources into timely results” in a timely manner” were cited as
one of the main reasons of poor
Earthquake in Haiti response
Real Time Evaluation report
found that “the overall results “The information flow was massive
are considered to be both but with limited strategic usage (i.e.
‘scattered’ and ‘patchy’” decision making and prioritization)”
Floods in Pakistan
“More consistent methods for
“Nearly all agencies and organizations and integration of assessments
were unable to mobilize the appropriate would have minimized the
capacity to respond to the Darfur crisis” inattention to cross-sectoral
issues, in particular protection and
gender”
Disaster in Darfur
*RTE = Real Time Evaluation Report
Having access to the right information seems to be one of the main factors that determines the
difference between life and death 2
3. A number of issues have made an effective information management
solution both an important opportunity and a massive undertaking
High Level Issues
Granular Issues
• Lack of information sharing between
humanitarian organizations • Lack of process standardization on
how humanitarian data is
• Lack of information management capacity
Process represented during data exchange
both within local and international
humanitarian organizations as well as
within governments and first responders in
• Lack of access to the most current
disaster prone countries. information required by responders
Technology to make fully informed decisions
• Lack of a common platform for
securely sharing humanitarian data
These Issues are Costly
• Increase in the amount of time it takes to collect • Lack of capacity to share, manage,
analyze and disseminate
and analyze data resulting in reduced Organization humanitarian data both at the
information availability which impacts the national and international level
responders’ ability to do their job effectively
• Increase costs to emergency response agencies
due to multiple data collection iterations • Lack of willingness to share
humanitarian information
• Lack of data leads to an increase in operational Governance
costs such as transportation and distribution
costs
3
4. In order to address these issues, a number of people from different
organizations came together to focus on two key objectives
Open Humanitarian Initiative
STREAM1 - TECHNOLOGY STREAM2 - CAPACITY BUILDING
Main Objective: Main Objective:
• Improve information sharing between • Improve information management capacity both
humanitarian organizations within local and international humanitarian
organizations as well as within governments and
first responders in disaster prone countries 4
5. The Open Humanitarian Initiative is divided into 6 areas to provide a
complete information management solution
Project Deliverables Impact
1 • Interoperability: Data standards will be • Governments, NGOs and humanitarian
STREAM1 - TECHNOLOGY
defined to ensure consistent organizations will be able to move and
terminology and to enable data sharing share information between different
technical solutions
2 • Data Sharing Platform: A data sharing • Ensures data can be shared remotely
platform will combine, store and share between organizations and can be
humanitarian response data using the accessed from any location enabling
data standards schemas defined better decision making
3 • Visualization: An interface will be • Organizations and responders will be able
created where data can be processed, to visualize the required data in the ideal
analyzed and displayed in different format
formats such as graphs, tables, charts,
dashboards, maps etc…
4 • Capacity Building: Local disaster • People trained in using information
management authorities as well as management tools, such as the OHI
humanitarian organization staff will be platform, leading to better crisis
STREAM2 - CAPACITY
trained in the use of information information management
management tools, such as the OHI
platform
BUILDING
5 • Digital Volunteers: Local and global • Culture of information management
digital volunteer communities will be established, leading to an increase in
created, fostered and trained in the use responder capacity and data availability
of information management tools
6 • Research and Innovation: A culture of • Increase in the quality of the analysis
research and innovation established performed resulting in increased OHI tool
within the information management effectiveness
field in disaster prone regions 5
6. Unique initiative built around collaboration and innovation
With subset of potential partners, we..
• Leverage existing investments
Don’t
reinvent • Scale-out best practices
the wheel • Inter-operate with existing solutions
• Not do yet-another set of pilots that don’t go anywhere
• Public-private partnership at it’s fullest extend
Utilize
Broad • Work with private sector, academic community, UN agencies and digital volunteer
groups
Community
• Work closely with governments in disaster prone countries
• Flexible funding model
Are Flexible
• Simple, yet effective governance model
• Managed through agile project management methodology
6
7. Bringing together a broad set of potential partners is a key success factor
Subset of potential partners Role within OHI
Global Technology Companies • Support with the design and
implementation of the data platform,
visualization and interoperability
• Provide the technology such as hosting
services and software
• Provide guidance and in-kind
development support
Academic Institutions
• Support with the research and
innovation approach
• Help with training and learning material
• Provide guidance and in-kind support
Humanitarian Institutions
• Support with the overall project
• Provide guidance and leadership
• Provide in-kind support
7
8. High Level Architecture Diagram
Existing Platforms Visualization GUI
SQL Azure ArcGIS Other Custom
OCHA 3W IFRC - DMIS Reporting Online Visualizations
Etc …
Data Sharing
HXL
Platform KML/RSS
SQL Azure
Send and receive
Data in HXL format
(Pub/Sub)
Fusion Tables
Web Based, Open,
server-to-server
publish/subscribe
protocol FreeBase
8