Pakistan Floods

PAKISTAN FLOODS — WHAT LIES BEHIND Politecnico di Milano Laboratorio di sintesi finale

Veronica Caglio Elena Conchetto Veronica Frisicaro Santiago Villa Dian Wei

THE CHOICE —

PAKISTAN FLOODS 2010 — CONNETCION BETWEEN CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE DISASTER

The Floods that took place in Pakistan last year, are considered as some of the worst natural disasters in recent history.

Unplanned and uncontrolled human activities lead to climate change and global warming; which can be linked to the frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events. This events are expected to happen more often and to be even more destructive.

Developing countries, such as Pakistan are highly exposed to these kinds of events and have a scarce, if not nonexistent infrastructure to cope with these disasters; this fact makes almost impossible the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the affected nations.

Many international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Metereological Organization have pointed out the relation between climate change and the outbreaks of natural disasters.

THE FACTS — WHAT HAPPENED IN THE 2010 FLOODS

Catastrophic monsoon rains in July and August 2010

20 360 550 AFFECTED PEOPLE 2113 DEATHS 2.6 MILLION ACRES OF CROP LAND INUNDATED

[Source: EM-DAT: The OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database – www.emdat.be – Université Catholique de Louvain – Brussels – Belgium.]

UN News Center

THE FACTS —

Tajikistan

IMPACT OF THE FLOODS

China

Afghanistan

Iran

Pakistan

India

Arabian Sea

Region of Pakistan Esondation Area

FIELDS OF INTEREST — SUBDIVISION OF ISSUES

Foreign Policy Wich states have political reasons to interact with Pakistan crisis, what they do, how they act in emercency response.

Internal Policy What kind of help people afflicted from floods received from Pakistan government.

Research What kind of research has been made to help predict disasters like Pakistan floods, and what kind of technological tools are used in emergency.

Economy Commitments, donations and funds for recovery.

TAGS —

CHOSEN CATEGORIES News Online newspapers that report news and facts.

Organizations Organizations like FAO, WHO, etc. that made punctual reports about the situations in Pakistan and are in charge of fundraising.

Government State websites that spoke about floods, expressing how they are helping Pakistan government and population.

Social Media Blogs and relative comments, forums and other websites like Wikipedia, gathering people opinions, stories, and direct experience.

THE CONTROVERSY —

THE MAIN ISSUE — HOW PAKISTAN USED FUNDS

Meteorological agencies didn’t make the correct forecast in advance and the government was slow to respond with relief operations.

Donor countries get suspicious because of the corruption of the government and the aids to the Talibans.

Quantities expressed in Millions of U.S Dollars http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/aug/09/pakistan-flood-aid

Italy

Oman

India

400

Finland

U.A.E.

Spain

Austria

Switzerland

Kuwait

RedCross

Netherlands

Turkey

Sweden

China

Norway

Japan

Denmark

Germany

Others

Canada

Australia

United Kingdom

EU Commissions

Saudi Arabia

Private

United States

THE FACTS —

CONTRIBUTIONS IN PAKISTAN FLOOD RELIEF Committed Pledged

0

THE FACTS —

CONTRIBUTIONS IN PAKISTAN FLOOD RELIEF

This is the table of major donors who have contributed to funds and aid to Pakistan during the flood in 2010.

They include states, private citizens and associations, humanitarian organizations.

It was pointed out that aids have not been bestowed only in the form of direct funding, but also in the form of investments in the region. The main donors were the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom and Australia. It is notable that the list of major donors includes India, always in conflict with Pakistan.

RESEARCH PROTOCOL —

SOME QUESTIONS — THE ISSUES THAT CAME UP

—What’s the challenge for the Pakistan government?

—Who cares about the Pakistan flood?

—Which countries commented on the event?

—What other countries are involved in the discussion?

—What kind of sources are they?

THE PROTOCOL — GEO-POLITICAL ISSUES

The protocol aims to understand the complex relations that are established in the economic, politic and social fields when a natural disaster strikes.

This protocol is focused on the geo-location and visualisation of all the parts involved in the Pakistan’s flood issue.

THE PROTOCOL — FLOWCHART

Key Words and queries

Research on Google

Manual Selection

Cluster by topic

Corpus

GeoIP/Issue Geographer

Used tools

Maps

Visualization

Geo-localization

Sources classified by type

Alchemy

Hot topics Principal issues about the controversy (countries, people and organizations)

Crawler

Actors

Newspaper

Who spoke?

Who donate for rescue?

Who was quoted?

As major source

FIRST STEP — KEYWORD SELECTION

Selection of keywords related to the 2010 Pakistan floods.

These keywords are selected in order to unveil a series of relationships between the different entities involved in the disaster.

SECOND STEP — FILTERING

Manually sort out the most relevant websites related to each query. With the selected results build a reliable source of information

THIRD STEP —

LOCATING THE RESULTS

Using tools such as Geo-Ip and Issue Geographer figure out the location and level of concentration of the information sources.

FOURTH STEP — FURTHER RELATIONS

Semantic Research and Alchemy API. With the gathered information perform a semantic research to extract further relations. Then again, manually sort out the results in order to obtain meaningful results.

FIFTH STEP —

NATURE OF THE SOURCES

Classify all the sources found and map the types of fonts interested in the event by manual selection

VISUALIZATIONS —

ISSUE GEOGRAPHER — LOCATING THE SOURCES

1

2

Number of sources

3

4

5

ISSUE GEOGRAPHER — LOCATING THE SOURCES

To view the origin of the sources of our corpus, we decided to enlist the help of Issue Geographer tool.

First we put all hosts of the corpus of which have been identified the state and city of origin. Then, we used the visualizator, which represented a map of the sites listed and the number of sources.

For clarity, we highlighted the countries involved and the names given to cities identified by the Issue.

We can immediatly see how US are the major commentator of this issue, followed by the local observer from Pakistan.

WORDLES —

ENTITY IDENTIFICATION

The Wordle was created from the results of Alchemy.

Among the various entities we selected Country, People and Organization, in order to map the various actors, and see which of these have more relevance.

The result was primarily affected by the presence of the word Pakistan, present several times in the text not only as an actor but also as a mere geographical area.

After deleting the word Pakistan, The wordle highlighted the hot topics of our controversy.

WORDLES —

ENTITY IDENTIFICATION

ACTORS —

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Committed funding $ 377,558,484.

Rank first in aid pledged.

ACTORS — INDIA

Long lasting conflict with Pakistan.

Its donations were first rejected.

ACTORS — CHINA

Rank fifth in semantic research.

Mainly involved because of its proximity to Pakistan.

ACTORS — UNITED KINGDOM

British Pakistanis are the second largest ethnic minority population in the U.K, with nearly 1 million people.

In our corpus United Kingdom journal “Guardian” is the biggest source.

ACTORS — TALIBAN

Strong presence of Talibans in Pakistan caused an amount of donations lower than those made for other disasters in the same year.

ACTORS —

PAKISTAN REGIONS

Regions most afflicted by floods.

ACTORS — RELATIONS

SOURCES AND COUNTRIES — WEB VOICE

SOURCE PAGES — DIVIDED BY TYPE

DONORS AND FUNDS — GRAND TOTAL 1,526,210,424

SOURCE COUNTRIES — WEBSITE SUBDIVISIONS Countries

http://www.daily.pk/pakistan-f... http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08... http://afghanistan.blogs.cnn.c... http://fpc.state.gov/documents... http://www.cbsnews.com/stories... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... http://www.ahmedquraishi.com/2... http://articles.cnn.com/2010-0... http://www.csmonitor.com/Comme...

Tags:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010... http://www.criticalthreats.org...

Political

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

Social

http://www.reuters.com/article...

Economic Economic and political Scientific Scientific and political Social and economic

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

http://news.harvard.edu/gazett...

http://www.voanews.com/english... http://www.ahmedquraishi.com/2...

United States

Social and scientific

http://www.catholic.org/intern...

http://www.defence.pk/forums/s...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl...

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/a... http://judithcurry.com/2011/01... http://www.criticalthreats.org...

http://www.oxfam.org/en/emerge...

United Kingdom

http://judithcurry.com/2010/09...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2... http://www-958.ibm.com/softwar...

http://www.boston.com/news/wor... http://judithcurry.com/2011/02...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/glob...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl...

http://english.cri.cn/6909/201...

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashe...

http://tribune.com.pk/story/11...

Australia

China

http://tribune.com.pk/story/11...

http://fts.unocha.org/pageload...

Italy

http://tribune.com.pk/story/46...

Pakistan

India

http://www.sify.com/news/talib...

http://tribune.com.pk/story/97... http://tribune.com.pk/story/38... http://www.dawn.com/2010/10/15... http://archives.dawn.com/archi...

Luxembourg

http://ec.europa.eu/echo/civil...

OVERVIEW —

INTEGRATION OF CONSIDERED VARIABLES

OVERVIEW —

INTEGRATION OF CONSIDERED VARIABLES This visualization shows the relationships between the most involved countries in the Pakistan floods that took place during July and August of 2010.

The graph works as a summary for the majority of the results about of our controversy.

It shows the relationships between the countries involved in the discussion as actor-nodes of a complex network.

The visualization has different reading levels. The first one, represented by the light green circles, determined the presence of each country in terms of frequency.

The composition starts from the relevance of the countries mentioned in all the selected pages of our corpus, represented as circles. The disposition of the circles doesn’t correspond to a geographical order, but the structure is bound by logical connections for a clear readability. vvvvvThe size of the circles changes proportionally and it depends on how many times the country appears on the source page (semantic extraction made by the Alchemy tool). The bigger circle indicates which country is more mentioned in the whole corpus.

The outer darker region shows the level of economic contribution of the involved nations; the size of these circles depends on the financial aid given. The stroke of the circles, in fact, refers to the value reported in the list relating to the amount of funds allocated by each country (from The Guardian Datablog).

OVERVIEW —

INTEGRATION OF CONSIDERED VARIABLES Further divisions can be found inside. Just few circles contain some smaller colored dots that represent the sources pages of our corpus that commented on the facts: their position shows their location according to the country and the different colors classify the pages by the type (news, gov, com, org, social media).

Every dot is linked to some other countries with lines that start from the page and go to the circles of the countries, in order to show which country is mentioned in that specific page (the more the page speaks about the same country, the more the thickness of the line increases).

This is a specific visualization to freeze the state of the Pakistan flood 2010 controversy, using all the geographical issues raised from the research and work. It is the result of four different graphs made up with the Gephi tool: a single graph for each reading level with a specific goal.

Every graph is used to explain, step by step, the searching process; all of them are combined to create the complex total system.

OVERVIEW —

INTEGRATION OF CONSIDERED VARIABLES The first original Gephi graph shows all the source pages of our corpus, colored by country, with all the connections to the related mentioned countries: it creates a kind of hierarchy among them. In the second Gephi visualization, the source pages differ according to the type, rather in the third nations are classified by the amount of donations.

Finally, the last Gephi graph defines the source countries related to the selected pages of the corpus, to show the distribution of the information.

All the separated layers are merged in only one visualization, in order to point out how the same country can change role for relevance and influence in the complex system.

As we can see in the global visualization, the most involved countries of the controversy are Pakistan, United States, United Kingdom, India, Afghanistan and China. The one who speaks the most about the Pakistan flood is United States, with the 78,3% of news about it; US is also the first nation for the financial aid and the most mentioned country, excluding Pakistan.

Political relationships come out from the graph for the strong connections between United States, United Kingdom and India playing relevant roles around Pakistan, not only referring to the 2010 flood specific dispute.

Links and proportions among the countries are clearly explained by the streamgraph created using the Fineo tool.

OVERVIEW —

MENTIONED COUNTRIES

OVERVIEW — DONORS

OVERVIEW — SOURCE COUNTRIES

OVERVIEW — SOURCE PAGES

OVERVIEW —

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN MAIN ACTORS

FINEO —

STREAMGRAPHS Source pages

Complete set of flows between countries

Mentioned nation

FINEO —

STREAMGRAPHS Source pages

Mentioned nation

Depiction of the participation of the United States of America in terms of source pages.

FINEO —

STREAMGRAPHS Source pages

Mentioned nation

Depiction of China, India and United Kingdom participation in terms of source pages. If the fluxes are compared, the difference between involvement is quite notorious. No percetanges were displayed, just mere relations.

FINEO —

FLOWS BETWEEN ACTORS The streamgraph shows the proportions among the countries actors of the controversy. Classified between sources and mentioned, relating to the profile of action and function, the voices of the countries raised by our corpus are directly linked to the target nation.

The flows are proportioned and distributed so as we can easily understand which are the most active sources and which one appears the most on the pages. Furthermore, this kind of visualization is good to show for each nation what is the percentage ofi involvement: on one hand, we can see which country is mentioned in every single source and how much it is relevant; on the other hand, the graph shows which and how many sources talk about that specific subject.

Among the sources, United States is the most active voice and it takes into account almost all the nations selected from the Alchemy tool results.

Obviously, Pakistan is the most mentioned in all the pages of the corpus, as pivot of the controversy.

NEWSPAPERS — AS A MAJOR SOURCE

NEWSPAPERS — AS A MAJOR SOURCE

The largest circles, colored in relation to geographic area, are the Source Domain.

The smaller circles, in dark gray, are the target page, that is the sites that have treated the event Floods in Pakistan, rated according to how many times they are connected to the Source Domanin.

This view shows us what country spoke about the floods in Pakistan, and how the various web sites are related to each other.

SOURCE PAGES — CATEGORIES Category United States Pakistan United Kingdom India Italy China Australia Luxembourg

SOURCE PAGES — CATEGORIES

This visualization clearly explains why our topic became more and more centered on politics.

The controversy starts from a social point of view, but moves on economic factors when it shows up the problem of how funds are used.

Although it’s a scientific issue, this topic isn’t treated as extensively as one would expect.

CONCLUSIONS — WHAT LIES BEHIND

The flood of Pakistan in 2010 was a terrible event, which killed thousands of people and has left displaced more than 20 million. Although we expect that this event is presented and treated as a humanitarian emergency, it emerged from our observation that conflicts and political interests have had a major part in this affair. The sites and the discussions we have monitored describe a complex situation: barely hidden beneath the surface of Pakistan’s worst flooding in living memory were the geopolitical stakes shaping both the justifications for official Western assistance and how aid was delivered to victims of the disaster. some states apparently far were intervened to establish first of all their influence, and have power to decide about the future of the country. The peculiar situation of government corruption and the presence of terrorist forces did not help the population which, compared to other disasters around the world, has passed through many respects in the background.