Global EM Technology in Humanitarian Response Developments and Limitations

Technology in Humanitarian Response: Developments and Limitations

By Sonya Naganathan, MD MPH on behalf of the SAEM Global Emergency Medicine Academy

In 2021, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported 235 million persons in need of humanitarian assistance and projected that number to increase to approximately 274 million people in 2022 (with projected costs of USD $41 billion). Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen are the three most expensive crises. Afghanistan, which carries the highest cost, will require 4.4 billion dollars in assistance to reach the 24.4 million people in need.

Most recently, the war in Ukraine has catapulted the world of humanitarian relief back into the daily news cycle. There have been numerous reports of civilians, hospitals, and humanitarian aid workers being intentionally targeted by the Russian military—leading to tragic loss and destruction of lives and infrastructure. As a result, the humanitarian crisis and response has rapidly decompensated, marred by myriad safety and logistics concerns. Over the last decade, a series of catastrophes have spurred the development of digital and other technologies to attempt to mitigate some of the risks and inherent challenges to these settings. There has been an ever-growing call for more. Let’s look back.

Open Source Software

Towards the end of 2007, two months of political unrest following the election of then Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki led to efforts focused on harnessing the power of the public to generate real-time information. Ushahidi, a company born out of this crisis, crowdsourced information using text message and email and mapped the reports of protests and violence (via their open-source platform) to various public websites including Google Maps. Ushahidi has since grown to develop its technology, demonstrating its use in different settings. Notably, Ushahidi’s crisis mapping efforts were instrumental in disseminating vital information in the immediate aftermath of the Haitian earthquake in 2010. By allowing others to send text messages to a centralized location, Ushahidi volunteers were able to map the GPS coordinates and

provide the information to rescue teams on the ground.

Cash Transfers

Cash transfers have been a tried-andtrue method of post conflict humanitarian assistance. Cash assistance lets the affected individuals decide exactly where they want to spend their money – and do so locally. Especially in places with good infrastructure, cash transfers are more frequently used. As its use increases, the technology develops, too. The use of biometric data, which is used to facilitate transfer and ensure cash is being exchanged out of and into the right hands, is the leading technology in this area. It has been used in multiple locales including Yemen, Jordan, Uganda, and the Philippines. In fact, in a Jordanian refugee camp, Syrian refugees purchase groceries via iris scans.

Security Risk

Nevertheless, security breaches plague the community still. While biometric data, for example, allows an organization to easily confirm an individual identity, identity fraud and the security of large data sets remains controversial. Governments and private companies have access to the immense data of vulnerable populations, creating additional risk. Similarly, the use of humanitarian notification systems has been used to allow warring governments access to civilian locations. Those coordinates can denote locations for governments to avoid in order to lessen the targeting of innocents and areas of humanitarian activity. Over the last two decades, there have been numerous reports of intentional targeting of humanitarian and medical facilities in South Sudan, Syria, and most recently the bombing of several hospitals in Ukraine by the Russian government.

The next decade will allow for these technologies to further develop.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Naganathan is an assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center in the Emergency & Disaster Global Health Division. She completed an emergency medicine residency at Washington University in St. Louis and a fellowship in global emergency medicine at Brown University. @SNagMD

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