Libya 03012011

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Conference call with UN OCHA regarding the support of Volunteer Technology Communities (Re: Libya) March 1, 2011 - 10AM EST

Notes from UN OCHA

In Attendance (in order of introduction)

  • Brendan McDonald, OCHA
  • Lars Bromely, UNOSAT
  • Patrick Meier, CrisisMappers
  • Heather Blanchard, Crisis Commons, heather@crisiscommons.org
  • Nicholas Chavent, Open Street Map
  • John Crowley, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
  • Gisli Olafsson, NetHope
  • Andrew Alspach, OCHA
  • Andrej Verity, OCHA
  • Chad (CJ) Hendrix, OCHA
  • Pablo Mayrgundter, Google

Discussion:

  • The Chair, Brendan McDonald, Chief of the OCHA’s Information Services Section, opened the meeting by thanking the participants for participating in the teleconference and sharing information on current information management activities in response to the humanitarian crisis taking place in Libya.
  • Chad Hendrix has been working to put together the Common Operational Datasets (CODs) that the responding UN agencies and clusters will be using for Libya. UNOSAT has agreed to host the CODs and are available online at http://www.unitar.org/unosat/libya. There are two identified big gaps in the CODs:
  • Population dataset. Although adequate to start, it does need work to improve.
  • Humanitarian Profile. There is a struggle to define the expected humanitarian case load. The situation is a bit confusing because we are dealing with cross-border issues as well as displaced migrant workers and small numbers of refugees. As well, we do not have any information on any anticipated work load within Libya although an Iranian-based individual has been doing a thorough job of compiling in-country reports on Twitter.
  • WHO has provided a dataset of hospitals, but will only be used for rural areas as the Google Map Maker hospitals are better in urban areas.
  • John (HHI) raised the question of What problems are we trying to solve with the data sets?. OCHA answered that they are to be used by responding bodies to have a common understanding and operational baseline for planning and responding to the emergency.

Information sharing and planned activities from OCHA

  • The situation is continuing to evolve. In regards to Libya, there are two main issues:
  • People leaving Libya into Eypt, Niger and Tunsia. Current reports are showing that existing mechanisms are acceptable right now, but given the situation could change at any moment, we must be prepared to respond.
  • The unknown humanitarian requirements and case load inside Libya
  • The UN’s Department of Safety and Security has given permission for UN staff to travel into Libya excluding certain areas.

Scenario Development: various scenarios are being considered and reviewed.

  • A regional appeal is currently in the works and should be launched in the coming few days.
  • OCHA’s Regional IMO is based in Cairo.

Information Challenges:

  • Social media mapping and collation to help develop a picture of what is needed inside Libya. The UN has limited ability to monitor social media, but believe that it could be a useful source of information.
  • Settlement information / datasets (especially with assigned coding – perhaps census data)
  • UNOSAT had some census information in Arabic from the US Embassy so expecting that it is relatively accurate
  • Other desired datasets (e.g. educations facilities)

Information sharing and planned activities from UNOSAT

  • UNOSAT is compiling the COD data that they possess.
  • UNOSAT is focusing on Libya and have very limited data on other countries (i.e. Tunisia and Egypt).
  • UNOSAT is hosting the COD website: http://www.unitar.org/unosat/libya
  • Noted that licensing of data will be an issue as there will be mix of datasets with differing licensing.
  • Action Point: Andrew or CJ will call Nicolas and John about licensing issues

Information sharing and planned activities from CrisisMappers

  • The Crisis Mappers network is available for tasking.
  • The Standby Task Force is not activated at the moment so we have an opportunity to request its activation.
  • Patrick has been in touch with the Iran twitter contact point about putting his/her tweets onto an Ushahidi instance.
  • CrisisMappers are very willing to activate Task Force especially for media monitoring
  • OCHA believes that this would be a very useful source of information.
  • Standby Taskforce issue will be the duration of its activation. OCHA responded that, although difficult to gauge at the moment, it is expected that once the agencies begin implementing their programmes, the information will become less important. Standby Taskforce will prepare for the possibility of one week.
  • OCHA: language translation has been an issue given that most information we are seeing/following is English, but there is a lot of Arabic information available.
  • Standby Taskforce has a translation team that could be explored for use.
  • Action Point: Crisis Mappers to review with the task team coordinators and get back to OCHA with what is possible. Activation is requested if deemed possible.

Information sharing and planned activities from Crisis Commons.

  • Crisis Commons noted a challenge/worry of social media and media monitoring of this emergency given that it is a conflict zone. Are we compounding the risk of those who are putting information on social media? As well, do the people in-country really understand the risk of putting their information online? And that we might amplify it?
  • CrisisMappers: would use lessons learned from mapping the protests in Sudan and would suggest the use of a password protected site. Also, all volunteers have signed a Code-of-Conduct surrounding their work.
  • NetHope talked about anonymizing data and working at the appropriate “zoom level” to ensure a result that is appropriate for the responding organizations.

Would it be worth having organizations searching for datasets that are available (outside the CODs) that might be of use to the responders. Heather suggested the idea of searching in Arabic and a possible partnership with John *Hopkins University that has capacity to do some automated translation services. OCHA: yes, we should be working on datasets beyond CODs, but need to have a place to collaborate so people know what has been found and what has been searched.

  • OSM: would it be possible to have the data sets or media monitoring information tagged on OSM to ensure data remains public. The topic raised a discussion about the licensing of CODs, evolving data during an emergency, etc.
  • Action: Andrew and CJ to call strategic, policy-like discussion about platforms and licensing/ownership of data. It is the data, not the platform that matters. It is proposed that this discussion would form part of the next meeting tentatively planned for Thursday, 02 March 2011.
  • Action: Pablo (Google) will discuss with MapMaker team about how quick map maker data can be made available online (i.e. latency of changes).

Next Meeting: it was tentatively agreed that the next meeting would happen on Thursday, 02 March 2011.

  • Action: Andrej will create a Skype group called OCHA-VTC to enable any ongoing chats as well as be the platform for future meetings
  • Action: Andrej to send invitations for the next meeting.

Notes from Heather Blanchard:

  • We want to talk about the ongoing work on common operational datasets
  • We want to hear what you are doing
  • Chad Hendericks, have been putting together COD online on UNOSAT
  • Two big gaps in the data sets, population data sets needs improvement, the first COD "Humanitarian Profile" (Caseloads) both those who have crossed the border due to the Libya incidents, refugees, migrant works
  • We do not know yet what the anticipated caseload is
  • There are two other fundamental data sets (1) WHO Hospitals (2) Map maker Hospitals are better in urban areas than (3) Map of Media reports (someone in Iran has been doing this)
  • CODs are baseline data sets that the UN and the responding agencies as a basis of their operational planning
  • From OCHA side: the situation is continuing to evolve inside Libya. From an OCHA perspective: the humanitarian situational in the surrounding area, the global humanitarian system is concerned, things can change d
  • Our planning has been focused on LIbya, there has been a team from the UN sent
  • Forming a regional humanitarian appeal coming out soon
  • We have a regional office in Cairo coordinating
  • No UN system that we are aware of that has a gripe on SM, little information on settlement data
  • There are a couple of settlement data, NGA and the MapMaker datasets, might need to dic
  • Want to know about pre-exsisting census data for the area
  • What problems do you need to solve?
  • What problems are you trying to solve with the data sets?
  • We are compiling COD and settlement datasets are part of what we are going
  • There might be some work with deconfliction of data
  • We have an understanding of an equivelant ecosystem by the authorities
  • It might be just census data, it would be interested to have
  • For the census data, we did see something the other day, we saw something in Arabic (was passed by the US Embassy in Egypt - it was a public source)
  • Gridded population of the world data, it is mapped out census data that was put together by Columbia University
  • Oakridge National Labs owns data that UNOSAT may want to us, will be working with them
  • We are putting together all the data sets for the CODs, on the broader issues
  • If we can be clear about the licensing scheme, this is what is stopping us (OSM)
  • There are historical reasons why we tend to be grey and vague when we talk about licensing (take this offline)
  • Current plans and activities
  • Look to do some media monitoring and light mapping
  • Most of the information that is coming out from social media
  • UN: we have little ability to monitor social media, no capacity to mash up content and information for us this would be a useful source of information
  • The main concern from the task force side, how long is the engagement, we don't have a sense of how long
  • It becomes less used by the UN agencies once the program is in place once the people are responding
  • It would be a period of time for now
  • The other thing is communicated with the affected conversation, assuming from a western perspective, turning into arabic and into english (translation services)
  • We can look at a combination of how this
  • We can look at a combination of automated translation
  • Identify what we can and cannot do, hopefully be able to at least do a media monitoring team
  • Heather suggested a Skype Chat group
  • CrisisCommons: thank you very much for inviting us to participate, like Crisismappers we very much appreciate the inclusion in this discussion. One topic that hasn't been discussed here is that of the challenges of taking social media information and aggregating it. The people on the ground sharing SM information aren't completely aware of the risk they are taking by sharing information. Technology volunteers taking that information and aggregating it in a public space can place more risk on those individuals. We don't know yet what will happen in Libya. CrisisCommons like many humanitarian organizations, operates in support of humanitarian relief, Libya is a conflict zone and there are more activist oriented engagement which is an area we shy away from. Earlier this weekend we had a request made by someone in the US who was in touch with people on the ground in Libya who has sat connectivity and was trying to get out information of what was happening on the ground. This activity was not encouraged. People on the ground believe that tools they can use will provide protection when we don't know that is the case.
  • CrisisCommons: Once place we could be helpful is to search for all the data sources publicly available to contribute to the CODs. Regarding taking ground generated SM information and aggregating that, we will talk to Crisismappers this week and discuss. Today, there are no agreed upon governance based on research and lessons learned on engagement regarding technology volunteers acting in conflict environments. This is something we look forward to working with you in the future. These are process and governance questions.
  • Very often individual reports would be more valuable as aggregated or summarized reports
  • I think if we can do the media monitoring, more appropriate for use of most of the people responding
  • Encourage search for data sets, what are the other data sets that might be of use
  • We probably want to put these links up somewhere
  • On the collaboration of data sets, there needs to be one place for storing information
  • When you are reporting information, you have the attributes of the datasets
  • If a group in the VTC or media monitoring, maybe they can be tying those reports in OSM
  • If there is better data sets out there
  • This information is going to be reused in projects, we have to identify the support for this information is going to be reused by the communities related in the crisis
  • The COD data sets are to define the best available datasets
  • We have to identify best available data set
  • I agree we need a snapshot of the moment, the situation can evolve, make those datasets available
  • One of these stream of information, be sure that we set up the flow
  • Need to have a separate conversation on this (HHI would like to be included)
  • What is the delay in an edit in Map Maker?
  • What we are having here is a technical discussion, perhaps CJ and ourselves can join in as required.
  • Google can provide a map maker question on latency
  • Compared the data - for OCHA needs the Map Maker data will meet that
  • The point then when OSM surpasses the Map Maker data we can reflect again there
  • CrisisCommons: The tools that the data is on is not the challenge, its the data that is being generated by technology volunteers. That data needs to be open and freely available. It doesn't matter what the tool is, could be Google, could be OSM. The point is that if volunteers are generating data, it needs to be open.
  • If we have more access to imagery we will be able to do more mapping (OSM)
  • The point is if we give data it has to be open data, it has be reusable by other actors
  • Reconvene at 10AM on Thursday, the situation on the ground may change rapidly, add agenda items

Notes compiled by Heather Blanchard, CrisisCommons, 703-593-3823, heather (at) crisiscommons.org

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