2015 May MIT

Ever wanted to know about, or work on, disaster and humanitarian response technology from a people-first perspective? Aspiration's #HumTechFest strives to build capacity for humanitarian aid and disaster response efforts through technology and community. These are participatory and community-driven convenings designed for field practitioners, media makers and storytellers, technology developers, information security practitioners, members of affected populations, researchers, and everyone in between. The agenda is co-developed with participants, facilitators, and partners in the time leading up and during the event.

Please check out our Participant Guidelines before the event.

Date: May 9+10

Location: MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, MA

Registration Link: http://humtechinteract.eventbrite.com

Universe of Topics

Data Collection

• What's the good, bad, and ugly of data collection
• how do we handle privacy/security in high-vulnerability times?
• Data from community should be usable by the community
• How to make it easier for different tech to work together

Adoption

• How technology can improve coordination after a disaster
• how to get people excited about tech for manageing data
• how do we share canvasing data and keep it secure?
• how do we bake consent culture into disaster and humanitarian efforts?

Local/External

• How can communities hold responders/NGOs/etc accountable?
• When is a good time to leave the disaster area as a humanitarian?
• How to better support local info responders? (eg Kathmandu Living Lab)?
• scale systems while keeping them personal
• How might we learn from local populations in a state of emergency

Resilience

• How to make info resilience (lists of NGOs, shelters, existing communities) normal everywhere?
• How can we be proactive about disasters rather than reactive
• Lessons learned from response to Ebola Crisis in West Africa
• Best methods to teach people
• how to encourage people to get training before a disaster instead of volunteering after a disaster
• Breaking down resilience and how that term is carried out
• How to keep attention for long-term needs
• Looking at topics through the lends of urban planning and city infrastructure

Local capacity and volunteers

• For-profit social good vs nonprofit/humanitarian
• how formal and informal groups can work together
• Is it possible to support frontline communities without being disruptive?
• ways to teach/trigger curiosity
• Better/more efficient tech for first responders (EMT/Police/Fire)

Bandwidth

• How to improve connecti ity after a disaster
• How do we get info to affected people in low bandwidth environments (eg SMS)?

Security

• How to hack-proof wireless tech
• Systematic support for targets of cyberstalking?
• how to reduce cost of forensic analysis of hacked IT equipment

Visualization

• Best way to display information and data
• What is the role of simulation and tech like Oculus Rift?
• What is the user journey of an emergency (1 day, 1 week, 1 month in)

Spectrogram

• Philanthropy isn't sustainable.
  • Capitalism is a self-fueling machine
  • Libraries
• We have all the tech we need -- we need to solve the problems at hand.
• Private companies should be responsible for assisting in emergencies.
• We already have enough tech solutions.
• People are not comfortable enough with technology to use it in stressful/emergency situations.

Discussion Topics/Breakouts

• Data and Ethics: overview of what response is like, 3W (who, what, where) for situational awareness, and bottlenecks. How data is generated, parsed, and made use of (or not).
• Occupy Sandy: some components of how OS worked, including social media, coordination channels, tech used, and bridging the formal and informal.
• Data Standards:
• Template for HotWash:
• Public Labs and Consent: background on Public Lab, focus on upcoming formaldehyde levels project, how to break down the gap between scientists and other humans.
• Online Safety: discussion of how people can be safer, online and off, as well as accountability for those who endanger safety.
• Consent: is anything different about consent in a disaster situation than in less dire circumstances?

Projects

• Frontline communities holding responders accountable : There are few to no ways for frontline communities to hold those claiming to assist them accountable. Here, we cover what it might look like to create such a mechanism, and how to implement it.

Things to Peruse Further

• Games to prepare for disaster: creation of games are one way to make the onus of disaster preparedness a bit more fun.
• Guide for interacting with frontline communities (find or create) : many response organizations likely want to do a better job of interacting with frontline communities. Can we create a guide for them?
• Local organization list and reviews: a common bottleneck for creating a 3W, having this set up in advance would greatly smooth matters.
• Local organization identification at the global level methodology: a local 3W would be highly contextual and framed in the local language and priorities. How do we link that into global understandings and needs, and visa versa?
• Template/questionnaire for After Action Report to be made during deployment: AARs are written in order to better iterate based on issues and successes of a given deployment. They're also often written by exhausted responders after the response is done, making the information stale and time-intensive.
• Who What Where for virtual and coordinating responders: a 3W for remote responders.
• Resilience with respect to fragile infrastructure
• Application / promotion of consent frameworks

Accountability mechanisms between frontline communities and responders -- do they exist? Should we make them?

• External NGOs 'helping' and then leaving without leaving ongoing support is disruptive
• Citizen-centric data model