Constructive Convergence: Imagery and Humanitarian Assistance

Abstract

Abstract : In the past few years especially since the 2010 Haitian earthquake Geospatial Information System (GIS) products, often based on imagery, have become critical enablers of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR) efforts. Much more imagery is becoming available to the HA/DR community, complemented by increasing bandwidth to share it, more powerful edge devices to process it, global volunteer groups to help make sense of crowd-sourced information and high-level policy and doctrine that are becoming more supportive of collaboration around GIS products in HA/DR environments. Doug Hanchard s paper makes an important contribution to this field. He does not try to be all things to all people, but focuses on important technological aspects of imagery in HA/DR. The paper includes specific recommendations, from transmission standards, to short message service shortcodes, to application programming interfaces and data search techniques. At the same time, he recognizes that technology alone is not enough: Social networks need to be developed and trust built to encourage diverse groups to work together. Policy and doctrine need to be translated into effective field operating procedures so that people on the ground know what to do. Legal and regulatory constraints must be understood and challenged where necessary. Resources must be addressed and acquired. Trainers must be trained, units exercised and curricula adapted to achieve genuine lessons learned, instead of lessons observed, and re-observed, and re-observed.