The new informatics of pandemic response: humanitarian technology, efficiency, and the subtle retreat of national agency

Christopher Wilson,Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert

doi:10.1186/s41018-018-0036-5

Abstract

Digital communication technologies play an increasingly prominent role in humanitarian operations and in response to international pandemics specifically. A burgeoning body of scholarship on the topic displays high expectations for such tools to increase the efficiency of pandemic response. This article reviews empirical uses of communications technology in humanitarian and pandemic response, and the 2014 Ebola response in particular, in order to propose a three-part conceptual model for the new informatics of pandemic response. This model distinguishes between the use of digital communication tools for diagnostic, risk communication, and coordination activities and highlights how the influx of novel actors and tendencies towards digital and operational convergence risks focusing humanitarian action and decision-making outside national authorities’ spheres of influence in pandemic response. This risk exacerbates a fundamental tension between the humanitarian promise of new technologies and the fundamental norm that international humanitarian response should complement and give primacy to the role of national authorities when possible. The article closes with recommendations for ensuring the inclusion of roles and agency for national authorities in technology-supported communication processes for pandemic response.

Highlights

Recent decades have seen a dramatic rise in global pandemics
The capacity of digital communications tools to process, systematize, and make sense of large amounts of data has attracted the attention of practitioners, policy makers, and scholars alike (Brownstein et al 2009; Tusiime and Byrne 2011; Wesolowski et al 2014; Zwitter and Hadfield 2014; Meier 2011; Holeman et al 2016), and has raised significant expectations regarding their use in pandemic response in particular (Odugleh-Kolev 2014)
Digital communications in Fast and Waugaman’s case studies are leveraged to determine the way in which Ebola was spreading and the nature of risks posed by the pandemic, in order to coordinate activity among different types of response actors, including national authorities, international humanitarian aid workers and front-line health care providers, and in order to communicate with the general public regarding health risks and appropriate behavior to mitigate those risks

Summary

Introduction

Recent decades have seen a dramatic rise in global pandemics. From the SARS pandemic in 2003, to Avian Influenza in 2006, H1N1 in 2009, Ebola in 2014, and the appearance of the Zika virus in Latin America in 2015, these developments are inextricably bound up in modern socio-technical developments and processes of globalization. The fourth section notes two underlying dynamics that are consistently cited in conjunction with the use of digital communications in pandemic response: the introduction of novel actors and convergence of activities in single technological platforms and across organizational entities.

Results

Conclusion