The ICT4Peace Foundation congratulates OCHA on the launch of ‘Guidance for incorporating big data into humanitarian operations‘ by Katie Whipkey and Andrej Verity. The new report is in substance and form, a wonderful achievement and a timely one around a topic what was once, not too long ago, peripheral at best and a dark science to most. Open and big data is now centre and forward in humanitarian and aid operations. OCHA has much to be credited for this evolution.

In 2012, the ICT4Peace Foundation released The potential and challenges of open data for crisis information management and aid efficiency: A preliminary assessment that prefigured, already many years ago, the same opportunities and challenges outlined in the recent OCHA report, from the perspective of open data in the service of humanitarian aid.

The Foundation’s work around and interest in Big Data, including at a number of presentations to the Swiss Government, UN agencies including the Department of Political Affairs in New York plus leading universities like ETH in Zurich has always referenced the thought leadership of OCHA.

The Foundation also directly supported, for a substantial period of time, the development and hosting of OCHA’s Common Operational Datasets and Fundamental Operational Datasets (CODs and FODs), as repositories at the time of institution or user generated datasets vetted by the UN, pre-dating HXL and HDX.

The Foundation’s work in this area has not unlike OCHA’s recent report tried to push the boundaries in accepting this world as vital to aid effectiveness and efficiency.

For more writing on Big and Open Data by the Foundation, read:

For details of events the Foundation has been involved in around Big and Open Data see: