An interview with Daniel Stauffacher by www.unimondo.org (OneWorld Italy)

Available also here.

Mappe interattive che segnalano focolai di violenza elaborate a partire da segnalazioni via sms e internet. Video educativi per prevenire l’insorgere di epidemie in territori dilaniati dalla guerra. Database aggiornati dagli utenti e combinati con sistemi informativi geografici (GIS) che consentono di identificare le mine da rimuovere. Monitoraggi di elezioni attraverso la condivisione di informazioni su piattaforme digitali. Sistemi di allerta (early-warning) che permettono di prevedere l’insorgere di conflitti. Sono solo alcuni esempi dei tanti possibili modi per utilizzare le Tecnologie per l’Informazione e la Comunicazione (TIC) nella promozione della pace e della ricostruzione post-bellica. A questo tema, il World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), che proprio in questi giorni si sta tenendo a Ginevra, dedicherà una discussione di alto livello presieduta da Daniel Stauffacher, Presidente della ICT for Peace Foundation ed ex Ambasciatore della Svizzera presso le Nazioni Unite.

Il nome della fondazione di cui è presidente unisce due termini, TIC e pace, che, a prima vista, possono apparire estranei. Potrebbe spiegare il loro legame con tre esempi pratici?

Bisogna innanzitutto sottolineare che le TIC sono strumenti che permettono a tutti noi, cittadini della società dell’informazione, di lavorare meglio, qualsiasi sia la nostra occupazione: questo principio vale per un contadino, un banchiere, un funzionario pubblico, un cooperante o, appunto, un operatore di pace che si occupa della prevenzione e allerta dei conflitti, mediazione, peacekeeping, ricostruzione, protezione dei civili o gestione delle informazioni in situazioni di crisi. Tre situazioni concrete mi vengono in mente : un progetto di sminamento umanitario supportato da piattaforme informatiche, i tentativi di riconciliazione tra le fazioni belligeranti in Congo e la piattaforma di allerta dell’UNDP che, aggiornata costantemente attraverso l’incrocio di indicatori e rapporti, permette di prevedere l’insorgere di una crisi.

Il Vertice di Tunisi sulla Società dell’Informazione (WSIS) nel 2005 ha riconosciuto il potenziale delle TIC nella promozione della pace, nella prevenzione dei conflitti e nella ricostruzione post-conflitto. Quali innovazioni si sono affacciate in questo campo dal 2005 a oggi?

Sicuramente oggi disponiamo di strumenti di gran lunga più sofisticati, come le piattaforme per gestire la raccolta e l’elaborazione degli sms, i social media, il crowdsourcing (progetto realizzato da un insieme di persone non definito) e il crowdmapping (mappatura interattiva via internet). Questi strumenti sono venuti alla ribalta per la prima volta in Kenya per localizzare le violenze che si sono scatenate in seguito alle controverse elezioni del 2007. In seguito, nel 2010, in occasione del terremoto a Haiti, sono stati utilizzati per affrontare la crisi umanitaria. Più recentemente, le TIC hanno avuto un ruolo di rilievo durante la primavera araba, in particolare a supporto dell’attivismo per i diritti umani e nel monitoraggio delle elezioni in Egitto e Tunisia.

In che modo le TIC possono fare la differenza nel prevenire un conflitto o ristabilire la pace?

Ci sono sempre molteplici fattori che portano alla guerra o alla pace. Possono essere di natura politica, economica, culturale o etnica, per nominarne alcuni. Non sarebbe intellettualmente onesto affermare una causalità diretta tra l’uso di TIC e la prevenzione o la risoluzione di un conflitto. È vero però che le persone che combattono per la libertà e per i diritti umani, gli operatori umanitari e i mediatori hanno la possibilità di svolgere il proprio lavoro in modo più efficace grazie alle tecnologie digitali perché queste permettono di condividere informazioni vitali in tempo reale con soggetti chiave come decisori, vittime, popolazioni colpite, mezzi di informazione internazionali e così via.

Sulla condivisione rapida e allargata di informazioni via web si basano le piattaforme di crowdsourcing e crowdmapping come Ushaidi (testimone in swahili). Qual è la loro funzione in una situazioni di crisi?

In breve, queste piattaforme permettono a chiunque sia connesso a internet o disponga di un telefono cellulare di comunicare la propria posizione, i bisogni sul campo e coordinare gli interventi di risposta.

In che modo le TIC possono rappresentare un rischio per la pace?

I fomentatori di guerre hanno sempre usato le TIC, e in primo luogo i media tradizionali. La vera novità è che oggi anche chi lavora per prevenire, mediare e gestire un conflitto, ristabilire e mantenere la pace e portare soccorso dispone di una vasta gamma di strumenti tecnologici, diventati più facilmente accessibili a un costo relativamente basso. Tra le possibili minacce, dopo il cyber-crimine e il cyber-terrorismo, ci sono una guerra tra nazioni e la militarizzazione del cyberspazio, in cui potremmo perdere la libertà di accesso e di utilizzo. Per prevenire tale pericolo, c’è bisogno di promuovere dialogo e accordi internazionali.

Il 16 maggio presiederà il dibattito di alto livello del WSIS dedicato alle TIC per la ricostruzione post-conflitto. Quali saranno i principali punti di discussione?

L’utilità delle TIC nella promozione della pace e la ricostruzione, affermata durante il WSIS di Tunisi, è stata testata solo qualche anno dopo, quando un gruppo di cittadini tunisini si sono uniti per rovesciare il governo e protestare contro la mancanza di opportunità economiche e sociali. Le TIC, e sin particolar modo i social media, hanno giocato un importante ruolo nel coordinamento della rivoluzione, nella relativamente pacifica transizione e nel monitoraggio delle elezioni. La Tunisia è uno dei casi, sempre più numerosi, in cui le TIC assumono un ruolo determinante nella ricostruzione post-rivoluzione e post-conflitto. Il programma di partnership internazionale promosso dalla Banca Mondiale infoDev, insieme alla ICT for Peace Foundation e con finanziamenti dell’agenzia inglese per lo sviluppo DfID, ha commissionato una serie di casi studio che analizzano il contributo delle TIC in paesi che si trovano in diverse fasi del processo di ricostruzione: Afghanistan, Liberia, Ruanda, Sri Lanka, Timor Est e Tunisia. Il panel di esperti, basandosi in parte su queste ricerche, discuterà di come i decisori e il settore privato dovrebbero dare priorità all’utilizzo delle TIC in situazioni post-belliche e approfondirà come questi strumenti possano migliorare la fornitura di servizi e la costruzione della nazione (nation building). Si potrà così comprendere meglio il ruolo dell’informazione nello sviluppo post-conflitto e nella promozione della coesione sociale.

Daniela Bandelli

George Sadowsky, the editor, along with Najeeb Al-Shorbaj, WHO, Torbjörn Fredriksson, UNCTAD, two of the fourteen authors and ICT4Peace’s Daniel Stauffacher, member of the Board of the World Wide Web Foundation, released at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva  on 15 May the  Web Foundation’s first major publication: Accelerating Development Using the Web: Empowering Poor and Marginalized Populations, available for download today.

Generously supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and in partnership with the United Nations Development Program, the book is a compendium of articles by recognized experts describing the real and potential effects of the World Wide Web in all major aspects of economic and social development. It provides overviews of the major macro issues – access, capacity, and standards, among others – while also detailing insights into specific business and public policy domains.

The book unites themes of technological innovation, international development, economic growth, gender equality, linguistic and cultural diversity and community action, with special attention paid to the circumstances surrounding the poor and vulnerable members of the Global Information Society. Its findings will be of particular value to policy makers, NGO staff members, foundations, private donors, and regional experts and will also enrich the discourse among academics and members of civil society who are interested in progress in the least developed countries in the world.

Our research fills a gap in the current store of knowledge by taking a broad holistic approach, offering detailed commentary from fourteen experts who are deeply engaged in the field of ICTs for development, many with extensive experience in developing countries, and each able to emphasize the key questions, challenges, and successes unique to their field. While these authors speak of the fields with which they are most familiar, much of the commentary is structured in a way that enables the reader to draw parallels across the fields and identify where there are similarities and divergences in the deployment of ICTs for development.

Browse the Table of Contents and view or download a copy today.

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis on 18 November 2005, acknowledged the “potential of ICTs to promote peace and to prevent conflict” as well as their use in “post-conflict peace-building and reconstruction”.

ICTs are critical tools for fueling post-conflict reconstruction: they can attract private investment, strengthen government operations, help civil society to re-build / build community networks and democratic movements, and communicate the reconstruction progress to a wide range of stakeholders. In a post-conflict reconstruction phase, it is essential for the country in question to develop a coherent and inclusive post-conflict ICT policy, based on a clear prioritization of, and commitment to, deployments and regulatory measures.

infoDev, a Global Partnership of the World Bank, and the ICT4Peace Foundation, with funding from UKaid (DfID), have commissioned a series of case studies of countries at different stages of post-conflict – covering Afghanistan, Liberia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Timor-Leste and Tunisia – to examine the contribution of ICTs in more detail. The studies examine how policy-makers and the private sector should prioritize ICT initiatives in the aftermath of conflict and aim to understand how ICTs can contribute to improving service delivery and assisting with nation-building. This research serves as the first large-scale comparative analysis of the role that ICTs play in countries emerging from conflict and it helps to identify the role of information in post-conflict development and social cohesion.

Speakers in the High Level Dialogue

Chairman: Brahima Sanou, Director, ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau
Moderator: Daniel Stauffacher, Chairman, ICT4Peace Foundation

• H.E. Amirzai Sangin – Minister of Communications and IT, Afghanistan
• H.E. Tetsuo Yamakawa – Vice-Minister for Policy Coordination, Ministry of Information and Communications, Japan
• H.E. Beatrice Khamisa Wani – Deputy Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services, Government of South Sudan
• Prof. Jelel Ezzine – Director General of International Cooperation at Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Tunisia
• Tim Kelly – Lead ICT Policy Specialist, infoDev/World Bank
• Juliana Rotich – Co-Founder of Ushahidi

Speakers in the Thematic Workshop
Moderator: Tim Kelly – Lead ICT Policy Specialist, infoDev/World Bank

• Prof. Michael Best, Georgia Tech – on the Liberia case study
• Sriganesh Lokanathan, Senior Research Manager of LIRNEAsia – on the Sri Lanka case study
• Zack Brisson, Principal of Reboot – on the Tunisia case study
• Rima Qureshi, Head of Ericsson Response – on the role of the private sector

Please visit the WSIS website to register.

Geneva Dialogue on Cybersecurity
Protecting Critical Infrastructure against Cyberattacks

In partnership with the Swiss Ministry of Defence and the East West Institute

Press Release

17 April 2012: The Geneva Security Forum successfully completed its 2012 Dialogue on Protecting Critical Infrastructure against Cyberattacks in Geneva with high-level participation from Switzerland, the US, China, Canada, Mexico and key representatives from critical infrastructure businesses, academia, civil society, and the media.

Discussions focused on addressing global interdependencies and risks in the protection of critical infrastructure, risk management, national best practices and the strategic agendas of the key cyber players including the US, China and Russia.

Participants agreed to continue the Geneva Dialogue process, establishing a forum for the exchange of national and corporate experiences in the protection of critical infrastructure and for the discussion of national cyber policies at an international strategic level.

For further information please contact Barbara Weekes, CEO, Geneva Security Forum, Switzerland bwgenevasecurityforumnet.

The UN Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technologies and Development (GAID)
While the United Nations Summits of Heads of States emphasized the importance of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in achieving the internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), there was a need for a truly global forum that would comprehensively address cross-cutting issues related to ICT in development.The Global Alliance for Information and Communication Technologies and Development (GAID), an initiative approved by the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2006, was launched after comprehensive worldwide consultations with governments, the private sector, civil society, the technical and Internet communities and academia. With its multi-stakeholder approach, the Alliance reaffirms the belief that a people-centered and knowledge-based information society is essential for achieving better life for all. Recognizing that no single actor is capable of achieving the MDGs in isolation, the creation of an open and inclusive platform that can broaden the dialogue on innovative ways of harnessing ICT for advancing development is crucial. Stemming from a need for a truly global forum, the Alliance’s objective include facilitating the identification of technological solutions for specific development goals and developing pertinent partnership, along with acting as a think tank on Information and Communication Technology ICT) related issues and as an advisory group to the UN Secretary General.

The panel discussed the increasing role of technology for humanitarian crisis management and addressed in particular the following points:

1. Examples where technology (e.g. mobile phones, satellite imagery) enables useful data gathering in a crisis.
2. Analytical technology and processes that are needed to transform data into actionable information.
3. Ways in which technology can extend the collective intelligence to improve decision-making among the host government, local communities, individual citizens, NGOs, private sector, military and donors.
4. The keys to rolling out solutions on a larger scale for sustainable impact.

Download the Powerpoint presentation made at this session here.

The ICT4Peace Foundation is pleased to inform you about its most recent paper entitled The potential and challenges of open data for crisis information management and aid efficiency: A preliminary assessment.

The authors, Daniel Stauffacher, Sanjana Hattotuwa and Barbara Weekes of the ICT4Peace Foundation, aim to explore both the strengths and potential challenges of open data for crisis information management, crisis response and aid efficiency.

Access to data or information translates into empowerment; power to make informed decisions, to solve problems, to generate economic activity, to improve living standards and, in the case of humanitarian emergencies, to protect and save lives. The integral value and many positive spin-off benefits, in particular for the work of the humanitarian response community, emerging from this flattening of the global information hierarchy, need to be reinforced for those who would prefer to keep data in silos, locked away through licenses, patents and proprietary technology. At the same time, the negative use of collated or triangulated open data for destructive purposes against populations or individuals at risk should not be underestimated.

The paper raises issues for further study and exploration including the impact of the ever-increasing number of organizations and governments both opening their data, and integrating data from sources outside traditional channels; the creation of new open data sources such as the Core and Fundamental Datasets of the UN Crisis Information Strategy (CiMS); the risk of open data for vulnerable populations and IDPs; the need to uphold the “do no harm” principle of humanitarian work in this newly emerging environment; the potential benefits of combining open data with crowd-sourced information and feedback to increase quality and veracity of information; the role of crowd-sourced information in a fragile state context; and the need to increase technical know-how and capacity building, particularly in countries at risk.

Despite the explosion of open data and information sharing, there is still quite a long road to go before all the necessary actors are convinced of the benefits of openness and transparency. There are still serious challenges in terms of licensing, proprietary technologies and commercial interests, which need to be addressed. But, through the initiatives and expertise of governments, NGOs and transnational corporations, information is being unlocked and published. Citizens with new tools and devices are producing their own information. We are at the dawn of a new age of empowerment and perhaps the biggest democratic process in the history of mankind. This fast-moving process requires detailed further study, both of the issues raised in this paper and also building on the important work being done by a myriad of NGOs and international organizations.

Read online here. Download the report as a PDF here.

Representing the ICT4Peace Foundation, Sanjana Hattotuwa participated and lectured in Information and Intelligence Cooperation in Multifunctional International Operations, a course run by the Folke Bernadotte Academy in Sandö – Stockholm. Participants included high ranking officials from government, NGOs, UN and EU peacekeeping operations and MACs, analysts and information managers. As FBA notes,

The aim of this course is to develop and improve cooperation and sharing of information and intelligence in multifunctional missions by giving senior officers and professionals involved in or designated to work in multifunctional operations the ability to build functional networks and systems for collection, analysis and dissemination of information and intelligence.

Participants will learn how to improve communication and cooperation between the different actors in the mission area and gain knowledge of how information and intelligence networks can be built depending on needs and special conditions. They will develop their understanding of different actors and their respective information needs as a necessary point of departure for cooperation and coordination.

Earlier this year, the ICT4Peace Foundation and FBA signed an MoU to cooperate in the furtherance of training and capacity building in the field of crisis information management for peace support operations. The Foundation’s input into Information and Intelligence Cooperation in Multifunctional International Operations stems from this MoU.

In class feedback, all participants appreciated the presentations made by Sanjana Hattotuwa on crisis information management, open source information generation, verification, analysis and visualisation, information security, open and big data as well as cutting-edge processes, tools and platforms in social media that today are transforming the domains of peacekeeping, peacebuilding and governance.

In addition, Sanjana also ran a simulation exercise in which participants were challenged to use around 30 leading systems and platforms for crisis information management so as to strengthen real world capacity to deal with today’s complex and evolving information ecosystems.

Our most common verification strategies were to corroborate reports by checking online news, looking at attached photos or videos, asking our local volunteers to investigate personally or through their local contacts, or contacting the sender. We had an additional team on the ground that could travel to investigate and verify reports of large-scale fraud.

Our verification volunteers also had two additional trainings. First, they learned how to use ICT4Peace’s verification matrix plug-in, which helped administrators ascertain the reliability of reports. Second, they had training from Reuters reporters, as traditional media has developed a range of intricate verification strategies in the face of their need to draw from social media.

In addition, ICT4Peace’s Daniel Stauffacher and Sanjana Hattotuwa have been and will be teaching at the Folke Bernadotte Accademy.

In his presentation he referred to important recent initiatives such as Open Government Partnership (http://www.opengovpartnership.org/) of 8 founding countries lead by Bresil and the United States and 43 additional countries. The Open Government Partnership is a new multilateral initiative launched on 20 September 2011 that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance. In the spirit of multi-stakeholder collaboration, OGP is overseen by a steering committee of governments and civil society organizations.

He then introduced a series of interesting open data initiatives that aim to foster transparency and efficiency in crisis management and development cooperation, inter alia such as Open Aid Partnership (http://wbi.worldbank.org/wbi/open-aid-partnership), The International Aid Transparency Initiative (http://www.aidtransparency.net/), OpenAid.SIDA, Schweden (http://www.openaid.se/en), Open Aid Data (http://open.aiddata.org/), Humanitarian Response – Common and Fundamental Operational Datasets Registry (http://cod.humanitarianresponse.info/), Open Data For Resilience Intiative (OpenDRI) (http://gfdrr.org/gfdrr/opendri), Google Public Data (http://www.google.com/publicdata/directory).

Daniel Stauffacher’s conclusion was that open data can substantially support better crisis information management and development cooperation, for instance in helping implementing the Common and Fundamental Operational Datasets Registry (http://cod.humanitarianresponse.info/). But in addition, he predicted that open government data and open data initiatives, combined with or leveraged by crisis mapping and crowd sourcing can even further enhance aid efficiency and transparency and humanitarian operations. A point that was eloquently also made by Caroline Anstey, a managing director of the World Bank in a recent op-ed in the International Harald Tribune in January 2011 (http://nyti.ms/w13s25).

Daniel Stauffacher’s presentation (in german language) can be found as a PDF here: http://bit.ly/yG59mL.
The Video presentation (in german language) can be found also under: http://www.digitale-nachhaltigkeit.ch/2011/12/ogd-dinner/ or on youtube http://bit.ly/yLjI0f.

The ICCM network now features the video of this keynote on YouTube.

In this latest paper by the ICT4Peace Foundation, the authors have called for a non-binding code of conduct to strengthen cyber-security and mitigate the threat of growing cyber-security threats. The paper is a substantive basis for the call issued by the authors in an op-ed in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on 6 July 2011, for such a non-binding code of conduct.

The paper describes also some recent developments in 2011 that took place at the policy-making level at the United Nations and important conferences in London and Berlin in the Fall of 2011.

Download the report as a PDF here or view it online here.

I am pleased to send you the ICT4Peace Foundation’s 2011 Year End Report, which you can read online here, or download as a PDF here.

2011 was, as the year before, rather tumultuous with the Arab Awakening and with political, economic and social upheaval affecting every corner of the globe. The year has also been marked by terrible natural disasters. It was a very busy year for the Foundation and as a larger community interested in promoting peace, democracy, human rights and development through the use of ICTs and social media. We believe great progress was made in increasing awareness and better understanding of the international community on the enormous potential that we have in using these social media, online platforms and ICTs in general.

An important event for the Foundation this year was the successful hosting, together with the Swiss Government and the EU Joint Research Centre, of the 2011 International Crisis Mappers Conference in Geneva. It was the largest ICCM gathering to date.

We continued our rich cooperation with UN ASG and CITO Dr. Soon-Hong Choi to support the implementation of the UN Crisis Information Management Strategy as part of the UN Secretary General’s overall UN ICT strategy. The Foundation also supported UN OCHA in building the Humanitarian Response – Common and Operational Datasets (CODs) Registry to make critical information during a humanitarian crisis more widely available and accessible.

The Foundation developed and carried out training courses in Crisis Information Management (CIM) for multidimensional and multi-stakeholders missions in peacekeeping and peace-building. The content was anchored to new dimensions in peacekeeping and disaster management, including harnessing the potential of new media, the web, Internet and mobile technologies for increased situation awareness.

The work on the ICT4Peace Ushahidi Matrix Plug-in on information validation continued over 2011 and tested during the recent Egyptian elections, as well as the historic first democratic elections in Tunisia.

Late this year, the Foundation underwent an evaluation of its work since 2006 by the Swiss Government. The very useful findings and recommendations reaffirmed the unique role and relevance of the Foundation and will help refine its strategy from 2012 to 2016. We hope to continue to champion the use of ICTs in all aspects of peacebuilding, peacekeeping and crisis management over 2012, and beyond.

With my best wishes,

Daniel Stauffacher

Das erste Dinner der Parlamentarischen Gruppe Digitale Nachhaltigkeit in der neuen Legislatur widmete sich dem viel diskutierten Thema Open Government Data. Was sind Chancen und Risiken frei zugänglicher Behördendaten? Was wurde bisher erreicht, was ist noch möglich? Welche politischen Gründe sprechen für bzw. gegen Open Government Data?

Zu diesen und weiteren Fragen informierten sich die über 60 Teilnehmenden des Parlamentarier-Dinners im Hotel Bern. André Golliez, Initiant von opendata.ch und Partner bei itopia AG, eröffnete den Abend mit einem Einstieg in die Thematik und zeigte aktuelle Trends der Open Government Data Bewegung auf (PDF-Folien). Anschliessend erläuterte der Direktor der Schweizerischen Landestopografie Jean-Philippe Amstein die aktuelle Daten-Situation bei der Swisstopo und wies auf die notwendigen Reformen hin, die für einen vollständigen Wechsel auf Open Government Data notwendig wären: Umverteilung von rund 15 Millionen Franken, welche die Swisstopo jährlich am kommerziellen Verkauf ihrer Daten verdient (PDF-Folien). Danach gewährte der ehemalige Botschafter und Gründer der Stiftung ICT4Peace Daniel Stauffacher einen Einblick in den internationalen Kontext und zeigte beispielhaft auf, welche Chancen Open Government Data für Hilfsorganisationen bezüglich Entwicklungszusammenarbeit und Nothilfe bei Katastrophen eröffnet (PDF-Folien).

See full article on Blog Digitale Nachhaltigkeit here.

28 November, Geneva, Switzerland – Daniel Stauffacher, Chairman, ICT4Peace Foundation, participated as a member of the Futurict project team in the EU FET Flagship Pilots Midterm Conference, 24-25 November 2011, Warsaw, Poland. This project is co-lead by Prof. Dirk Helbing, ETH Zürich and Prof. Steven Bishop, University College, London along with approximately 300 research teams all over the world. ICT4Peace has been supporting the efforts of Prof. Helbing and Prof. Bishop to build this important project since spring 2010.

The EU FET Flagships are ambitious large-scale, science-driven, European research initiatives that aim to achieve a visionary goal. The scientific advance should provide a strong and broad basis for future technological innovation and economic exploitation in a variety of areas, as well as novel benefits for society. The six selected FET Flagship Pilots were officially launched by EU Vice-President Neelie Kroes in May 2011 during the fet11 Conference in Budapest. The Midterm Conference in Warsaw was an opportunity for the six Flagship Pilots (FuturICT, Graphene, Guardian Angels, The Human Brain Project, EPFL Lausanne, ITFoM and RoboCom) to promote their projects in front of approximately 250 experts, including EC, national funding agencies and other stakeholders.

What is FuturICT?
We have built particle accelerators to understand the forces that make up our physical world. Yet, we do not understand the principles underlying our strongly connected, techno-socio-economic systems. We have enabled ubiquitous Internet connectivity and instant, global information access. Yet we do not understand how it impacts our behaviour and the evolution of society. To fill the knowledge gaps and keep up with the fast pace at which our world is changing, a Knowledge Accelerator must urgently be created. For this, the FuturICT flagship project will promote an interdisciplinary integration of natural, social, and engineering sciences with novel paradigms of information technology. This will produce the synergy effects required to address many of our 21st century challenges. After the age of physical, biological and technological innovations, FuturICT will lead Europe into the next era – a wave of information-driven social and socio-inspired innovations.

Globalisation and technological change have made our world a different place. This has created or intensified a number of serious problems, such as global financial and economic crises, political instabilities and revolutions, the quick spreading of diseases, disruptions of international supply chains, organised crime, international conflict and world-wide terrorism, and increased cyber-risks as well.

Although the creation of more and more interconnected systems and the pace of innovation in the area of information and communication technologies (ICT) have contributed to the above problems, future ICT can also be key to the solution. It can create unprecedented benefits for our economy and society, based on a whole range of new methods and innovations. For this, ICT must acquire the ability to flexibly adapt to the needs of society.

In this way, it can become a stabilising factor fostering transparency, trust, respect for individual rights, and opportunities for participation in social, economic, and political processes. This requires us to establish a new science of multi-level complex, global systems and a co-evolution of ICT with society, by bringing the best knowledge of experts on information and communication systems, complex systems and the social sciences together.

The vision of the FuturICT flagship project is to develop the capacity to explore and manage our future, based on a fundamental understanding of the institutional and interaction-based principles that make connected systems work well.

The methods and ‘Big Data’ needed for such a scientific endeavour are now becoming available: it is, therefore, time to make a ‘Big Science’ effort to couple methods and data with theories and models, like in the Human Genome Project. This endeavour should be open, because we need to prevent private monopolies of socio-economic data, and it should be federated, because joint interdisciplinary efforts are the only way to tackle humanity’s global challenges and ensure leadership in socio-inspired ICT innovations. The investments into the FuturICT project can benefit citizens and society in many ways: by promoting collective awareness of the impacts of our decisions and actions, by mitigating global problems and systemic risks, and by creating new possibilities to participate in social, economic and political affairs. In particular, FuturICT will create the basis for new spin-offs, business opportunities and jobs.

FuturICT is a visionary project that will deliver new science and technology to explore, understand and manage our connected world. This will inspire new information and communication technologies (ICT) that are socially adaptive and socially interactive, supporting collective awareness.

Revealing the hidden laws and processes underlying our complex, global, socially interactive systems constitutes one of the most pressing scientific challenges of the 21st Century. Integrating complexity science with ICT and the social sciences, will allow us to design novel robust, trustworthy and adaptive technologies based on socially inspired paradigms. Data from a variety of sources will help us to develop models of techno-socioeconomic systems. In turn, insights from these models will inspire a new generation of socially adaptive, self-organised ICT systems. This will create a paradigm shift and facilitate a symbiotic co-evolution of ICT and society. In response to the European Commission’s call for a ‘Big Science’ project, FuturICT will build a largescale, pan European, integrated programme of research which will extend for 10 years and beyond.

Why do we need it?
Today, society and technology are changing at a pace that often outstrips our capacity to understand and manage them. It seems that we know more about the universe than about our society. Therefore it is time to use the power of information to explore social and economic life on Earth and discover options for a sustainable future. As the recent financial crisis demonstrates, the systems that we have built to organise our affairs now possess an unprecedented degree of complexity and interdependence among their technological, social and economic components. This complexity often results in counter-intuitive effects driven by positive feedbacks that lead to domino-like cascades of failures. Neither the precepts of traditional science, nor our collective experience from a simpler past, adequately prepare us for the future. It is simply impossible to understand and manage complex networks using conventional tools.

We need to put systems in place that highlight, or prevent, conceivable failures and allow us to quickly recover from those that we cannot predict. We need this insight to help manage our financial markets but also to tackle other risks, such as flu pandemics, social instabilities, or criminal networks. At the same time, policymakers are currently faced with major decisions of how to plan the general infrastructure of services to cope with the demands of the future, and what is more, to do so in a sustainable manner. The same decisions are also posed to individuals who wish to improve their own lives. Thus now is the time to create a paradigm shift moving from a focus on the system components and their properties towards evaluating their interactions. These interactions are often hard to measure but create collective, emergent dynamics, which are characteristic of strongly coupled systems.

How will it work?
The FuturICT flagship project will align the research of hundreds of the best scientists in Europe through a 10 year, €1 billion research programme to develop new methods which integrate different scientific models, data and concepts. To build capacity, regional support will be developed alongside educational programmes for young researchers.

FuturICT will build a sophisticated framework for simulation, visualisation and participation, called the FuturICT Platform. A suite of models forming the Living Earth Simulator will power Observatories, to detect and mitigate crises plus identify opportunities in specific areas. These models will be driven, and calibrated, by data aggregated in real-time, which are gathered by a digital Planetary Nervous System. Both models and data will support the decision-making of policy-makers, business people and citizens, through a Global Participatory Platform, which is intended to facilitate better social, economic and political participation.

What will be the benefit?
The FuturICT project will produce benefits for science, technology and society by integrating previously separated approaches. ICT systems of the future will provide the social sciences with the datasets needed to make major breakthroughs in our understanding of the principles that make socially interactive systems work well. This, in turn, will inspire the design of future systems, made up of billions of interacting, intelligent components capable of partially autonomous decisions. One goal is the creation of a privacy-respecting, reputation-oriented, and self-regulating information ecosystem that promotes the co-evolution of ICT with society. The tremendous growth in social media, mobile applications, Open Data and Big Data will enable complexity science to tackle practical problems by uncovering laws of interaction and help us understand the implications of strong couplings, thereby forging a new science of global systems that are more resilient to disruptions.

Furthermore, FuturICT will produce outcomes that are relevant to society, creating systems that help decision makers assess the implications of alternative strategies. FuturICT’s Global Participatory Platform will thus provide something like a policy ‘wind tunnel’ where the consequences of decisions can be explored. Hence the project will create a focus on resilience and sustainability.

Exemplar, case studies will be performed in order to address major challenges such as smart cities or smart energy systems, but also build up our capacity to model systems and understand data. Additionally these studies will improve our understanding of over-arching, key concepts such as risk, trust, resilience and sustainability which are relevant to a wide range of systems, including ICT systems. Having all this new information in place will allow FuturICT to study interactions among society, technology, environment and the economy through interconnected Exploratories. This will allow us to create an Innovation Accelerator that will discover valuable knowledge in the flood of information, help to find the best experts for projects, and support the distributed generation of new knowledge, hence promoting innovation.

FuturICT will start an era of social innovation, sparking off novel, socially inspired technologies, spin-offs and whole new business areas.

Who is involved?
Active collaborations are now taking place among Europe’s top universities with hundreds of researchers engaged in the project. Hubs to support regional activities have been created in many European countries. FuturICT communities also exist in USA, Japan, China, and Australia. Individuals and a wide range of scientific organisations have expressed their explicit support, as have small and big businesses. Each supporter recognises the vital importance of securing funds for this area of research to build European expertise within an integrated project and create an innovation economy based on the digital revolution, while at the same time benefiting humanity. Affiliations with existing complementary projects are being established and new projects are being encouraged.

FuturICT: National Focus Areas and Responsibilities
Regional hubs have been set up in many countries to coordinate activities. Some of the collaborating institutes are shown; we envisage different institutes joining the project as it develops. In addition collaborations have started with e.g. Microsoft Research, IBM, Telecom Italia, Yahoo! Research, Disney Research and many others. Please see the website www.futurict.eu for the full list and details of the hubs.

Contacts
Prof. Steven Bishop UCL, FuturICT.eu Pilot Phase Coordinator, email: sbishopuclacuk
Prof. Dirk Helbing, ETH Zurich, Chair of FuturICT.eu Steering Committee, email: dhelbingethzch

Keynote Address by Delilah Al-Khudhairy on behalf of the European Commission’s inhouse science service at the Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Good Afternoon Dear Colleagues,

It is also my pleasure to welcome you to the 3^rd International Conference of Crisis Mappers.

As Patrick Meier and Jen Ziemke have mentioned, this is the first time this conference is held in Europe, whose location was chosen for several strategic reasons, three of which I would like to highlight:

• The European Union is the largest donor of humanitarian and development assistance globally
• The ICT sector in the EU account for some 8% of its GDP. Furthermore, the EU also has a seven year research programme at the European level with a budget of about 12 billion euros earmarked for R&D in ICT, Security and Space to address challenges in homeland security, civil protection, health security and global security challenges, including humanitarian disasters, amongst other issues. About 9 billion euros is for ICT research alone.
• Geneva is the host of a large number of UN Agencies and other Inter-governmental Organizations, NGOs and business companies engaged in humanitarian operations, and whose operational needs can help to guide academia, industry, research organisations and the crisis-mapping community to develop and deliver relevant and reliable products and services.

This year’s conference has been co-organised with ICT4PEACE Foundation, The Crisis Mappers and the Swiss Confederation who I would like to thank profusely for the effort and hospitality. Moreover, it has been a pleasure for our team to work closely with Daniel Staufacher, Sanjana Hattotuwa and Barbara Weekes since the beginning of this year. Our thanks are also extended to Patrick Meier and Jen Ziemke for helping us to transform together the N. America Crisis Mapper Experience into a European One and with who both the JRC and ICT4Peace Foundation have been working closely during the whole year to realize this Conference. Our thanks also extend to the World Bank, ESRI and the John Carroll University who have helped with sponsoring the Conference.

The goal of the 3^rd Int. Conf. for Crisis Mappers is to bring together practitioners, researchers, developers of ICT solutions and policymakers to discuss and assess the role of novel ICT solutions in the fields of emergency response and humanitarian aid interventions, as well as the challenges of main streaming ICT services and products in the operational practice of emergency response and humanitarian aid communities.

In the last decade, the use of ICT solutions has been steadily growing in the humanitarian and civil protection communities for a number of reasons: better and cheaper computers and mobile devices, cheaper and more accessible storage capability including through cloud computing, better spatial and temporal resolution satellite data and equally important better awareness and increasing confidence by the user communities in emergency response and humanitarian relief in the reliability and quality of ICT derived services and products. Today, we are seeing:

• the growing use of ICT solutions to support humanitarian and emergency response interventions in the field
• the accepted use of remote sensing derived products to support emergency and humanitarian interventions
• the increasing use of Web-based platforms to support information sharing and collaborative initiatives

But, more recently, and particularly since Haiti 2010, new interesting initiatives such as voluntary crowd sourcing and social media have entered the arena.

The opportunities provided through continuously evolving ICT solutions and new sources of information such as social media and voluntary crowd sourcing come along with new challenges we must address if we wish to mainstream them in the operational workflow of emergency response and humanitarian relief- They include:

• Massive information overload from all sorts of information sources, traditional and non-traditional
• Massive ICT overload
• New actors engaged in information generation

In addition, the new initiatives social media and crowd sourcing also raise the important challenge of information trust, reliability and sustainability.

The use of ICT solutions in the field, through for example, the combined use of web-based platforms and mobile devices, implies that we are able to quickly and in NRT transmit geo-located photos, videos, data communications and text reports from the field to situation centres, to voluntary initiatives, and to also share with and between actors in the field.  How do we build trust, reliability and sustainability in developments related to practitioner and voluntary information generation initiatives?

Remote sensing derived products and traditionally produced geo-information layers are routinely used today in support to emergency and humanitarian preparedness and response.  Usable, reliable and trusted products are key characteristics of products provided today by traditional service or information providers. Again, how do we build trust, reliability and sustainability in novel developments related to the new voluntary information generation type initiatives building around remote sensing and other geo-information data that we have seen evolve since Haiti last year?

Timeliness of relevant and trusted information is essential in the emergency and response phase of any crisis. Today, in the civilian domain, for a number of reasons, there are limited improvements we can expect from satellite-derived information in terms of providing a situational awareness at time intervals much more frequent than 24 hours on a daily basis over the same crisis spot. Therefore, there is an expected interest by actors in the emergency and humanitarian relief communities in understanding the limitations and added value of the use of field-based practitioner sensing and voluntary community sensing to address information gaps. In a number of recent disasters, the mainstream media appear to have taken up crisis mapping solutions as an integral part of the reporting. This is not yet necessarily the case in the emergency and humanitarian relief communities. Why?

The traditional emergency and humanitarian relief processes were designed around sharing information between known and trusted teams and their partners – they were not designed to easily integrate information from new sources such as social media or voluntary geo-information production initiatives. They also cannot always adapt quickly their workflows to accommodate new ICT solutions, new voluntary crisis mapping teams or to quickly integrate local volunteered information.

This means there is still a lot of work ahead of us to build more trust in new ICT uses and to systemize and mainstream this in the operational workflow of emergency and humanitarian relief communities. And this also applies to new crisis crowd sourced and voluntarily generated geo-information. 

Furthermore, we should keep in mind that Natural Disasters, conflicts and other types of disasters are not reducing. The total number of disaster events is trending up: The first half of 2011 has already produced more events than most years before 2006. This increasing trend will ofcourse add a strain on practitioners engaged in emergency preparedness and response, who have to save lives and improve the well being of survivors, particularly those who have a mandate to act in disasters and crises inside and outside the EU or widely outside the EU. They need trusted, reliable and sustainable information and tools that they can easily integrate in their operational workflow. Therefore, we have two enormous challenges ahead of us:

• Building and maintaining trust, reliability and sustainability as a regular feature in traditional geo-information products and ICT services
• A better understanding of the challenges, the needs and design for trust, reliability and sustainability of new sources of information originating from community sensing or crowd source mapping or other, and how best to use them in complement to traditional geo-information products and ICT services.

What we wish to avoid, particularly for the practitioner, is to have more information at the expense of having less relevant, less reliable and less trustworthy information. Trust, reliability and sustainability will remain the largest challenge.

Thank you.

23 November, Geneva, Switzerland – The ICT4Peace Foundation and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), in collaboration with the International Network of Crisis Mappers successfully organised and co-hosted the 3rd International Conference on Crisis Mapping (ICCM).

ICCM 2011, held at the International Conference Centre Geneva, CICG, Switzerland from 14 – 15 November, was the first to be held outside the US and also the largest so far, with over 400 participants in attendance. The conference brought together the most engaged practitioners, scholars, software developers and policymakers at the cutting edge of crisis mapping to address and assess the role of crisis mapping and humanitarian technology in crisis response. The Crisis Mapping field has emerged in the last five years as a dynamic web of advanced technology, user generated mapping, and new methodologies in crisis reporting.

The overarching themes of ICCM 2011 were validation, security, key partnerships between formal humanitarian organisations and informal volunteer networks, scalability of crisis mapping projects and the challenges resulting from as well as potential of mainstreaming crisis mapping into humanitarian relief and aid.

Delilah Al-Khudhairy on behalf of the European Commission’s inhouse science service, JRC and Sanjana Hattotuwa on behalf of the ICT4Peace Foundation delivered keynote addresses that were very well received by the participants. In her address, Delilah Al-Khudhairy repeatedly stressed the need to strengthen trust, reliability and sustainability of new sources of information originating from community sensing or crowd source mapping. She went on to note that “What we wish to avoid, particularly for the practitioner, is to have more information at the expense of having less relevant, less reliable and less trustworthy information” adding that “We must remember that one of the key success measures in emergency and humanitarian relief response is whether the ICT services and geo-information products or the novel volunteered crowd sourced information can or has helped to save more lives, to further improve the well being of affected communities, and to further increase our society’s resilience to future disasters”.

In his keynote address, Sanjana Hattotuwa reiterated the importance of these points and went on to draw in broad brushstrokes the new landscape of ICTs in humanitarian relief and aid work. Flagging enduring concerns over information overload, the technical challenges of curating crowd sourced data as well as enduring organisational challenges of more efficient and effective response in the face of rising expectations and public scrutiny, Sanjana also stressed the importance of sharing failure and beyond the telegenics, hype and promotional material around technology platforms and tools, the fact that crisis mapping matters only when it helps save lives.

Over 20 Ignite Talks on Day 1 followed the keynote presentations. At five minutes each, these presentations delivered a glimpse into the world of crisis mapping, and how far it has progressed from even three years ago. Presentations ranged from cutting edge technical innovation and social engineering to the protection of civilians in violent conflict.

On Day 2, self-organised sessions at ICCM lookedin-depth at a diverse range of issues and challenges, ranging from verification frameworks for crowd sourced data and quality standards to operational security for crisis mappers and opening up humanitarian information. All sessions were well attended and participants actively contributed to the discussions, making the interactions lively, probing and informative.

ICCM 2011, as planned by the ICT4Peace Foundation and JRC, brought together a more diverse participation than earlier ICCM conferences, with students and academia from across Europe including the UK interacting with practitioners with years of field experience, social entrepreneurs, UN staff, European and Swiss based NGO representatives as well as media, in addition to the many familiar faces who flew in from across the Atlantic.

Sponsors for ICCM 2011 included ESRI, John Carroll University, and the World Bank, who were present at the event. The conference curators on behalf of JRC and ICT4Peace were Tom de Groeve, Barbara Weekes, Patrick Meier and Jen Ziemke.

The next ICCM is planned for Autumn/Fall 2012, in Washington DC.

Delilah H.A. Al Khudhairy B.Sc (Eng), PhD from the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre delivered this keynote at VALgEO 2011, held from 18 – 19 October 2011. Daniel Stauffacher, Chairman of the ICT4Peace Foundation was also present and spoke on “The Role Of Validation In Information And Communication Technologies (Ict) For Crisis Management“.

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Good Morning Dear friends and colleagues,

I see several familiar faces and several new ones too.

Welcome to the 3rd Valgeo workshop on Validation of geo-information products for crisis management’.

One of our initial aims of the first workshop was to create a community of interested organisations in sharing know-how, best-practices and needs in order to help to:

1. Improve the process of validation of information products derived not only from remotely sensed data but also from other sources.
2. Facilitate the exchange of developments and other initiatives addressing validation of crisis relevant information
3. Facilitate the exchange of needs between practitioners and the scientific research community

Validation of geo-information has several dimensions including relevance, reliability, and quality, which in turn address issues such as readability and usability of crisis relevant information.

At Valgeo, whilst we endeavor to cover all aspects, we have focused until now on the Quality dimension.

Why is it important to discuss Validation in crisis management in settings like the Valgeo workshop?

Well it is important because of the proliferation in the methods that are used by all sorts of actors for deriving, visualising, mapping, sharing and distributing information relevant to crisis management particularly during the preparedness and response phases. This is evident in:

• the growing use of ICT to support interventions in the field
• the accepted use of remote sensing derived emergency support products
• the use of Web-based platforms to support information sharing and collaborative initiatives
• the availability and use of crowd sourced and volunteered geo information in certain types of crises

The use of ICT in the field, through for example, the combined use of web-based platforms and mobile devices, implies that we are able to quickly and in NRT transmit geo-located photos, videos, data communications and text reports from the field to situation centres, to voluntary initiatives, and to also share between actors in the field. How do we build Validation in these developments, where time is an issue, so that their added-value of NRT field-based situational awareness can be taken up by practitioners, bearing in mind that information collected or volunteered will in the future no longer be expected or necessarily be only provided by practitioners in the field but they can also be potentially provided by ordinary citizens or even as we have seem in some disasters like Haiti non-expert or experts distributed around the world? We will hear several examples during the workshop on research and applications on these issues.

Remote sensing derived products are routinely used today in support to emergency preparedness and response. Routine validation is essential to ensure that data, methods and processes used are regularly reviewed and improved to assure delivery of usable, reliable and relevant information. During the workshop we will hear about experiences on the validation process established and used within the framework of activities such as the GMES SAFER project and others. My colleague, Torsten Redlinger, from the GMES Bureau may also touch upon this point. The question here is not so much do we have to have a harmonized validation process, but rather how do we regularly share know-how and best practices and build validation in our work flow to ensure that the beneficiary at the end of the day is the user of crisis relevant information.

Timeliness is essential in the emergency phase of any crisis. Today, in the civilian domain, for a number of reasons, there is limited improvement we can expect from satellite-derived information in terms of providing a situational awareness at time intervals more frequent than 24 hours on a daily basis over the same hot spot. Therefore, there is an expected strong interest in understanding the added value of the use of practitioner sensing and community sensing to address the information gaps and to complement satellite-derived situational awareness through providing NRT or RT field or on the-spot based situational awareness. Some initial validation work is already underway in initiatives such as Ushahidi. How much can this initial work be accommodated to address scenarios beyond the ones it was designed for? If we need to design a new validation process that can accommodate practitioner and community sensor information, what factors do we need to consider, bearing in mind that practitioner sensing is controlled up to a certain point, whereas community sensing is voluntary?

Natural Disasters, conflicts and other types of disasters are not reducing. In 2010, the global impact of natural disasters took a turn for the worse with an increase in fatalities and economic damage. There were 385 NDs worldwide that killed more than 297,000 people, affected over 217 million others and caused about $ 124 billion in economic damages (ref. Annual Disaster Statistical Review 2010).

The total number of disaster events is trending up: The first half of 2011 has already produced more events than most years before 2006. This increasing trend will ofcourse add a strain on practitioners engaged in emergency preparedness and response who have to save lives and improve the well being of survivors, particularly those practitioners who have a mandate to act in disasters and crises inside and outside the EU or widely outside the EU. They need information and tools that they can easily integrate in their work process and that will help them to respond faster. Therefore, we have two enormous challenges ahead of us:

• Building and maintaining validation as a regular feature in traditional satellite-based information products.
• Better understanding the challenges, the needs and design for validation of new sources of information coming from the field and other sources and originating from different types of actors (namely practitioner versus community sensing), and how best to utilize them in complement to traditional geo-information products.

In the validation process, especially with increasing use of non-traditional novel sources of information, trust will remain the largest challenge. What we wish to avoid, particularly for the practitioner, is to have more information at the expense of having less relevant and less trustworthy information.

These are the sort of challenges the Valgeo community can and should address so that we can make progress together on identifying follow-up actions and recommendations that can help to lead to benefits for the emergency response and post-disaster recovery communities as well as help those communities to uptake and mainstream technological advances in information with a practical form pf validation playing an integral part.

A warm Welcome once again to you my friends and colleagues and I look forward to a productive two days workshop.

I shall hand you over to Martino Pesaresi and leave you in his good pair for hands as the chair of the workshop.

Thank you.