The ICT4Peace Foundation, the Swiss Confederation and the European Commission’s Joint Research Center are pleased to announce and invite you to participate at the 3rd International Conference of Crisis Mappers (ICCM) in Geneva on 14-15 November 2011. Sponsors include the World Bank. More details regarding registration for ICCM 2011 will be available soon.
The purpose of ICCM 2011 Geneva is to bring 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. Following the myriad of responses to the Haiti 2010 earthquake, the crisis mapper community is fanning out into new domains. A number of reports highlight a great deal of excitement over the potential of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs), new and social media as well as crowd-sourcing to strengthen planning and delivery of aid.
There are, however, outstanding and pressing questions over reliability, replicability, sustainability as well as assumptions over the design and application of these new tools and platforms. Some of these concerns have led to the establishment of the stand-by volunteer force by the crisis mapping community and integration of new platforms into existing institutional infrastructure and workflows. At the same time, crisis mapping solutions are being picked up by the mainstream media as an integral part of reporting, for example, during the recent flooding in Sri Lanka and Australia, the crisis in Libya and the earthquake in Japan. Furthermore, we are seeing the growth of local community led efforts, e.g. in the Kibera slums of Nairobi and on-going work in Haiti to use these new tools for long-term development.
Issues on the limitations of crisis-mapping, for example in the Sudan referendum, the recent North-African uprisings and related socio-political, cultural and economic sensitivities are being actively discussed. The Geneva Region is the host of a large number of UN Agencies and other Intergovernmental Organizations, NGOs and business companies engaged in humanitarian operations, which are helping to determine or shape the operational needs for which the crisis-mapping community will be able to develop and deliver cutting-edge products and services in the future.
We hope you will be able to join us in Geneva for what promises to be a most stimulating and action-oriented conference!
Some pertinent work and publications of the ICT4Peace Foundation critically analysing crisis mapping’s evolution, potential and challenges include:
Much more output and critical thinking can be found on our website.
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Word map created from Haiti Information and Communications Observations by Larry Wentz.
