ICT4Peace brings UN OCHA and ETH Zurich together to evaluate the Humanitarian Exchange Language (HXL)
Zurich, 30 April 2013
The ICT4Peace Foundation has facilitated a first exchange between the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and ETH Zurich on the Humanitarian Exchange Language (HXL). HXL is the data standard OCHA is developing so that humanitarian organisations can share operational data across their different systems.
As part of its long-standing support to the UN Crisis Information Management Strategy (CiMS), ICT4Peace has been asked by OCHA to help evaluate HXL from organisational and technical perspectives. If the evaluation is positive, ICT4Peace will support its implementation.
To strengthen the technical side of this evaluation, Daniel Stauffacher wrote to the President of ETH Zurich, Prof. Ralph Eichler, on 23 March 2013. He asked whether a department of ETH might be interested in carrying out a technical evaluation of HXL. The President’s office, through Dr. Nikolaus Gotsch, identified Prof. Donald Kossmann of the Institute of Information Systems as the right expert, and he kindly agreed to help.
On 26 April 2013, Daniel Stauffacher of ICT4Peace and CJ Hendrix of UN OCHA met Prof. Kossmann at ETH Zurich. They discussed how the humanitarian community is structured, the information management challenges that result, and where HXL fits within the CiMS framework. The conversation covered several things:
- the diversity of information systems across humanitarian organisations, and how a common standard can work alongside it
- the data modelling approach underlying HXL, and how it allows the standard to grow over time
- how ETH expertise could accompany the project as it moves forward, including possible involvement of Master’s students in prototyping
Prof. Kossmann kindly offered to remain a sparring partner for conceptual reflection as the HXL project moves forward. As a next step, a meeting between Prof. Kossmann and OCHA colleagues is foreseen in New York in June 2013, possibly with the Swiss Mission to the UN, to present the potential of HXL for crisis information management.
ICT4Peace warmly thanks President Eichler, Dr. Gotsch and Prof. Kossmann for ETH Zurich’s support, and the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs for its continued backing of ICT4Peace’s work on crisis information management.
Added to our archive in October 2026, based on ICT4Peace correspondence from March and April 2013.
Tags: ETH, OCHA, HXL, Crisis Information Management, UN CiMS, Partners