In parallel to the panel on early warning systems, the disaster response panel will also focus on early response to serious crimes and gross violations of human rights, specifically in the context of disasters. Broadband and cellular networks can be quickly established to support the information flow to and from victims. The analysis of information flows can be automated to detect patterns and emergencies. But technology can also represent a challenge, creating information overflow and requiring capacities that are not always available. How do we design effective systems for situations that require rapid and efficient response mechanisms? What are some of the lessons learned in light of recent disasters?
Panelists:
Patrick Meier (Crisis Mapping / Ushahidi)
Jennifer Chan (Harvard Humanitarian Initiative)
Steven Hansch (Institute for the Study of International Migration)
John Crowley(Harvard Humanitarian Initiative/STAR-TIDES)
Bio
Jennifer Chan
Dr. Jennifer Chan is an associate faculty member of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. Chan is an emergency medicine physician and public health provider.
John Crowley
John Crowley is a Research Fellow at Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and STAR-TIDES. John coordinates a community of developers who build solutions for big problems in humanitarian assistance and disaster response operations. One of those issues is how to create a bridge between governments, NGOs, and stressed populations using crowdsourcing and other forms of collective intelligence.
Supporting the STAR-TIDES initiative at the National Defense University, he led a tiger team to connect crowdsourcing communities with the U.S. Southern Command’s emergency operations centere during the Haiti response. Between earthquakes, John coordinates the "Camp Roberts" RELIEF experiments through the Naval Postgraduate School -- a program that gathers participants from responder communities and challenges them to swarm around shared problems. Through the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, John is expanding an existing program in crisis mapping to include the theory and practice around collective intelligence for response operations.
John holds an MPA from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he was the Robert C. Seamans Fellow in Science, Technology, and Public Policy. He also holds masters and bachelors degrees in intellectual history and music from Boston University. He tweets at @jcrowley.
Steve Hansch
Steve Hansch is a Senior Associate at the Institute for the Study of International Migration. Mr. Hansch has conducted field work implementing and developing disaster response programs in Ethiopia, Sudan, Kosovo, Rwanda, Azerbaijan and Somalia, working with NGOs like the International Rescue Committee, CARE, Relief International, and Partners for Development. In the early 1990s he served as Program Director of the NGO consortium Food Aid Management, dedicated to sharing information about improving the effectiveness, efficiency and accountability of international relief. From 1993 to 1998 he served as Senior Program officer at the Refugee Policy Group, where he led evaluations of NGO field programs and organized a number of lessons-learned workshops among emergency NGOs.
He also has had steady involvement in teaching about disaster prevention and humanitarian relief since designing a course on the subject -- to fill a perceived gap -- at Stanford University in 1976. Since then he has lectured and taught courses on humanitarian aid, with a primary focus on NGO capacity building, at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, Georgetown's McDonough School of Business, the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, Columbia University, the University of Wisconsin at Madison (the Disaster Management Program) and American University. He also serves as a SPHERE trainer for NGOs and has taught in the NGO-oriented specialized trainings offered on emergency relief by the International Committee of the Red Cross, USAID's Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (through World Education and Columbia University) and others.
Patrick Meier
Patrick Meier is the Director of Crisis Mapping & Partnerships. Meier is the co-founder of the International Network of Crisis Mappers and previously co-directed Harvard University's (HHI) Program on Crisis Mapping and Early Warning. He has consulted for many international organizations including the UN, OSCE and OECD on numerous crisis mapping and conflict early warning projects in Africa, Asia and Europe. Patrick is a recognized expert and thought leader on the intersection between new technologies, early warning, civil resistance, human rights and humanitarian response. He has written extensively on these topics and has presented his work at numerous high-profile conferences worldwide.
Patrick is also completing his PhD at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and is currently a Visiting Fellow at Stanford University's Program on Liberation Technologies. He is on the Board of Digital Democracy, the Meta-Activism Project and the Konpa Group. Patrick has an MA in International Affairs from Columbia University and is an alum of the Sante Fe Institute's (SFI) Complex Systems Program.
Rights that belong to an individual as a consequence of being human. The term came into wide use after World War II, replacing the earlier phrase “natural rights,” which had been associated with the Greco-Roman concept of natural law since the end of the Middle Ages. As understood today, human rights refer to a wide variety of values and capabilities reflecting the diversity of human circumstances and history. They are conceived of as universal, applying to all human beings everywhere, and as fundamental, referring to essential or basic human needs. Human rights have been classified historically in terms of the notion of three “generations” of human rights. The first generation of civil and political rights, associated with the Enlightenment and the English, American, and French revolutions, includes the rights to life and liberty and the rights to freedom of speech and worship. The second generation of economic, social, and cultural rights, associated with revolts against the predations of unregulated capitalism from the mid-19th century, includes the right to work and the right to an education. Finally, the third generation of solidarity rights, associated with the political and economic aspirations of developing and newly decolonized countries after World War II, includes the collective rights to political self-determination and economic development. Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, many treaties and agreements for the protection of human rights have been concluded through the auspices of the United Nations, and several regional systems of human rights law have been established. In the late 20th century ad hoc international criminal tribunals were convened to prosecute serious human rights violations and other crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The International Criminal Court, which came into existence in 2002, is empowered to prosecute crimes against humanity, crimes of genocide, and war crimes.
"John Crowley is a Research Fellow at Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and STAR-TIDES. John coordinates a community of developers who build solutions for big problems in humanitarian assistance and disaster response operations. One of those issues is how to create a bridge between governments, NGOs, and stressed populations using crowdsourcing and other forms of collective intelligence." Real great guy! don't click here | Pictures of Jesus | Xbox 720 | Halo 4 | Easytether | Cheetah Facts
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