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“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.”
With these words, Microsoft founder Bill Gates helps frame an important moment for the humanitarian response community. Emerging technologies with a tremendous potential to dramatically decrease loss of life in a disaster scenario are on the visible but still far horizon. They show promise but not ready for pragmatic wide-scale use. How do we heed the advice of Mr. Gates and act today to enable the major leaps of the next decade that will save hundreds of thousands of lives?
Reflecting on the 2014 Ebola outbreak response can start the conversation. Mobile phones and cellular networks were readily accessible to Ebola responders. Their potential as a powerful, emerged technical tool to track and trace the outbreak and response were well documented and understood. However, phones in the hands of first responders and affected population did not ensure critical information got to organizers fast enough to get ahead of the outbreak in countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone.
A number of factors contributed to the technology inefficiency in ebola response. Various response groups were using different information systems which meant they could not collaborate or share information easily. No legal partnership agreements on emergency protocol for telecommunication companies were in place, which meant caller data which could be used to track the outbreak was not released. A lack of basic reporting infrastructure at health clinics resulted in underreported or incomplete information of the situation. The 2014 Ebola episode demonstrated the impact of advanced technology in emergency response is only as good as the foundational systemic pieces focused on prevention, preparedness and local capacities.
The Red Cross and Red Crescent have been leading a worldwide discussion on how we leverage emerging tech to strengthen community resilience in their Global Dialogue on Emerging Technology for Emerging Needs. Michele Lynch is a lead on the initiative for the Red Cross which has engaged local, national and global stakeholders. “Futurists and consumers agree that emerging tools like 3-D printers, augmented reality software, biometric scanners, robots, unmanned aerial vehicles and wearable devices are sparking another technology revolution” Lynch states. “Preparing for their arrival in the marketplace will help to mitigate potential disruption and increase acceptance, demand, and usage, in everyday life and in disaster preparedness, response and rebuilding”.
To further explore the emerging technology and humanitarian response landscape, we spoke with Lynch, her colleagues, and others in the humanitarian response field and focused in on two emerging technologies: drones and 3-D printers.
Drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)
One can quickly envision the potential for drones in humanitarian response. Drones have a mobility that humans do not, their ability to do things autonomously and from a distance opens the door for vaccines, medicine and other supplies to reach the most remote communities, even if roads are closed, damaged or nonexistent. Drones can also be programed to do repeated tasks autonomously, allowing them to easily take on some larger tasks. It is like if you teach a machine to process one medical record they can process a million, drones likewise can do repetitive remote physical actions quickly and at a large frequency. The experimentation has already begun with drones, opening up important appropriate design and ethical considerations.
Somewhere between military grade drones and the do-it-yourself (DIY) variety is a design that can take on the specialized tasks in humanitarian response situations. The ten year outlook for drones is delivery and transport of critical materials and equipment, but interim goals are needed to advance the specialized design requirements. Producing updated and real-time satellite imagery of a location in the immediate aftermath of a disaster is an example of the short term goals for drones, one that forward-thinking groups like Planet Labs are already chasing.
Another tangible short term goal is for drones to reconnect affected populations and responders when the disaster may have shut down communication and information networks “By transmitting cellular and Wi-Fi signals using a mesh network, UAVs have the potential to restore critical communications for citizens following a disaster” explains Lynch.
Unlocking the potential of drones will also require ethics considerations and advanced policy around privacy and dignity of affected populations and updates to aviation regulations. At the same time, the ethical questions which drones open up are not necessarily new, they are similar to questions which have been debated in the humanitarian community for years. With the appropriate technical and policy advancements, completed in a participatory manner over the next few years, drones are positioned to improve humanitarian response exponentially.
3-D Printing
3-D Printed Wrench
Onsite 3-D printing of objects ignites the imagination for strengthening supply chain and sustainability of equipment and materials in humanitarian response. While not as applicable to the immediate aftermath of a disaster, 3-D printing could have a huge role to play in the recovery and resilience building, by opening the door for repair and extending the life of equipment and materials. “3-D printing also enables people to adapt relief items, particularly for the disabled” Lynch shares. “Examples may include a splint for injuries, modified tools for amputees or portable ramps for wheelchairs. Many designs are already open source and available online.”
To make the long term leap, short term pricing, material and production gaps must be taken on in the short term. Industrial 3-D printers are expensive, and require specific raw materials. Creating the supply chain of raw materials to the humanitarian community is an immediate challenge, a problem groups like Ethical Filament are taking on by turning recycled materials in those raw materials. Getting 3-D printers into the hands of innovators at the community level is also critical to enabling a bottom-up wave of little inventions that will pop up and cause a chain reaction, the sparks of innovation. Getting 3-D printers (as well as drones) into the hands of grassroots groups like MakerNurse will foster experimentation that generates the small breakthroughs that lead to the significant gains.
Meeting the expectation of the technology revolution in humanitarian response will be a continuous systems strengthening exercise. Community groups best placed to design solutions should be engaged with drones and 3-D printers, as well other emerging technology such as wearables, connected diagnostics, smart home technology. Committed systems thinkers among these groups can work day-by-day to experiment and build the resilience and preparedness of their local communities and institutions.
What emerging technology do you see as aiding tremendously to disaster or humanitarian response? Are you an early stage innovator with an application of an emerging technology for humanitarian response? Share you ideas and keep up to date on the latest by following InSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases and Disasters) on Twitter.
InSTEDD is a partner of Cisco CSR. Cisco sponsors The Huffington Post’s ImpactX section.
Things change. It’s inevitable. The changes at this year’s Sundance Film Festival apparently include a flood of press and industry credentials, the only explanation for the ultra-packed P&I screenings.
There also have been changes to the two main hotels that serve as central staging areas: the Marriott that serves as festival headquarters and the Yarrow, which houses a theater and a lot of festival guests. Both apparently have undergone remodeling. As a result, two rustic, homey venues have been redesigned in what can only be described as faux rustic, abstract rustic, Eurotrash rustic. More’s the pity.
My day was split between documentaries and dramas, with one very strong one of each.
Craig Zobel’s Z for Zachariah is a post -apocalyptic love triangle that is haunting and lovely – a distinct change of pace from Zobel’s last film, the chillingly neon-lit Compliance.
Set in a remote rural valley untouched by an unexplained nuclear holocaust, it features Margot Robbie (Wolf of Wall Street) as what appears to be the lone survivor of the disaster. She is a farm girl who knows how to take care of herself, scavenging the town below (in protective gear) and trying to grow her own food. She has a well with good water, a rifle and a dog for companionship.
One day a stranger in a protective suit comes up the road: John (Chiwetel Ejiofor). Initially frightened of him, Anne saves him from potential death in polluted water and nurses him back to health. She is pleased to discover that he’s a mechanical engineer, who not only figures out how to get gas out of a pump without electricity, but develops plans to build a water wheel on a nearby waterfall that could generate electricity to power her house.
It’s the Garden of Eden and they begin to slide toward Adam and Eve status — until Caleb (Chris Pine) wanders into camp. He’s not a snake (in fact, he’s a God-fearing former coal miner), but he might as well be.
Yet Zobel veers away from the melodramatic toward something more insinuating and, as a result, more gripping. The emotions remain just below the surface but they are definitely there, thanks to beautifully nuanced turns by the cast of three. The story-telling is subtle; the implications are huge.
Douglas Tirola’s Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon reminds us that what has become an almost-anything-goes strain of humor in pop culture has its roots in an uproariously funny magazine from the early 1970s. Its offspring include films like Animal House and Caddyshack and, eventually, the films of John Hughes and Saturday Night Live.
This commentary continues on my website.
The following post first appeared on FactCheck.org.
Mitt Romney said that under President Obama “there are more people in poverty in America than ever before.” That’s true, but the poverty rate — which accounts for population changes — was higher under several former presidents than it is currently.
Romney, who is considering a third presidential run, made the statement while discussing income inequality at an event sponsored by the Republican National Committee.
Romney, Jan. 16: Under Obama the rich have gotten richer, income inequality has gotten worse, and there are more people in poverty in America than ever before.
It’s true that “income inequality has gotten worse.” According to research by Emmanuel Saez, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, post-recession incomes of the top 1 percent of earners grew by 34.7 percent from 2009 to 2012, while incomes of the bottom 99 percent of earners grew by just 0.8 percent. The top 1 percent saw 91 percent of the income gains in the first three years of the economic recovery, according to Saez.
It’s also true, as Romney said, that the 45.3 million people living in poverty in 2013, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, is more than under any other president. However, the 2013 figure, the most recent available, was lower than the 46.5 million people living in poverty in 2012. The 2013 count is also the lowest since 2009, Obama’s first year in office.
Romney’s focus on the raw numbers also ignores the fact that the poverty rate declined in 2013. That year, the official rate was 14.5 percent, down from 15 percent in 2012, and the lowest rate since Obama’s first year as president.
More importantly, when comparing Obama to past presidents, a better measurement would be the poverty rate, since it takes population into account. And the most recent rate under Obama is not the highest that it has ever been. The rate was 15.1 percent in 1993 under President Clinton. It was 15.2 percent in 1983 under President Reagan. And it was between 17.3 percent and 22.4 percent in the seven years between 1959 and 1965 under Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.
Even using a different measure of poverty — the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure — the rate under Obama isn’t the highest on record.
The SPM was developed in 2011 to account for many of the government programs assisting low-income families and individuals that are not included in the current official poverty measure. It “creates a more complex statistical picture incorporating additional items, such as tax payments, work expenses and in-kind benefits in its family resource estimates.” It generally factors in the cost of food, clothing, shelter, and utilities used by families. It also takes into account such things as geographical differences in the cost of living.
In 2013, 15.5 percent of the population was living in poverty, based on the Supplemental Poverty Measure. That was down from 16 percent in 2012. Like the official poverty rate, the SPM, in 2013, was the lowest since 2009, the earliest year for comparable estimates.
However, in January 2014, prior to the release of the 2013 figure, the White House Council of Economic Advisers calculated an “anchored” version of the supplementary measure, which sets poverty thresholds based on expenditures for necessary items and then adjusts for inflation in each year. Using those assumptions, the White House found that “the percent of the population in poverty when measured to include tax credits and other benefits has declined from 25.8 percent in 1967 to 16.0 percent in 2012.”
A 90-year-old woman is going to school to learn skills that she never had the opportunity to acquire when she was younger.
Priscilla Sitienei has been attending Leaders Vision Preparatory School in her village of Ndalat, Kenya, for the past five years according to BBC News. Sitienei didn’t have the chance to learn how to read and write, but is finally doing so now.
The 90-year-old, who goes to school with six of great-great-grandchildren, says she has some big goals.
“I’d like to be able to read the Bible,” Sitienei, whose classmates are between the ages of 11 and 14, told BBC News. “I also want to inspire children to get an education.”
Sitienei’s school day is just like any other student’s at the prep school, BBC News reported. She wears the school uniform to classes, and takes math, English, physical education, dance, drama and singing. She also lives in one of the campus dormitories, where she rooms with one of her great-great-grandchildren.
Her commitment to learning has made her a role model for the students.
“Gogo has been a blessing to this school, she has been a motivator to all the pupils,” David Kinyanjui, the school’s principal, told BBC News, using Sitinei’s nickname which means “grandmother” in the local Kalenjin language. “She is loved by every pupil, they all want to learn and play with her.”
The 90-year-old, who served as a midwife in her village for several decades, wants her story to spur others to take another chance at getting an education.
“Too many older children are not in school. They even have children themselves. They tell me they are too old,” she told BBC. “I tell them, ‘Well I am at school and so should you.'”
Sitinei’s passion for learning is shared by Charlotte Butler of Naugatuck, Connecticut, who began pursuing a Post University college degree in 2013 at the age of 80, according to the University’s website. The 80-year-old, who set out to attain her Bachelor of Science in human services, wished to set an example for her sons, helping them understand the importance of education.
Allen Fleming also decided to complete his degree later in life,
attaining his Bachelor of Arts from the University of North Georgia in August of last year, at the age of 88, KiroTV.com reported. The World War II veteran attended several universities while in the service but didn’t have the chance to finish his schooling. Getting his diploma had always been a lifelong dream of his. Now, with a degree in English literature and a minor in journalism, Fleming hopes to inspire younger generations to pursue higher education.
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