Humanitarianism is an active belief in the value of human life, whereby humans practice benevolent treatment and provide assistance to other humans to reduce suffering and improve the conditions of humanity for moral, altruistic, and emotional reasons. One aspect involves voluntary emergency aid overlapping with human rights advocacy, actions taken by governments, development assistance, and domestic philanthropy. Other critical issues include correlation with religious beliefs, motivation of aid between altruism and social control, market affinity, imperialism and neo-colonialism, gender and class relations, and humanitarian agencies. A practitioner is known as a humanitarian.
OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative project to create a free editable geographic database of the world. The geodata underlying the maps is considered the primary output of the project. The creation and growth of OSM has been motivated by restrictions on use or availability of map data across much of the world, and the advent of inexpensive portable satellite navigation devices.
Collaborative mapping is the aggregation of Web mapping and user-generated content, from a group of individuals or entities, and can take several distinct forms. With the growth of technology for storing and sharing maps, collaborative maps have become competitors to commercial services, in the case of OpenStreetMap, or components of them, as in Google Map Maker and Yandex.Map editor.
Ushahidi is an open source software application which utilises user-generated reports to collate and map data. It uses the concept of crowdsourcing serving as an initial model for what has been coined as "activist mapping" - the combination of social activism, citizen journalism and geographic information. Ushahidi allows local observers to submit reports using their mobile phones or the Internet, creating an archive of events with geographic and time-date information. The Ushahidi platform is often used for crisis response, human rights reporting, and election monitoring. Ushahidi was created in the aftermath of Kenya's disputed 2007 presidential election that collected eyewitness reports of violence reported by email and text message and placed them on a Google Maps map.
IsraAID is an Israel-based non-governmental organization that responds to emergencies all over the world with targeted humanitarian help. This includes disaster relief, from search and rescue to rebuilding communities and schools, to providing aid packages, medical assistance, and post-psychotrauma care. IsraAID has also been involved in an increasing number of international development projects with focuses on agriculture, medicine, and mental health.
NetHope, Inc. is a global consortium of nearly 60 global nonprofit organizations that specializes in improving IT connectivity among humanitarian organizations in developing countries and areas affected by disaster. The organization has partnerships with Accenture, Amazon, Cisco, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Oracle NetSuite and more than 60 leading technology companies. Its humanitarian development, emergency response, and conservation programs are in place in 180 countries. It was founded in 2001.
Google Crisis Response is a team within Google.org that "seeks to make critical information more accessible around natural disasters and humanitarian crises". The team has responded in the past to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, 2010 Pakistan floods, 2010–11 Queensland floods, February 2011 Christchurch earthquake, and the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami among other events, using Google resources and tools such as Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Person Finder, and Google Fusion Tables.
Relief 2.0 or disaster relief 2.0 is the deployment of digital information techniques in the management of disaster relief.
The Digital Humanitarian Network is a consortium allowing Volunteer and Technical Communities (V&TCs) to interface with humanitarian organizations that seek their services.
Government crowdsourcing is a form of crowdsourcing employed by governments to better leverage their people's collective knowledge and experience by tapping into their ability to see connections, understand issues, and coordinate action. It has tended to take the form of public feedback, project development, or petitions in the past, but has grown to include public drafting of bills and constitutions, among other things. This form of public involvement in the governing process differs from older systems of popular action, from town halls to referenda, in that it is primarily conducted online or through a similar IT medium.
Sahana Software Foundation is a Los Angeles, California-based non-profit organization founded to promote the use of free and open-source software (FOSS) for disaster and emergency management. The foundation's mission statement is to "save lives by providing information management solutions that enable organizations and communities to better prepare for and respond to disasters." The foundation's Sahana family of software products include Eden, designed for humanitarian needs management; Vesuvius, focused on the disaster preparedness needs of the medical community; and legacy earlier versions of Sahana software including Krakatoa, descended from the original Sahana code base developed following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The word "Sahana" means "relief" in Sinhalese, one of two national languages of Sri Lanka.
Missing Maps, a humanitarian project that preemptively maps parts of the world that are vulnerable to natural disasters, conflicts, and disease epidemics. It was founded in November 2014 by the American Red Cross, British Red Cross, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, and Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders and has so far mapped large towns and cities in countries such as South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic.
All Partners Access Network (APAN), formerly called Asia-Pacific Area Network, is a United States Department of Defense (USDOD) social networking website used for information sharing and collaboration. APAN is the premier collaboration enterprise for the USDOD. The APAN network of communities fosters multinational interaction and multilateral cooperation by allowing users to post multimedia and other content in blogs, wikis, forums, document libraries and media galleries. APAN is used for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, exercise planning, conferences and work groups. APAN provides non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and U.S. partner nations who do not have access to traditional, closed USDOD networks with an unclassified tool to communicate.
A mapathon is a coordinated mapping event and a kind of editathon. The public is invited to make online map improvements in their local area to improve coverage and to help disaster risk assessment and energy management.
Alison Thompson has worked for the past 16 years as a full-time humanitarian volunteer.
Crowdmapping is a subtype of crowdsourcing by which aggregation of crowd-generated inputs such as captured communications and social media feeds are combined with geographic data to create a digital map that is as up-to-date as possible on events such as wars, humanitarian crises, crime, elections, or natural disasters. Such maps are typically created collaboratively by people coming together over the Internet.
Kathmandu Living Labs (KLL) is a living lab and nonprofit civic technology company based in Kathmandu, Nepal that primarily works on mobile technology and mapping. KLL focuses on using GPS/GIS technology for humanitarian aims, sometimes referred to as "humanitarian mapping".
Patrick Meier invented the concept of using crisis mapping in humanitarian emergencies, and is a co-founder and the Executive Director of WeRobotics.
Digital Humanitarians: How Big Data is changing the face of humanitarian response is a 2015 book by Patrick Meier.
