Turning data into action: supporting humanitarian field workers with open data

In the aftermath of disasters, information is of the essence for humanitarian decision makers in the field. Their concrete information needs is highly context-influenced and often they find themselves unable to access the right information at the right time. We propose a novel ICT-based approach to address these information needs more accurately. First, we select a group of in-field decision makers and collect their concrete information needs in the disaster aftermath. We then review to what extent existing data and tools can already address these needs. We conclude that existing solutions fall short in meeting important information needs of the selected group. We describe the design of an information system prototype to address these gaps more accurately. We combine data of the International Aid Transparency Initiative and the Humanitarian Data Exchange to form the data-backend of our system. We describe our implementation approach and evaluation plan.