Date/Time
Date(s) - 20/08/2012
3:00 pm4:30 pm
Location
Room T2.26
Category(ies) No Categories
Dr Marta Poblet
Director of the Institute of Law and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona
‘Crisis Mapping: Leveraging Social Media and Global Communities’
Crisis mapping is a brand new field. It has emerged as a set of online collaborative practices to source, process, and visualize information and data on events that derive from natural disasters (i.e. earthquakes, floods, tornados, bush-fires), crises, and conflicts. Generally, the goal of crisis mapping is to provide aid organisations, NGOs, human rights activists, etc., with real time, geo-referenced, actionable data to organise more efficient coordination and response.
The mapping of the conflicts in Libya and Syria, to mention two recent examples, has allowed volunteers and technical communities (VTCs) to document human rights violations that can be the basis for legal prosecution of war criminals. Crowdsourced crisis mapping opens a new era where global volunteer and technical communities may significantly contribute to transform international law by bringing into the picture a new humanitarianism based on practices, emerging norms, and both global and local capacities.
Marta Poblet is a core team member of the Standby Volunteer Task Force, a global network of crisis mappers working in humanitarian response. Her research covers legal organisations, judicial systems, conflict management and resolution, ADR-ODR, mobile technologies for development, and crisis mapping.
No RSVP necessary. All welcome.
