Download or read book Technology For Humanitarian Action written by Kevin M. Cahill and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanitarian workers around the world struggle under dangerous conditions. Yet many do not have the technological tools readily available elsewhere to help them realize their mission to provide essential services and save lives. This book, the fruit of a historic conference, is a practical guide to current technologies that can help relief and humanitarian aid workers succeed. Designed to facilitate needed technology transfer to the humanitarian sector, the essays focus on areas where technology is underused and predict where new technological advances may be applied to relief efforts. The essays cover essential areas: communications technology and infrastructure support and security. They describe how such technologies as personal identification and tagging systems, software radios, wireless networks, and computer-aided language translation can promote safety and manage large groups of people. Other essays outline new technological solutions to such challenges as mine removal, water purification, and energy generation. The contributors are: Kevin M. Cahill, Frank Fernandez, C. Kumar Patel, Paul J. Kolodzy, Joseph Mitola III, Victor Zue, Jaime G. Carbonell, Stephen Squires, Joseph V. Braddock, Arthur L. Lerner-Lam, Ralph James, William L. Warren, and Regina E. Dugan.
Download or read book Technologies for Development written by Silvia Hostettler and published by . This book was released on 2020-10-08 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book presents 18 case studies that explore current scientific and technological efforts to address global development issues, such as poverty, from a holistic and interdisciplinary point of view, putting actual impacts at the centre of its analysis. It illustrates the use of technologies for development in various fields of research, such as humanitarian action, medical and information and communication technology, disaster risk-reduction technologies, habitat and sustainable access to energy. The authors discuss how innovative technologies, such as unmanned aerial vehicles for disaster risk reduction, crowdsourcing humanitarian data, online education and ICT-based medical technologies can have significant social impact. The book brings together the best papers of the 2016 International Conference on Technologies for Development at EPFL, Switzerland. The book explores how the gap between innovation in the global South and actual social impact can be bridged. It fosters exchange between engineers, other scientists, practitioners and policy makers active at the interface of innovation and technology and human, social, and economic development. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.
Download or read book Digital Humanitarians written by Patrick Meier and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2015-01-06 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The overflow of information generated during disasters can be as paralyzing to humanitarian response as the lack of information. This flash flood of information‘social media, satellite imagery and more is often referred to as Big Data. Making sense of this data deluge during disasters is proving an impossible challenge for traditional humanitarian
Download or read book The Politics of Humanitarian Technology written by Katja Lindskov Jacobsen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-06-05 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a detailed exploration of three examples of humanitarian uses of new technology, employing key theoretical insights from Foucault. We are currently seeing a humanitarian turn to new digital technologies, such as biometrics, remote sensing, and surveillance drones. However, such humanitarian uses of new technology have not always produced beneficial results for those at the receiving end and have sometimes exposed the subjects of assistance to additional risks and insecurities. Engaging with key insights from the work of Foucault combined with selected concepts from the Science and Technology Studies literature, this book produces an analytical framework that opens up the analysis to details of power and control at the level of materiality that are often ignored in liberal histories of war and modernity. Whereas Foucault details the design of prisons, factories, schools, etc., this book is original in its use of his work, in that it uses these key insights about the details of power embedded in material design, but shifts the attention to the technologies and attending forms of power that have been experimented with in the three humanitarian endeavours presented in the book. In doing so, the book provides new information about aspects of liberal humanitarianism that contemporary critical analyses have largely neglected. This book will be of interest to students of humanitarian studies, peace and conflict studies, critical security studies, and IR in general.
Download or read book Non traditional Security In The Asia pacific A Decade Of Perspectives written by Alistair Cook and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2021-02-05 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is Non-Traditional Security? How have our understandings of security changed over the past decade? What are the dominant non-traditional security challenges we face in the world today?The concept of national security remains contested but our understanding of it continues to evolve as it is shaped by the world around us. From a globally dominant 'traditional' understanding of security during the Cold War characterised by a focus on countries and their militaries protecting their sovereignty to today, where non-military threats such as global pandemics, climate change, energy, to disasters threaten the wellbeing and livelihoods of people, communities, and the environment that form the backbone of society.The global dial has shifted towards a more comprehensive understanding of security that recognises these non-traditional security threats moving the focus away from solely the survival of the state to the empowerment and protection of people and the environment. This shift highlights the experiences of different individuals and communities, from civilians affected by war to irregular migrants moving from one place to the next, and what the world witnesses as efforts to empower and protect people and the environment.Indeed, comprehensive security has a long history in the post-colonial Asia-Pacific. Non-Traditional Security emerged after the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. It emerged as a way to recalibrate the ways governments engaged people and communities and developed pathways for countries in the region to cooperate.Non-Traditional Security in the Asia-Pacific: A Decade of Perspectives, an interdisciplinary collection, is essential reading for anyone interested in the developments of security with a focus on the dominant non-traditional security threats in the Asia-Pacific over the last decade — from advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars, to policymakers at the local, national, regional, and international levels.
Download or read book Humanitarian extractivism written by Kristin Bergtora Sandvik and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2023-10-17 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the digital transformation of aid as a form of humanitarian extractivism. It focuses on how practices of data extraction shift power towards states, the private sector and humanitarians. Digital initiatives aimed towards ‘fixing’ the humanitarian system, making it better and more secure, also create risk and harm for vulnerable individuals and communities. Central to the digital transformation of aid is the digital body – with digital identities becoming a prerequisite for receiving aid and protection – and the centralisation of vulnerability arising from enormous databases holding ever more humanitarian data. Cyber-attacks, human error and technological problems generate risks for humanitarians, but also mean that humanitarians themselves can put populations in need at risk. The book explores new humanitarian spaces and practices such as the humanitarian drone airspace, wearable innovation challenges and ethics in global disaster innovation labs.
Download or read book Humanitarian Engineering written by Carl Mitcham and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanitarian Engineering reviews the development of engineering as a distinct profession and of the humanitarian movement as a special socio-political practice. Having noted that the two developments were situated in the same geographical and historical space -- that is, in Europe and North America beginning in the 1700s -- the book argues for a mutual influence and synthesis that has previously been lacking. In this spirit, the first of two central chapters describes humanitarian engineering as the artful drawing on science to direct the resources of nature with active compassion to meet the basic needs of all -- especially the powerless, poor, or otherwise marginalized. A second central chapter then considers strategies for education in humanitarian engineering so conceived. Two final chapters consider challenges and implications. Table of Contents: Engineering / Humanitarianism / Humanitarian Engineering / Humanitarian Engineering Education / Challenges / Conclusion: Humanizing Technology
Download or read book Reimagining Innovation in Humanitarian Medicine written by Krish W. Ramadurai and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-12-06 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout history, humanity has been plagued by a myriad of humanitarian crises that seemingly take the form of perpetual human suffering. Today, approximately 125,000,000 people require humanitarian assistance as the result of famine, war, geopolitical conflict, and natural disasters. A core component of this suffering is afflictions related to human health, where disturbances strain or overwhelm the existing healthcare infrastructure to create the conditions for an increase in morbidities and co-morbidities. One of the more startling elements is the loss of life to preventable medical conditions that were not properly treated or even diagnosed in the field, and is often due to the limited interventional capacity that medical teams and humanitarian practitioners have in these scenarios. These individuals are often hindered by medical equipment deficiencies or devices not meant to function in austere conditions. The development of highly versatile, feasible, and cost-effective medical devices and technologies that can be deployed in the field is essential to enhancing medical care in unconventional settings. In this book we examine the nature of the creative problem-solving paradigm, and dissect the intersection of frugal, disruptive, open, and reverse innovation processes in advancing humanitarian medicine. Specifically, we examine the feasible deployment of these devices and technologies in unconventional environments not only by humanitarian aid and disaster relief agencies, but also by crisis-affected communities themselves. The challenge is complex, but the financial support and technical development of innovative solutions for the delivery of humanitarian aid is a process in which everyone is a stakeholder.
Download or read book Humanitarianism Keywords written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-09-07 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanitarianism: Keywords is a comprehensive dictionary designed as a compass for navigating the conceptual universe of humanitarianism. It is an intuitive toolkit to map contemporary humanitarianism and to explore its current and future articulations. The dictionary serves a broad readership of practitioners, students, and researchers by providing informed access to the extensive humanitarian vocabulary.
Download or read book The Good Drone written by Kristin Bergtora Sandvik and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the military use of drones has been the subject of much scrutiny, the use of drones for humanitarian purposes has so far received little attention. As the starting point for this study, it is argued that the prospect of using drones for humanitarian and other life-saving activities has produced an alternative discourse on drones, dedicated to developing and publicizing the endless possibilities that drones have for "doing good". Furthermore, it is suggested that the Good Drone narrative has been appropriated back into the drone warfare discourse, as a strategy to make war "more human". This book explores the role of the Good Drone as an organizing narrative for political projects, technology development and humanitarian action. Its contribution to the debate is to take stock of the multiple logics and rationales according to which drones are "good", with a primary objective to initiate a critical conversation about the political currency of "good". This study recognizes the many possibilities for the use of drones and takes these possibilities seriously by critically examining the difference the drones' functionalities can make, but also what difference the presence of drones themselves – as unmanned and flying objects – make. Discussed and analysed are the implications for the drone industry, user communities, and the areas of crisis where drones are deployed.
Download or read book Handbook on European data protection law written by Council of Europe and published by Council of Europe. This book was released on 2018-04-15 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rapid development of information technology has exacerbated the need for robust personal data protection, the right to which is safeguarded by both European Union (EU) and Council of Europe (CoE) instruments. Safeguarding this important right entails new and significant challenges as technological advances expand the frontiers of areas such as surveillance, communication interception and data storage. This handbook is designed to familiarise legal practitioners not specialised in data protection with this emerging area of the law. It provides an overview of the EU’s and the CoE’s applicable legal frameworks. It also explains key case law, summarising major rulings of both the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights. In addition, it presents hypothetical scenarios that serve as practical illustrations of the diverse issues encountered in this ever-evolving field.
Download or read book Humanitarian Logistics written by Aruna Apte and published by Now Publishers Inc. This book was released on 2010 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanitarian Logistics takes a comprehensive look at the issues surrounding humanitarian logistics through the life-cycle of the disaster spanning three stages of operations: preparation, disaster response, and humanitarian relief.
Download or read book Technology for Humanitarian Action written by Kevin M. Cahill and published by International Humanitarian Aff. This book was released on 2005 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanitarian workers around the world struggle under dangerous conditions. Yet many do not have the technological tools readily available elsewhere to help them realize their mission to provide essential services and save lives. This book, the fruit of a historic conference, is a practical guide to current technologies that can help relief and humanitarian aid workers succeed. Designed to facilitate needed technology transfer to the humanitarian sector, the essays focus on areas where technology is underused and predict where new technological advances may be applied to relief efforts. The essays cover essential areas: communications technology and infrastructure support and security. They describe how such technologies as personal identification and tagging systems, software radios, wireless networks, and computer-aided language translation can promote safety and manage large groups of people. Other essays outline new technological solutions to such challenges as mine removal, water purification, and energy generation. The contributors are: Kevin M. Cahill, Frank Fernandez, C. Kumar Patel, Paul J. Kolodzy, Joseph Mitola III, Victor Zue, Jaime G. Carbonell, Stephen Squires, Joseph V. Braddock, Arthur L. Lerner-Lam, Ralph James, William L. Warren, and Regina E. Dugan.
Download or read book Is Use of Cyber based Technology in Humanitarian Operations Leading to the Reduction of Humanitarian Independence written by Martin Stanley Searle and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) are being tested and adopted at a significant rate in humanitarian emergency response. However, the crossing of physical, biological, and cyber domains that characterises these technologies threatens the independence of humanitarian organisations. This is occurring in an environment in which the value and purpose of independence is already seriously questioned, both in practice, and in principle. This paper argues that the loss of independence stems from two related trends. First, several 4IR technologies are improving the capacity of humanitarian organisations to gather, synthesise, and analyse data, resulting in the production of information of increasingly strategic, political or military value. Second, the cyber component of these technologies simultaneously renders that information more vulnerable to unauthorised access by third parties with relevant political, military or economic agendas. This parallels the "capability/ vulnerability paradox" identified in literature discussing cybersecurity in relation to the military or so-called "smart cities". In conflict and disaster settings, this paradox increases the likelihood of humanitarian actors functioning as appendages of other organisations. This loss of independence potentially has operational implications relating to access, and material impact on the ongoing debate around the importance of independence in humanitarian work
Download or read book Humanitarian Logistics written by R. Tomasini and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-02-19 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagine planning an event like the Olympics. Now imagine planning the same event but not knowing when or where it will take place, or how many will attend. This is what humanitarian logisticians are up against. Oversights result in serious consequences for the victims of disasters. So they have to get it right, fast.
Download or read book Humanitarian Military Intervention written by Taylor B. Seybolt and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2007 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Military intervention in a conflict without a reasonable prospect of success is unjustifiable, especially when it is done in the name of humanity. Couched in the debate on the responsibility to protect civilians from violence and drawing on traditional 'just war' principles, the centralpremise of this book is that humanitarian military intervention can be justified as a policy option only if decision makers can be reasonably sure that intervention will do more good than harm. This book asks, 'Have past humanitarian military interventions been successful?' It defines success as saving lives and sets out a methodology for estimating the number of lives saved by a particular military intervention. Analysis of 17 military operations in six conflict areas that were thedefining cases of the 1990s-northern Iraq after the Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Kosovo and East Timor-shows that the majority were successful by this measure. In every conflict studied, however, some military interventions succeeded while others failed, raising the question, 'Why have some past interventions been more successful than others?' This book argues that the central factors determining whether a humanitarian intervention succeeds are theobjectives of the intervention and the military strategy employed by the intervening states. Four types of humanitarian military intervention are offered: helping to deliver emergency aid, protecting aid operations, saving the victims of violence and defeating the perpetrators of violence. Thefocus on strategy within these four types allows an exploration of the political and military dimensions of humanitarian intervention and highlights the advantages and disadvantages of each of the four types.Humanitarian military intervention is controversial. Scepticism is always in order about the need to use military force because the consequences can be so dire. Yet it has become equally controversial not to intervene when a government subjects its citizens to massive violation of their basic humanrights. This book recognizes the limits of humanitarian intervention but does not shy away from suggesting how military force can save lives in extreme circumstances.
Download or read book Humanitarian Technology written by Martin Searle and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innovation has been elevated to the forefront of discussions on the future of humanitarianism. Data-based, materials, communications, and logistics technologies promise to improve the effectiveness of humanitarian operations. This paper explores four ensuing tensions that need balancing. The challenges facing new technologies parallel general criticisms levelled at humanitarianism over the last twenty-five years, including that it can exacerbate conflict and poverty, perpetuate political marginalisation, and prioritise agendas of foreign powers rather than those in need. This is likely because those technologies do not engage with these criticisms, which are political rather than technical. This does not necessarily mean those innovations lack merit; however, it does suggest that they are unlikely to meet the high expectations expressed for humanitarian technology. Technologies increasing individual autonomy are an exception. These clearly challenge the potential to instrumentalise centrally-distributed aid and the exacerbation of power imbalances.
