Download or read book The Humanitarian Machine written by Diego Fernandez Otegui and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the world reels from the impact of a global pandemic and increasing intensity of climate-caused hazards, the humanitarian sector has never been more relevant. But providing aid to those affected by disasters and crises is more complex than ever. In The Humanitarian Machine aid workers reflect on their own experiences of working in crisis. As they write about their work and the ways in which they each approach the challenges of helping people, they comment on some of the most vexing issues facing the humanitarian sector. Each speaks from their own perspective, asking tough questions, sharing thoughtful reflections about their ongoing work, and unpacking what it really means to be a humanitarian worker. The stories they tell, whether recounting a specific experience or reflecting on years of practice, reveal the dilemmas they face and demystify the overly romanticized aura that sometimes surrounds humanitarian practice. Complementing the candid accounts that humanitarian leaders contribute in this book, the editors examine how their stories, perceptions, and understandings align with similar conversations that take place in other settings. Viewed together in this way, the insights and reflections provided in this book will be invaluable for humanitarian practitioners, students, and researchers alike.
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 A Symbolic Approach to Humanitarian Action written by Diego Otegui and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-10-13 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book aims to present an alternative view of humanitarian action. It adds to current conversations and dilemmas within the humanitarian sphere by departing from traditional views that consider humanitarian interventions as a concrete human activity aimed at providing relief to disaster victims. Much differently, it invokes the idea that humanitarian action is also a cognitive process. In this process, both humanitarians and disaster survivors alike, unknowingly, apply historically, societally, and culturally defined symbolic constructions to make sense of post-disaster information and to make decisions. In the specific case of humanitarian workers, these symbolic constructions influence how they understand their post-disaster reality, including how they relate to those they consider to be in pain or distress. This way of looking at humanitarian action builds upon a robust theoretical framework called Institutional Logics, which helps us identify and interpret how individuals make sense of their reality. So it brings the complex world of the individual into a discussion that generally considers the organization as the unit of analysis. Studying humanitarian action through this alternative lens makes it easy to see that objective and verifiable post-disaster information is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to design humanitarian interventions, let alone assess their value and benefits. A Symbolic Approach to Humanitarian Action: It Takes One to Know One aims to bridge the gap between research and practice in humanitarian action by translating academic knowledge into an accessible format that can be used by practitioners to improve their work on the ground.
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 Digital Humanitarians written by Patrick Meier and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2015-01-06 with total page 161 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 Ground Rules in Humanitarian Design written by Alice Min Soo Chun and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-05-08 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Delve deep into the complex issues surrounding humanitarian design Ground Rules in Humanitarian Design establishes essential foundations for thinking about humanitarian design and its role in global change. Outlining a vital framework for designing for impoverished and disaster-stricken communities, this informative guide explores the integration of culture, art, architecture, economy, ecology, health, and education. Experts on land, health, water, housing, education, and planning weigh in with best practices and critical considerations during the design process, and discussion of the environmental considerations and local materials/skills will broaden your understanding of this nuanced specialty. Richly illustrated, this guide combines graphic documentation of projects, maps, and data-tracking developments from Asia, Africa, and the Americas to underscore the complexities of this emerging and evolving field. The ambition to provide humanitarian architecture for areas in acute need is driving design innovation worldwide among both practitioners and educators. This book provides an indispensable resource for those engaged in the search for the sustainable inclusion of cultural code and compassion as a technology for design innovation. Learn how to approach the problem of humanitarian design Understand the cultural factors that play into development Develop a new framework for planning post-disaster design See how humanitarian design is pushing the industry forward While still in college, students are being given the opportunity to directly participate in programmes that provide vital facilities for communities abroad. While these international initiatives remain largely ad hoc, this book provides parameters for engagement and establishes best practices for approaching these projects with a global perspective. With expert insight and practical strategies on the ground, Ground Rules in Humanitarian Design is an essential resource for architects at any level.
Download or read book Human Machine Interface written by Rishabha Malviya and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2023-10-16 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: HUMAN-MACHINE INTERFACE The book contains the latest advances in healthcare and presents them in the frame of the Human-Machine Interface (HMI). The Human-Machine Interface (HMI) industry has witnessed the evolution from a simple push button to a modern touch-screen display. HMI is a user interface that allows humans to operate controllers for machines, systems, or instruments. Most medical procedures are improved by HMI systems, from calling an ambulance to ensuring that a patient receives adequate treatment on time. This book describes the scenario of biomedical technologies in the context of the advanced HMI, with a focus on direct brain-computer connection. The book describes several HMI tools and related techniques for analyzing, creating, controlling, and upgrading healthcare delivery systems, and provides details regarding how advancements in technology, particularly HMI, ensure ethical and fair use in patient care. Audience The target audience for this book is medical personnel and policymakers in healthcare and pharmaceutical professionals, as well as engineers and researchers in computer science and artificial intelligence.
Download or read book The Humanitarian Review written by and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 874 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
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 Autonomous Weapons Systems written by Nehal Bhuta and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-09 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This examination of the implications and regulation of autonomous weapons systems combines contributions from law, robotics and philosophy.
Download or read book The Ethical Governance of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Healthcare written by Tina Nguyen and published by Ethics International Press. This book was released on 2023-11-25 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the ethical governance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML) in healthcare. AI/ML usage in healthcare as well as our daily lives is not new. However, the direct, and oftentimes long-term effects of current technologies, in addition to the onset of future innovations, have caused much debate about the safety of AI/ML. On the one hand, AI/ML has the potential to provide effective and efficient care to patients, and this sways the argument in favor of continuing to use AI/ML; but on the other hand, the dangers (including unforeseen future consequences of the further development of the technology) leads to vehement disagreement with further AI/ML usage. Due to its potential for beneficial outcomes, the book opts to push for ethical AI/ML to be developed and examines various areas in healthcare, such as big data analytics and clinical decision-making, to uncover and discuss the importance of developing ethical governance for AI/ML in this setting.
Download or read book Cold War Germany the Third World and the Global Humanitarian Regime written by Young-sun Hong and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-05 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines global humanitarian efforts involving the two German states and Third World liberation movements during the Cold War.
Download or read book Lethal Autonomous Weapons written by Jai Galliott and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Because of the increasing use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs, also commonly known as drones) in various military and para-military (i.e., CIA) settings, there has been increasing debate in the international community as to whether it is morally and ethically permissible to allow robots (flying or otherwise) the ability to decide when and where to take human life. In addition, there has been intense debate as to the legal aspects, particularly from a humanitarian law framework. In response to this growing international debate, the United States government released the Department of Defense (DoD) 3000.09 Directive (2011), which sets a policy for if and when autonomous weapons would be used in US military and para-military engagements. This US policy asserts that only "human-supervised autonomous weapon systems may be used to select and engage targets, with the exception of selecting humans as targets, for local defense ...". This statement implies that outside of defensive applications, autonomous weapons will not be allowed to independently select and then fire upon targets without explicit approval from a human supervising the autonomous weapon system. Such a control architecture is known as human supervisory control, where a human remotely supervises an automated system (Sheridan 1992). The defense caveat in this policy is needed because the United States currently uses highly automated systems for defensive purposes, e.g., Counter Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar (C-RAM) systems and Patriot anti-missile missiles. Due to the time-critical nature of such environments (e.g., soldiers sleeping in barracks within easy reach of insurgent shoulder-launched missiles), these automated defensive systems cannot rely upon a human supervisor for permission because of the short engagement times and the inherent human neuromuscular lag which means that even if a person is paying attention, there is approximately a half-second delay in hitting a firing button, which can mean the difference for life and death for the soldiers in the barracks. So as of now, no US UAV (or any robot) will be able to launch any kind of weapon in an offensive environment without human direction and approval. However, the 3000.09 Directive does contain a clause that allows for this possibility in the future. This caveat states that the development of a weapon system that independently decides to launch a weapon is possible but first must be approved by the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (USD(P)); the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (USD(AT&L)); and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Not all stakeholders are happy with this policy that leaves the door open for what used to be considered science fiction. Many opponents of such uses of technologies call for either an outright ban on autonomous weaponized systems, or in some cases, autonomous systems in general (Human Rights Watch 2013, Future of Life Institute 2015, Chairperson of the Informal Meeting of Experts 2016). Such groups take the position that weapons systems should always be under "meaningful human control," but do not give a precise definition of what this means. One issue in this debate that often is overlooked is that autonomy is not a discrete state, rather it is a continuum, and various weapons with different levels of autonomy have been in the US inventory for some time. Because of these ambiguities, it is often hard to draw the line between automated and autonomous systems. Present-day UAVs use the very same guidance, navigation and control technology flown on commercial aircraft. Tomahawk missiles, which have been in the US inventory for more than 30 years, are highly automated weapons with accuracies of less than a meter. These offensive missiles can navigate by themselves with no GPS, thus exhibiting some autonomy by today's definitions. Global Hawk UAVs can find their way home and land on their own without any human intervention in the case of a communication failure. The growth of the civilian UAV market is also a critical consideration in the debate as to whether these technologies should be banned outright. There is a $144.38B industry emerging for the commercial use of drones in agricultural settings, cargo delivery, first response, commercial photography, and the entertainment industry (Adroit Market Research 2019) More than $100 billion has been spent on driverless car development (Eisenstein 2018) in the past 10 years and the autonomy used in driverless cars mirrors that inside autonomous weapons. So, it is an important distinction that UAVs are simply the platform for weapon delivery (autonomous or conventional), and that autonomous systems have many peaceful and commercial uses independent of military applications"--
Download or read book The Vulnerable Humanitarian written by Gemma Houldey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-27 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Vulnerable Humanitarian challenges the prevalence of stress and burnout culture within the aid sector, laying bare the issues of power, agency, security and wellbeing that continue to trouble organisations and staff. Engaging and insightful, this book illustrates the problematic and unrealistic expectations of aid workers through the archetype of the perfect humanitarian, and considers why burnout is so endemic, yet so rarely acknowledged, within aid organisations. The book provides practical means through which staff and managers can reflect upon and discuss damaging organisational cultures and behaviours, and develop a more inclusive and caring work environment. Drawing on original academic research and interviews with national and international aid workers and development experts, the book proposes a feminist, anti-racist and decolonial agenda in challenging oppressive systems and structures within the sector. With extensive professional experience as an aid worker herself, Gemma Houldey also shares her own struggles with mental health and what she has learned from feminist practices for self- and collective care. Proposing new ways of addressing wellbeing that are sensitive to the multi-faceted personalities and lived experiences of people working on aid and development programmes, The Vulnerable Humanitarian is essential reading both for current aid sector employees and for prospective employees and students.
Download or read book City of Death written by Ephraim Mattos and published by Center Street. This book was released on 2018-10-23 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A frontline witness account of the deadly urban combat of the Battle of Mosul told by former Navy SEAL and frontline combat medic Ephraim Mattos. After leaving the US Navy SEAL teams in spring of 2017, Ephraim Mattos, age twenty-four, flew to Iraq to join a small group of volunteer humanitarians known as the Free Burma Rangers, who were working on the frontlines of the war on ISIS. Until being shot by ISIS on a suicidal rescue mission, Mattos witnessed unexplainable acts of courage and sacrifice by the Free Burma Rangers, who, while under heavy machine gun and mortar fire, assaulted across ISIS minefields, used themselves as human shields, and sprinted down ISIS-infested streets-all to retrieve wounded civilians. In City of Death: Humanitarian Warriors in the Battle of Mosul, Mattos recounts in vivid detail what he saw and felt while he and the other Free Burma Rangers evacuated the wounded, conducted rescue missions, and at times fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the Iraqi Army against ISIS. Filled with raw and emotional descriptions of what it's like to come face-to-face with death, this is the harrowing and uplifting true story of a small group of men who risked everything to save the lives of the Iraqi people and who followed the credence, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." As the coauthor of the #1 New York Times bestselling American Sniper, Scott McEwen has teamed up with Mattos to help share an unforgettable tale of an American warrior turned humanitarian forced to fight his way into and out of a Hell on Earth created by ISIS.
Download or read book To Be a Machine written by Mark O'Connell and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2018-01-16 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This gonzo-journalistic exploration of the Silicon Valley techno-utopians’ pursuit of escaping mortality is a breezy romp full of colorful characters.” —New York Times Book Review (editor's choice) Transhumanism is a movement pushing the limits of our biology—of our senses, intelligence, and lifespans—with technology. Its supporters have reached a critical mass and now include some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley and beyond, among them Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Ray Kurzweil. In this provocative and eye-opening account, journalist Mark O’Connell explores the staggering (and terrifying) possibilities that present themselves when you think of your body as an outmoded device. He visits the world’s foremost cryonics facility to witness how some have chosen to forestall death, discovers an underground collective of biohackers boosting their senses by implanting electronics under their skin, and meets with members of a team urgently investigating how to protect mankind from rogue artificial superintelligence. In investigating what it means to be a machine, O’Connell shines a light on our ancient desire to transcend the animal condition—and offers a surprising meditation on what it means to be human.
Download or read book Literature and Humanitarian Reform in the Civil War Era written by Gregory Eiselein and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1996-12-22 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "... this volume presents a reasonable, fresh, and well-researched reading of several key texts in American studies." -- Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas During the Civil War, a crisis erupted in philanthropy that dramatically changed humanitarian theories and demanded new approaches to humanitarian work. Certain writer-activists began to advocate an "eccentric benevolence" -- a type of philanthropy that would undo the distinction between the powerful bestowers of benevolence and the weaker folks who receive it. Among the figures discussed are the anti-philanthropic Henry David Thoreau and the dangerously philanthropic John Brown.
