Artificial Intelligence is Revolutionizing Humanitarian Aid
Guest post by Zeba Tasci
Zeba Tasci is the Associate Communications Officer for the Humanitarian Grand Challenge.
The global community is increasingly facing longer-lasting and more intense humanitarian crises, exacerbated by political conflict and climate change, but governments have not been quick to invest in humanitarian innovation. Yet, with growing needs from displaced communities, we are harder-pressed to find new faster, more efficient ways of helping those most affected by crises, especially those hardest to reach. The future of humanitarian aid must embrace innovation, and artificial intelligence (AI) is a powerful tool that can provide solutions to complex global challenges.
A few weeks ago, I joined Natasha Freidus, NeedsList co-founder and CEO, for an informal meet-up to discuss artificial intelligence in humanitarian contexts. The meet-up gathered fellows, researchers, developers, humanitarians, entrepreneurs, and curious folks for a chance to discuss the use of artificial intelligence in humanitarian operations, and how we, as humanitarian responders, can use AI and data in field operations to optimize and maximize results.
A Humanitarian Grand Challenge: NeedsBot
The U.S. Agency for International Development, the UK Department for International Development, the Government of the Netherlands, and Grand Challenges Canada are partnering on the initiative Creating Hope in Conflict: A Humanitarian Grand Challenge.
Through this Grand Challenge, we identify and support ground-breaking solutions that engage the private sector and draw from the experiences of affected communities in order to significantly improve — and in many cases, save — the lives of vulnerable people affected by conflict. Our goal is to identify solutions that allow communities to respond more nimbly to complex emergencies and take steps to create better lives for themselves.
Driven by reshaping crisis response and humanitarian aid, we are proud to support NeedsList, a Humanitarian Grand Challenge grantee, with their development of NeedsBot. During times of conflict and humanitarian disaster, access to accurate information about immediate needs on the ground is not easily accessible. NeedsList is creating a tool that will permit humanitarian and other actors to respond quickly.
The humanitarian aid sector is currently broken, unable to keep up with the growing demands and crises globally. In an era of political turmoil and climate change, NeedsList is the only online marketplace for crisis response and humanitarian aid, which aggregates and matches needs and offers from all stakeholders, to provide relief that is locally powered, tech enabled, and grounded in dignity.
NeedsBot is a type of chatbot that allows frontline responders to text in urgent information, along with supply and human resource needs, into the NeedsList online marketplace. This enables real-time data to be used to better understand the needs on the ground; it also acts as a database for donors and other organizations to directly meet the needs of the most vulnerable, hard-to-reach populations.
Empowering Displaced People to Be Part of the Solution
Cross collaboration between artificial intelligence developers and humanitarians is critical to finding innovative solutions to global challenges, but to truly reshape crisis response, inclusion is essential. We must make sure that the data being used in AI is accurate, which means involving the people we help to be part of creating the solution, directly communicating their needs and experiences.
In times of disaster and conflict, people are quite often left with their phones as the only tool to communicate with the outside world. As a secure, central database, NeedsBot is designed to give access to anyone from around the world to message in their needs and obtain life-saving information.
The use of artificial intelligence and data collection in humanitarian aid response has the potential to save millions of lives. As NeedsBot continues to be developed, we will be able to collect the data and results, examining patterns, using the data for predictions to gain a deeper understanding of the best way to allocate aid resources.
Artificial intelligence holds much promise to answer difficult questions at the heart of humanitarian response. Instead of doing things the same way we’ve always done them, now is the time to take risks in humanitarian aid, exploring the ways AI can support organizational change, foster creativity, and social innovation.
Real change is right around the corner. We’ve got to try a faster way to get there.
