ABOUT THE TALK: The overflow of information generated during disasters can be as paralyzing to humanitarian response as the lack of information. Making sense of this flash flood of information, “Big Data”, is proving an impossible challenge for traditional humanitarian organizations; so they’re turning to Digital Humanitarians: tech-savvy volunteers who craft and leverage ingenious crowdsourcing solutions with trail-blazing insights from artificial intelligence. This talk charts the rise of Digital Humanitarians and describes how they make sense of social media, satellite & aerial imagery and more on behalf of humanitarian organizations worldwide.

PATRICK MEIER is the author of the book Digital Humanitarians: How Big Data is Changing the Face of Humanitarian Response (http://www.digital-humanitarians.com/). He directs QCRI’s Social Innovation Program where he & his team use human and machine computing to develop “Next Generation Humanitarian Technologies” in partnership with international humanitarian organizations. Patrick was previously with Ushahidi and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. He has a PhD from The Fletcher School, Pre-Doc from Stanford and an MA from Columbia. His influential blog iRevolutions has received over 1.5 million hits.