When a disaster strikes, you want to be prepared
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has started to introduce more data driven methods to their daily work. To explore opportunities to continue this path, 510 - a data initiative of the Netherlands Red Cross – and ORTEC have partnered up. ‘510’ refers to the total surface area of the earth in million km squared. The purpose of the 510 initiative is to improve speed, quality, and cost-effectiveness of humanitarian aid by using and creating data and digital products. The collaboration involves a jointresearch into the use of text mining for disaster response and funding, thereby collectively creating a larger impact on the humanitarian sector.
Faster and better help worldwide
Maarten van der Veen founded 510 in 2016. “We are a data and digital team that helps Red Cross associations worldwide delivering faster, better and more cost-efficient help. Momentarily we support 36 Red Cross associations. Our teams also act
in big humanitarian programs. A lot of our fellow workers are volunteers and students. A number of products we made are up and running; e.g. a forecasting model for the impact of typhoons in the Philippines. Models like that are operational in other countries that are having trouble with floods. We are busy increasing the data literacy of Red Cross employees. We help associations to collect risk data, so they can visualize where their most vulnerable clients are located and where people are most exposed to disasters or conflicts.”
Text mining to predict the impact of disasters
Part of the data can be found by using text mining: a process by which a large set of existing information is examined to generate new knowledge. For the 510 initiative, Luisa Baeskow and Annelies Riezebos, two Master of Science graduate students, have been investigating the application of text mining techniques to specific Red Cross documents: the Vulnerability & Capacity Assessment (VCAs) reports and documents relating to the Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (DREFs). These documents contain data on both vulnerability and historical events. Through data and text mining, the application scope of these documents can be widened for disaster response and preparedness (the measures taken to prepare for and reduce the effects of disasters) in order to better shape and target future interventions.
Partnership with ORTEC
The partnership with ORTEC ‘fortunately isn’t being made very complicated’, says Van der Veen. “And there is an intrinsic motivation at ORTEC’s part: the initiative wasn’t started to be able to communicate externally using the name ‘Red Cross’ in ORTEC’s interest.” In 2019, 510 and ORTEC mentored graduates together (see: ‘Text mining to predict the impact of disasters’). Also, trainers from ORTEC helped train foreign data teams in data analytics and data science. Both organizations try to inspire each other. According to 510’s founder: “We work in a field with relatively little data, so we need to be pragmatic. We can’t get some big, ponderous file from our web shop and start analyzing it. We start by looking for data and trying to find smart alternatives. It makes you creative – and humble. It helps to reflect with people from the industry, such as people from ORTEC. In the nonprofit sector there is an evident lack of data literacy. We are the largest data team of the Red Cross, so the options to reflect within our own network are scarce.”
More specific goals
ORTEC and 510 want to strengthen their cooperation in 2020 to have more impact. Van der Veen: “We have set up a clear plan for 2020, with more support from ORTEC focused on accompanying students and deploying experts. We also formulated more specific goals. While accompanying students, you’re mostly gathering knowledge; but we also have some essential bottlenecks that need to be fixed. For instance: a data warehouse should be set up. We already started making a measuring instrument to see where Red Cross associations stand in the digital transformation. My hope for the future cooperation with ORTEC is that we can roll out a data curriculum for Red Cross volunteers worldwide and that we can solve our bottlenecks together, one by one.”
