Jemilah Mahmood
Chief, World Humanitarian Summit Secretariat at the United Nations
“The number of people affected by disasters or conflicts will keep rising amidst trends like population growth and climate change. Countries will have to invest more in disaster preparedness. Mobile technology will help save more lives through SMS warning systems and emergency fundraising will benefit from mobile money transfers. Real-time crowdsourced data will help get the right goods and services to the right people as a disaster unfolds. Ideas will be crowdsourced: we are holding a consultation at worldhumanitariansummit.org , gathering input on making action more effective.”
Nick Jennings
Regius Professor of Computer Science, University of Southampton; Orchid Project Leader
“Disaster response will be a technologically sophisticated endeavour, drawing data from many sources and sensors to obtain an accurate assessment of the situation. These sources will include information provided by ground robots, UAVs and the public, as well as the digital assets held by governments, businesses and NGOs.”
Dennis E McGuire
Founder, Chairman and CEO, Ecosphere technologies inc.
“Water and communications are central to disaster response. Technologies that incorporate solar-powered communications, and atmospheric water generators that produce clean drinking water from the air (rather than treating a contaminated water source), are an absolute necessity for disaster-response teams. These solutions are the future.”
Desiree Matel-Anderson
CEO, Global Disaster Innovation Group
“Disaster response is like high-school lunch tables — helpers are compartmentalised according to social constructs. Designers can help here. After hurricane Sandy, our designers observed how survivors use disaster-recovery centres (DRCs). Their human-experience design training helped redesign DRCs to greatly decrease registration time and improve flow.”
Evert Bopp
CEO and Founder, Disaster Tech Labs
“It will be driven by affected communities and supported by small, agile and specialised grass-roots organisations. Wireless connectivity will be essential for citizens to import and export data to relevant areas. It will also improve the co-ordination between responders. Response will be less about careers
and more about ‘power to the people’.”
Patrick Meier
Director of Social Innovation, Qatar Computing Research Institute; Author of Digital Humanitarians
“In 2024, the ‘share economy’ is a big driver of relief efforts. Airbnb facilitates shelter relief. Facebook enables self-organised disaster response by promoting self-help and mutual aid. Amazon’s massive fleet of UAVs/drones supports distribution of relief aid, and Google Earth is powered by satellites assessing disaster damage.”