IGF 2024 Lightning Talk #15 An ecosystem for putting AI in service of humanitarian needs

    United Nations Global Pulse
    Katya Klinova, Head of Data Insights for Social and Humanitarian Action, United Nations Global Pulse

    Speakers

    Katya Klinova, Head of Data Insights for Social and Humanitarian Action, United Nations Global Pulse

    Onsite Moderator

    Katya Klinova, Head of Data Insights for Social and Humanitarian Action, United Nations Global Pulse

    Rapporteur

    Katya Klinova, Head of Data Insights for Social and Humanitarian Action, United Nations Global Pulse

    SDGs

    1. No Poverty
    2. Zero Hunger
    13. Climate Action
    17. Partnerships for the Goals


    Targets: Natural disasters can un-do years of poverty reduction and hunger eliminations efforts, scarring affected communities for decades. Climate change is making natural disasters more frequent and less predictable, making efforts around building community resilience and improving the speed, precision, and efficiency of disaster response more important than ever.

    Format

    Lightning talk and demo

    Duration (minutes)
    20
    Description

    This lightning talk will present an example of a UN-led effort to create an ecosystem of partners able to match digital technologies and AI to humanitarian and development needs the market alone will not deliver on. This effort is called DISHA - Data Insights for Social and Humanitarian Action. It is a large multi-partner coalition, which brings together technology companies, academic and civil society research centers, philanthropies, and data partners. Importantly, it also includes humanitarian and development agencies who are not only DISHA's users but co-designers of each of the DISHA solutions.
    Working side-by-side, DISHA partners transform 'AI for good' research papers into safe, reliable products that practically help UN colleagues do their work more efficiently.

    Currently, we're focusing on two types of solutions to support disaster response planning and community resilience. Solutions of the first type use mobile network data to provide insights about population movements post-disaster and predict areas of greatest need based on call patterns. It helps to identify both the hardest-hit areas, as well as where people tend to flee to, where support is also crucial. We collaborate with numerous UN and external humanitarian organizations like CRS and Red Cross. Together, we co-design, test, and refine these solutions while managing associated risks.

    The second type of DISHA solutions uses high-resolution satellite imagery to assess damage to infrastructure after natural disasters. Rapid access to this data is crucial for first responders. But these assessments, usually manual, can take weeks and may not cover all affected areas. We're working with the UN Satellite Center, WFP, and Google on tools to speed up these assessments and expand the areas they cover.

    DISHA solutions will be demoed during the lightning talk.


    If Lightning Talk format at IGF allows time for Q&A we will provide a moderator to collect questions from the online audience and share them with the presenter. We'll also allow for an option to submit a question in advance through UN Global Pulse social media channels.