Process Workflow in Crowd-sourced Digital Disaster Responses

This paper examines the workflow and sense-making activities of digital volunteers, showing how they acquire, assess, process and scrutinise crowdsourced information to warrant confidence that the data satisfies the standard of engagement, production and analysis. We do so by studying a digital disaster response organisation - Humanity Road - through fifteen response operations across thirteen countries using digital ethnography over a period of sixteen months. This paper reports on the findings of this study, using a range of sources such as Skype chat logs, field notes, social media postings, and official documents. This paper also introduces a framework that offers a consistent and structured workflow for the communities of practice related to social media and data aggregation communities within the domain of Digital Humanitarian Networks. Our findings suggest practical implications for both the digital humanitarian organisations and government of the disaster-prone countries

Wars of Words: An Explication of the Complex Interface between Transnational Advocacy Networks and the Contemporary International System

Abstract Transnational advocacy networks (TANs) are a rapidly proliferating phenomenon in international contentious politics. Widely known for waging headline-grabbing wars of words, TANs remain under-theorised on important levels of analysis. Unsurprisingly, they have been termed ‘elusive’ in the political literature. Typically portrayed as vital service-providing agencies that by-pass official controls to relay civil society concerns to the world’s media and international policy-makers, TANs are commonly assumed to be the vociferous, Internet-enabled, offspring of traditional NGOs and, thus, heirs to the reputational capital of NGOs. However, despite this respected provenance, it is evident that TANs frequently fail to achieve their goals. Knowledge of why some TAN strategies succeed while others fail is contested and inconclusive. This empirical thesis attempts to build on the international political literature by showing why the emerging NGO typology of TANs cannot be explained without paying attention to the systemic complexity of their environment and the essentially communicative functioning of these globe-spanning advocacy cooperatives. It seeks to demonstrate also the analytical value of applying complex realism in IR praxis. Hence, the thesis explicates a real-world conundrum: What is the place and function of transnational advocacy networks in the contemporary international system and how effective are they in achieving their aims? To identify macro-structural conditions and indicators of relationship quality — primarily involving state and non-state elements in the context of the United Nations — the thesis study reclaimed macro-sociological perspective as a first stage, ‘top-down’ approach to this complex, multi-dimensional problem space. The resultant data and patterns were then tested by way of a second-stage, micro-sociological, ‘bottom-up’, case study exploration of the UN’s interface with three iconic TANs — Greenpeace, Oxfam and Human Rights Watch. By conceptualising these relationships as intersections between systemic elements constituted on different social levels and scales of complexity, the scalable methodology enabled the study to transcend the micro-macro problems inherent in the primary research question. The results indicate that TANs are a distinctive typology of NGO that the international system is struggling to evaluate and accommodate within existing arrangements for NGO engagement. Unexpectedly, the study found plausible indications that the barriers many TANs encounter are endogenously produced. The results challenge prevailing assumptions about the place and function of grassroots diplomacy in the international arena; the ability of communications strategies to remedy global problems; and the reality and limitations of ‘people power’. By highlighting under-exposed features of the contemporary international relational landscape, the thesis argues, we might better determine whether many contemporary TANs are, in fact, evolving as the best-suited champions for the urgent, political quests they adopt

Public Health Ethics: Cases Spanning the Globe

Public health ethics can be seen both as the application of principles and norms to guide the practice of public health and as a process for identifying, analyzing, and resolving ethical issues inherent in the practice of public health. Public health ethics helps us decide what we should do and why. Although the practice of public health has always considered ethical issues, the emergence of public health ethics as a discipline is relatively new. Although rooted in bioethics and clinical and research ethics, public health ethics has many characteristics that set it apart. The defining characteristics are its focus on achieving social goods for populations while respecting individual rights and recognizing the interdependence of people. Currently there are few practical training resources for public health practitioners that consider ethical issues and dilemmas likely to arise in the practice of public health. In public health ethics training, we have found it advantageous to use cases to illustrate how ethical principles can be applied in practical ways to decision making. The use of cases encourages reflection and discussion of ethics, reinforces basic ethical concepts through application to concrete examples, highlights practical decision making, allows learners to consider different perspectives, and sensitizes learners to the complex, multidimensional context of issues in public health practice. The case-based approach (known as casuistry) contrasts with the theoretical approach to considering moral principles, rules, and theories. By describing scenarios, cases allow the learner to use ethical principles in the context of a realistic situation that sheds light on ethical challenges and illustrates how ethical principles can help in making practical decisions. This casebook comprises a broad range of cases from around the globe to highlight the ethical challenges of public health. For those new to public health ethics, Section I introduces public health ethics. Chapter 1, “Public Health Ethics: Global Cases, Practice, and Context” by Ortmann and colleagues, summarizes basic concepts and describes how public health ethics differ from bioethics, clinical ethics, and research ethics. The chapter also includes an approach for conducting an ethical analysis in public health. In Chap. 2, “Essential Cases in the Development of Public Health Ethics,” Lee, Spector-Bagdady, and Sakhuja highlight important events that shaped the practice of public health and explain how practitioners address and prevent ethical challenges. Section II is organized into chapters that discuss the following public health topics: • Resource allocation and priority setting • Disease prevention and control • Chronic disease prevention and health promotion • Environmental and occupational public health • Vulnerability and marginalized populations • International collaboration for global public health • Public health research We have invited some of the leading writers and thinkers in public health ethics to provide an overview of the major ethical considerations associated with each topic. The topic overviews offer the authors’ perspectives about applicable ethical theories, frameworks, and tools and draw attention to the cases that follow. The cases are meant to highlight the ethical issues in practice. Each represents the work of authors from around the globe who responded to a solicitation from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We worked with the authors to ensure that each case included a concise articulation of a public health situation that raises ethical tensions, challenges, or concerns that require decisions or recommendations from public health officials or practitioners. The cases are presented in a standard format that includes a background, case description, discussion questions, and references. However, we also allowed for variation in the amount of detail provided in each section and the approach used to set up the case. Our goal was to include just enough contextual information to orient the reader who is not an expert in the case topic. We include the case setting, population, or intervention in question, legal or regulatory landscape, and questions to stimulate discussion on core ethical issues. Each case—although fictionalized—is as realistic as possible to reflect the ethical challenges that public health practitioners face daily. Sometimes the cases were based on actual or composite events. In these instances, the case details were modified to exclude identifying information that could be considered private, sensitive, or disputable by others involved in the case. We deliberately did not attempt to provide a resolution or solution for the cases. Often in public health practice, there is no single correct answer. Instead, ethical analysis in public health is a process to identify the ethical dimensions of the options available and to arrive at a decision that is ethically justifiable, through deliberation and consideration of relevant facts, values, and contexts. The cases and other writings in this book represent the opinions, findings, and conclusions of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position, views, or policies of the editors, the editors’ host institutions, or the authors’ host institutions. We decided which topic category to place the case in to best distribute the cases across chapters. However, you may note that some cases cross topic areas and could just as easily have been included in another chapter. This casebook is written for public health practitioners, including frontline workers, field epidemiology trainers and trainees, and managers, planners, and decision makers with an interest in learning about how to integrate ethical analysis in their day-to-day public health practice. However, the casebook will also be useful to instructors in schools of public health and public health students as well as to academic ethicists who can use the book to teach public health ethics and distinguish it from clinical and research ethics. Our hope is that the casebook will increase awareness and understanding of public health ethics and the value of ethical analysis in public health practice in all of its forms. This includes applied public health research; public health policy development, implementation, and evaluation; and public health decision making in national and international field settings and training programs. By emphasizing prospective practical decision making, rather than just presenting a theoretical academic discussion of ethical principles, we hope this casebook will serve as a useful tool to support instruction, debate, and dialogue about the nature of ethical challenges encountered in public health practice and how to resolve these challenges. We recommend discussing the cases in small groups and using the discussion questions, the ethical framework described in Chap. 1, and the information provided in the topic area overview sections as a starting place for exploring the ethical issues reflected in the cases. The ultimate goal of case-based learning is to develop skills in ethical analysis and decision making in daily public health practice. The ethical framework provides a convenient tool for putting our ideas into practice

Changes in the Arctic: Background and Issues for Congress

This report provides an in-depth overview of Arctic-related issues for Congress and refers readers to more in-depth CRS reports on specific relevant topics

Mission impossible: operations management in complex, extreme, and hostile environments

This PhD thesis seeks to advance knowledge on operations management (OM) challenges and strategies for crisis management in general and humanitarian relief in particular. Although knotty crisis situations are increasing in frequency, duration, and impact, their implications for OM remain ill-understood. I use the humanitarian context as a research setting because its features inherently render it challenging. Through comprehensive empirical studies, I explore the implications of complexity, extremity, and hostility for the operations of international humanitarian organisations (IHOs). The most crucial insights concern how contextual features impact IHOs’ decision space and outcomes. In studying complex emergencies as an exemplar phenomenon that induces complexity because of its politically charged nature, I find that inherent tensions between host government and IHOs interests lead to logistical inefficiencies for IHOs. Host government regulation and enforcement capabilities determine their nature and severity. My exploration of extremity caused by overlapping disasters leads to the curious finding that humanitarian supply networks exhibit resilience to overcome, and benefit from, unprecedented crises. Nonetheless, resilience capabilities and considerations become unsuitable as crises become long-drawn out. To explore the implications of hostility, I study operations in armed conflicts. Results show that when strategizing, the main trade-offs are cross-cutting between Humanitarian Action (HA) principles and OM performance objectives. Interestingly, the same IHO strategy leads to different results across conflicts. Overall, this thesis demonstrates that alternatives to conventional OM strategy and practices are needed in knotty contexts. The findings will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in OM, HA, and crisis management

Changes in the Arctic: Background and Issues for Congress

This report discusses the issues related to changes in the Arctic sea. It's background and issues for Congress