Humanitarian Aid and Spatial Technology in the Age of Ubiquitous Real-Time Location Data

Personal location data is now routinely collected, aggregated, and analyzed from an astonishing range of devices, data feeds, and social situations. Social media, online advertising, financial transactions, ride-sharing, and digital navigation constantly collect individual location signals at high resolution in both space and time. AI can be trained on this data to make commercial and security predictions at scale. However, access and application of this data for humanitarian aid remains at the early stages, often constrained by a lack of access to massive location data. This talk details some of the key directions and requirements for safely and effectively bringing real-time location data into mainstream use within humanitarian aid. Dr. Schroeder will present the work of Direct Relief and the CrisisReady partnership at Harvard University, which has developed and applied a model of data, methods, and translational readiness for human mobility dynamics across dozens of disasters and public health emergencies over the past five years.