Civic Tech Field Guide
Sharing knowledge and productively growing the fieldAdjacent Fields > Tech for public challenges > Disaster response and humanitarian tech - (135)
There's a long tradition of volunteer technologists rallying to aid communities in the aftermath of a disaster or humanitarian crisis. Many of the problems and solutions, such as managing skilled volunteers remotely, apply to other domains in the Civic Tech Field Guide. See also: Participatory Aid.
Showing 135 Results
Humanitarian Action provides a comprehensive overview of the humanitarian landscape by providing both an annual snapshot complemented by analysis, and live data on on humanitarian crises and response.
OCHA carried out two global survey to assess the consequences of the US funding freeze on humanitarian action globally. The first round, in February, looked at the impact of the suspension orders and waivers. The second was launched in March following the announcement of the US grants’ termination, in collaboration with IOM, UNHCR and ICVA.
Engineers Without Borders International (EWB-I)
Boulder, COWe’re on a mission to mobilise a global network of engineers for good.
ProTECHtion: Digitally Powered Community Protection
Oslo, NorwayNorwegian Church Aid, with the support of Innovation Norway, is working on the design of a digital “meeting place” for communities at risk of violence to talk safely about needs, priorities, and aspirations.
Gender-Based Violence Area of Responsibility
Geneva, SwitzerlandThe GBV AoR brings together non-governmental organisations, UN agencies, academics and others under the shared objective of ensuring life-saving, predictable, accountable and effective GBV prevention, risk mitigation and response in emergencies, both natural disaster and conflict-related humanitarian contexts.
IFRC GO
Williamsburg, VAIFRC GO aims to make all disaster information universally accessible and useful to IFRC responders for better decision making.
Data Entry and Exploration Platform (DEEP)
Williamsburg, VAA collaborative analysis platform for effective aid response
Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC)
Williamsburg, VAThe world's leading source of data and analysis on internal displacement
Nexus Environment Assessment Tool (NEAT+)
Williamsburg, VARapid and simple project-level environmental screening for humanitarian operations
Sahana makes high quality information management systems for emergency preparedness, response, recovery and resilience-building accessible to all.
GANNET
Williamsburg, VAGANNET is a Generative AI Initiative, offering AI-powered tools built to make knowledge and real-time information accessible to our community in a resource-efficient and ethical way.
Data Friendly Space (DFS)
Williamsburg, VAWe envision a future where technology and data power positive social change
USAID Stop-Work
Cincinnati, OhioTracking. Informing.
These are the results of a survey measuring the impact on organizations across the world affected by the US Government aid freeze.
Charities Affected by Freeze in Foreign Assistance Funding
United States of America (the)Charity Navigator's list of 3- and 4-star organizations whose programs may be affected by the Trump Administration's funding freeze.
Using publicly available satellite imagery and deep learning to understand economic well-being in Africa
Stanford University, Serra Mall, Stanford, CA, USAArticle in Nature by Christopher Yeh, Anthony Perez, Anne Driscoll, George Azzari, Zhongyi Tang, David Lobell, Stefano Ermon & Marshall Burke
CARE is a major international humanitarian agency delivering emergency relief and long-term international development projects. Founded in 1945, CARE is nonsectarian, impartial, and non-governmental. It is one of the largest and oldest humanitarian aid organizations focused on fighting global poverty.
Small donor campaign to help protect Kyiv from aerial bombing
Watch Duty
Santa Rosa, California, USAWatch Duty, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, alerts you of nearby wildfires and firefighting efforts in real-time.
EGOV Repositories
Guimarães, PortugalDiscover the United Nations University EGOV's repository platform, a centralized hub of specialized repositories tackling global challenges.
Starlink cellular connectivity in disasters
Redmond, WASpace X's Starlink unit was granted permission by the US FCC to activate a satellite connectivity option for Americans in hurricane zones
GeoMSF Platform
Washington, DCA full suite of mapping and geodata tools developed by and for Medecins Sans Frontieres
Evidence from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan shows that digital aid is a cost-effective, credible, and efficient way to reach vulnerable populations, in this case poor, tech-illiterate, female-headed households, in fragile states.
AI for Changemakers
Poland (Polska)A global accelerator for AI innovators and nonprofits working to solve the world’s pressing challenges.
Mapeo is a free, easy-to-use, open source set of tools for collecting and mapping information. Mapeo was built by Digital Democracy with and for earth defenders to easily document environmental & human rights information and to collect data about their land. It was designed to work in entirely offline environments, is highly customizable, and built on a decentralized peer-to-peer database that allows communities to own their own data.
Rapid integrates advanced mapping tools, authoritative geospatial open data, and cutting-edge technology to empower OpenStreetMap mappers at all levels to get started quickly, making accurate and fresh edits to maps.
The Export Tool is an open service that creates customized extracts of up-to-date OSM data in various file formats.
Swipe and tap. Put communities on the map. Help humanitarians find and help vulnerable people.
MapRoulette has dozens of mapping Challenges that are created by experienced mappers. Each Challenge is about improving OSM in one very specific way
We initially designed it as a decision support tool for humanitarian mappers. Now it has grown in functionality and use cases. Whether you work in disaster management, build a smart city, or perform research on climate change, Disaster Ninja can help you in a number of ways (see more info on website).
Mapping debris cleanup following Hurricane Beryl 2024
Modernized Volunteer Management for Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Recovery
Damage assessment software designed to rapidly and accurately collect damage assessments for FEMA’s disaster declaration process
Data For Crisis
TallinnA collaborative work between DW Akademie and SocialLab to provide credible raw and aggregated data from Social Networks about crisis-related topics like COVID and Migration to support media practitioners and researchers with free access to public data
FloodLight
PakistanA Code for Pakistan initiative to Crowdsource the flood-related data from the 2022 Floods in Pakistan.
KIKI, Virtual Human Interpreter
Japan (Nihon or Nippon)The world's first text-to-sign interpreter for emergency alerts
Portable Network Kits
New York City, NY, USAThe Portable Network Kit (PNK) is a wireless network in a suitcase that helps people understand how to build their own mini-internet – and with it, how the internet works and might be owned and governed more equitably.
Bangladesh Open Innovation Lab (BOIL)
Dhaka, BangladeshOur aim is to build a community that supports the Open Data and uptake of the Living Lab paradigm.
Climate Intelligence (CLINT)
EuropeThe CLIMATE INTELLIGENCE – alias CLINT – project is a European-funded project whose main objective is to develop an Artificial Intelligence framework composed of Machine Learning techniques and algorithms to process big climate datasets for improving Climate Science...
HURREVAC
Richmond, VAHURREVAC is the decision support tool of the [US] National Hurricane Program, administered by FEMA, the USACE, and the NOAA National Hurricane Center.
Hurricane Mapping (Sea Island Software)
Richmond, VAWe are Sea Island Software, Inc., a company specializing in hurricane threat assessment. HurricaneMapping.com is our storm tracking service for Google Earth and ESRI's ArcGIS.
British Red Cross
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the)The British Red Cross helps people in crisis, whoever and wherever they are. We are part of a global voluntary network, responding to conflicts, natural disasters and individual emergencies.
The State of Open Humanitarian Data 2024
Humanity Hub, Fluwelen Burgwal, The Hague, NetherlandsA ten-year anniversary retrospective on the Humanitarian Data Exchange, which was accessed by 1.4 million people in 230 countries to download 2.7 million open humanitarian datasets in 2023.
Exposing protection gaps in digital transformation programmes
Kare
Dublin, IrelandAID:Tech’s Kare Platform Enables Fast & Instant Disbursements to Survivors Via Digital ID
AID:Tech
Dublin, IrelandAID:Tech was established in 2015 and was the first company in the world to deliver international aid over blockchain technology.
Oxfam’s UnBlocked Cash project (UBC) is a blockchain-powered cash transfer solution that is set to tackle this challenge
Get email updates
Helpful Links
Reach Out
A project of
With support from
National Endowment for Democracy
Founding Organization
Civic Hall
Technology partner
Civic Tech Field Guide