Understanding the situation: Obtaining evidence in needs assessment and monitoring

Time
09:00 - 11:30

Presentations

Crowd Programmed Initiatives: facilitating the development of beneficiary-led aid programmes

Adrian Flint (University of Bristol) and Chris Meyer zu Natrup (MzN International)


Crowd sourcing has changed the face of online collaboration, with everything from fundraising, data visualisation and mainstream journalism using the ‘wisdom of crowds’ to create a bottom-up approach to information. In humanitarian contexts, ‘mobile participation’ and ‘microtasking’ have become buzz - phrases in the wake of initiatives like Mission 4636 inpost - earthquake Haiti and the Kibera Mapping Project in Kenya. This session mapped prevailing crowd sourcing trends and considers new data from existing projects.

Data quality in remote monitoring – a comparative analysis

Mona Fetouh (UN OIOS)


The session shared lessons from the extensive experience of Mona, Christian and Volker in Somalia and Eastern Burma. Both environments are characterised by heavy reliance of by international aid organisations on local partners. Because of this, and other factors hindering direct access for monitoring visits, real-time testing was developed for a number of familiar and new channels to collect and validate monitoring information in remote management situations. The presentation was made from a practitioner’s perspective, and learning from testing new channels for collection and validation is offered.

Rapid Mobile Phone-based Surveys (RAMP) for evidence-based emergency response

Scott Chaplowe (IFRC) and Rose Donna (Datadyne)


The session shared the Rapid Mobile Phone-based Surveys (RAMP) model the IFRC has designed with partners, and to examine it potential in contribution to evidence-based emergency response. The use of the mobile phones has considerable benefits in the efficient and reliable input, quality assurance, and timely analysis of data. Such potential is particularly well-suited for humanitarian as well as recovery settings. IFRC and partners designed a complete package of survey materials – RAMP –  to enable IFRC, NGOs, and Ministry departments to conduct health and development surveys at low cost, without external consultants, and with very rapid results using mobile phone data collection.