Acknowledgments

Methodology

This study was co-led by the American Red Cross and the IFRC.

The American Red Cross and IFRC Information Management teams reviewed relevant and publicly available documents published in recent years and conducted interviews of approximately 1 hour each with key stakeholders duration following a structured questionnaire.

In total, 21 interviews with 39 humanitarians and subject matter experts representing IFRC, American Red Cross, British Red Cross, Canadian Red Cross, OCHA/UNDAC, iMMAP, MapAction, REACH, UNOSAT-UNITAR, WeRobotics, and Pacific Disaster Center were interviewed. In order to capture a diversity of experiences in regards to aerial assessment, the profiles of those interviewed included individuals from the domains of information management, GIS and spatial analysis, needs assessment, disaster management, operations, and leadership in emergencies.

For more information, comments or queries please contact im@ifrc.org

About the IFRC

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is the world’s largest volunteer-based humanitarian network. With member National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies worldwide, we are in virtually every community reaching 160.7 million people annually through long-term services and development programmes, as well as 110 million people through disaster response and early recovery programmes. We act before, during and after disasters and health emergencies to meet the needs and improve the lives of vulnerable people. We do so with impartiality as to nationality, race, gender, religious beliefs, class and political opinions. Guided by Strategy 2030 – our collective plan of action to tackle the major humanitarian and development challenges of this decade – we are committed to saving lives and changing minds. Our strength lies in our volunteer network, our community-based expertise and our independence and neutrality. We work to improve humanitarian standards, as partners in development, and in response to disasters. We persuade decision-makers to act at all times in the interests of vulnerable people. The result: we enable healthy and safe communities, reduce vulnerabilities, strengthen resilience and foster a culture of peace around the world.

About the authors

Dan Joseph, Solutions Engineer, American Red Cross - As part of the Quality, Data, and Learning (QDL) unit at American Red Cross, Dan provides a variety of support related to information management and humanitarian tech. He provides direct implementation support for improved analysis, information dissemination, and data collection. He also engages in technology R&D for continuous improvement, and competency development for RCRC staff and volunteers. danbjoseph (@danbjoseph)

Guido Pizzini, Senior Officer, Information Management and Data Analysis, IFRC - Guido has more than 10 years of professional experience as a humanitarian information manager with multiple organisations at the field and HQ levels. Through his experience and expertise in Emergency Needs Assessment and Analysis, Guido is the IFRC technical advisor on Emergency Needs Assessment and co-lead of the IFRC Working Group on Assessment and Planning in Emergencies. He oversees the work the IFRC is doing in regards to humanitarian information analysis, which includes the design of training, implementation of methodologies and tools for improved secondary data analysis and the drafting of strategic roadmaps for improved decision making processes relying on solid analytical outputs for operations. Guido Pizzini (@guipizzini)

Lauri Pynnonen, Senior Officer, Primary Data Collection, IFRC - Lauri is responsible for the innovative information management and primary data collection tools for disaster and crisis prevention, response and recovery within the IFRC. For the past ten years his roles have included spatial data in many forms, ranging from designing national base maps to generating drone-based orthophotos for natural resource management.

Acknowledgments

We greatly appreciate the many people who participated in interviews and the time they spent to share the experiences and expertise regarding aerial assessment and humanitarian response. The findings of this study would have not been possible without the interviews we’ve been carrying out with all the stakeholders listed below, to which we are very grateful.

IFRC stakeholders

• Alberto Monguzzi, Head of Emergency Operations, IFRC

• Felipe Delcid, Coordinator, Continental Operations, IFRC Americas Regional Office

• Florent Del Pinto, Manager, Emergency Operations Centre, IFRC

• Francisco (Paco) Maldonado, Global Surge Lead, IFRC

• Jamie Lesueur, Head of Emergency Operations, IFRC

• Jessica Letch, Manager, Emergency Operations and Coordination, IFRC Asia Pacific Regional Office

• Lucia Lasso, Head of Emergency Operations, IFRC

• Luke Caley, Information Management Lead, IFRC

• Steve McAndrew, Deputy Regional Director, IFRC Americas Regional Office

National Society stakeholders

• Charlotte McGlade, Director of Emergency Operations, Canadian Red Cross

• Dale Kunce, CEO Cascades Region, American Red Cross

• Jean-Pierre Taschereau, CEC, Leadership Development, Canadian Red Cross

• Laura Cardoso de Oliveira Avelino, Senior IM Advisor, Canadian Red Cross

• Paul Knight, GIS Officer, British Red Cross

Inter-agency stakeholders

• Alan Mills, Preparedness Coordinator, MapAction

• Andrea Porro, Afghanistan Country Representative, iMMAP

• Arie Claassens, Iraq Technical Advisor, iMMAP

• Christophe Bois, Director of Planning and Development, iMMAP

• Craig Von Hagen, MENA Regional Director, iMMAP

• Gabriel Clavijo, Communications and design officer, Colombia, iMMAP

• Issa Tingzon, Thinking Machines

• Ivan Contreras, Data Analyst, iMMAP

• James Mc Arthur, GIS and Settlements Specialist, REACH

• Jeffery Villaveces, Colombia Country Director, iMMAP

• Joel Myhre, Senior Disaster Management Specialist, Pacific Disaster Center

• Joseph Muhlhausen, Head of Drones and Data Systems, WeRobotics

• Juan Serrano, web developer, Colombia

• Katherine, Colombia GIS Analyst, iMMAP

• Lars Bromley, UNOSAT-UNITAR

• Liliana Carvajal, GIS Analyst: Colombia , iMMAP

• Luca Dell’Oro, Head Disaster Risk Reduction, Disaster Mapping and Climate Services, UNOSAT-UNITAR

• Marcella Guerrero, Capacity building officer, Colombia, iMMAP

• Mark Steyn, Technical Advisor: Iraq, iMMAP

• Matthew Wencel, Senior Manager for GIS and Remote Sensing, REACH

• Patrick Meier, Co-Founder, WeRobotics

• Peter Muller, Global Lead, UNDAC

• Phillip Frost, Geoinformatics Lead, MENA, iMMAP

• Sebastian Ancavil, GIS Officer, IOM

Related literature

The following documents were reviewed by the authors. We would like to acknowledge all the individuals that have contributed to this field of study through the literature noted below.

Congalton, R. G., & Green, K. (2019). Assessing the accuracy of remotely sensed data: principles and practices. CRC press.

Davill, R. (2015) The Future of Drones in Humanitarian Relief. MSc. Thesis, King’s College, London

Ezequiel, C. A. F., Cua, M., Libatique, N. C., Tangonan, G. L., Alampay, R., Labuguen, R. T., … & Loreto, A. B. (2014, May). UAV aerial imaging applications for post-disaster assessment, environmental management and infrastructure development. In 2014 International Conference on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (ICUAS) (pp. 274-283). IEEE.

Greenwood, F., Nelson, E. L., & Greenough, P. G. (2020). Flying into the hurricane: A case study of UAV use in damage assessment during the 2017 hurricanes in Texas and Florida. PLoS one, 15(2), e0227808.

Jensen, J. R. (2016). Introductory digital image processing: a remote sensing perspective (No. Ed. 4). Pearson Education, Inc.

Khaloo, A., Lattanzi, D., Jachimowicz, A., & Devaney, C. (2018). Utilizing UAV and 3D computer vision for visual inspection of a large gravity dam. Frontiers in Built Environment, 4, 31.

Kohli, D., Sliuzas, R., Kerle, N., & Stein, A. (2012). An ontology of slums for image-based classification. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 36(2), 154-163.

Loos, S., Lallemant. D., Baker, J., McCaughey, J., Yun, S., Budhathoki, N., Khan, F., Singh, R. (2019) G-DIF: A geospatial data integration framework to rapidly estimate post-earthquake damage.

Malpeli, K. C., & Chirico, P. G. (2015). Testing a small UAS for mapping artisanal diamond mining sites in Africa. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, 81(4), 257-263.

Notti, D., Giordan, D., Caló, F., Pepe, A., Zucca, F., & Galve, J. P. (2018). Potential and limitations of open satellite data for flood mapping. Remote sensing, 10(11), 1673.

Oren, Camille, and Verity, Andrej. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Applied to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) And its Impact on Humanitarian Action. DH Network. May 2020.

Radjawali, I., & Pye, O. (2017). Drones for justice: inclusive technology and river-related action research along the Kapuas. Geographica Helvetica, 72(1), 17.

Soesilo, D., Meier, P., Lessard-Fontaine, A., Du Plessis, J., Stuhlberger, C., & Fabbroni, V. (2016). Drones in Humanitarian Action: A guide to the use of airborne systems in humanitarian crises. FSD Report, 1-60.

Stehman, S. V. (1999). Basic probability sampling designs for thematic map accuracy assessment. International Journal of remote sensing, 20(12), 2423-2441.