Tag Archives: Somalia

Video: The standbytaskforce.com in Action

I was recently invited to give a 5-minute talk on the SBTF in action. This was for the Frontiers in Development conference organized by USAID just a few weeks ago. They have just made the video public. In this presentation, I describe the SBTF’s recent projects in Libya and Somalia, and with USAID’s Credit Authority [...]
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Beyond Brute Force: Unexpected Lessons from Crowdsourcing Satellite Imagery Analysis for UNHCR in Somalia

The recent SBTF effort to identify IDP shelters in Somalia for the UNHCR has been notable for several reasons beyond the fantastic work by our very, very hard working volunteers; some of whom may now need an eye exam and glasses… And I feel that what I’m seeing is an inflection point in the development [...]
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Thank You video from UNHCR’s Deputy High Commissioner

My fellow SBTF Satellite Team co-lead Shadrock Roberts and I had the distinct pleasure of meeting with UNHCR’s Deputy High Commissioner Alexander Aleinikoff whilst in Geneva for ICCM. Here is a short thank you video from Professor Aleinikoff to everyone who worked on the UNCHR-Somalia Satellite Imagery Project. Apologies for the low volume, if anyone [...]
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Crowdsourcing Satellite Imagery Analysis for UNHCR-Somalia: Latest Results

253,711 That is the total number of tags created by 168 volunteers after processing 3,909 satellite images in just five days. A quarter of a million tags in 120 hours; that’s more than 2,000 tags per hour. Wow. As mentioned in this earlier blog post, volunteers specifically tagged three different types of informal shelters to provide [...]
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Crowdsourcing Satellite Imagery Tagging to Support UNHCR in Somalia

[Cross-posted from Patrick Meier's iRevolution blog] The Standby Volunteer Task Force (SBTF) recently launched a new team called the Satellite Imagery Team. This team has been activated twice within the past few months. The first was to carry out this trial run in Somalia and the second was in partnership with AI-USA for this human [...]
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Crowdsourcing Satellite Imagery Analysis for Somalia: Results of Trial Run

Cross-posted on Patrick Meier’s iRevolution blog We’ve just completed our very first trial run of the Standby Task Volunteer Force (SBTF) Satellite Team. As mentioned in this blog post last week, the UN approached us a couple weeks ago to explore whether basic satellite imagery analysis for Somalia could be crowdsourced using a distributed mechanical [...]
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