This project aims to build awareness of the potential of collective crisis intelligence among humanitarians, reduce the risks associated with AI, and demonstrate the value of these technologies for cross-cutting humanitarian priorities. Our approach targets systemic barriers to encourage wider adoption of collective crisis intelligence and transform crisis response – making it more timely, accurate and responsive to local needs.

Through our work with the IFRC, we found that collective crisis intelligence technology has the potential to make crisis response more timely, accurate and better matched to the needs of the most vulnerable. We also found that when designed together with local stakeholders, these tools are more trusted than ‘business as usual’ crisis response. But to date, only a handful of collective crisis intelligence solutions have been adopted or scaled by humanitarian organisations and governments. 

Our research into the reasons for this revealed four key barriers:

1. Lack of awareness: many humanitarians still haven’t heard of these technologies and don’t understand how they can support their work. This is particularly true for AI, where there is growing interest but little practical understanding.
2. Concerns about AI risks: although interest in AI has grown across the sector, there are also deep-seated concerns about the risks posed by the technology. Humanitarians worry about the potential harms of AI to vulnerable groups and that reliance on this technology may exacerbate existing power inequalities in the sector.
3. Insufficient proven cases: the transformative potential of collective crisis intelligence has not been demonstrated through enough real-life examples. This makes it difficult for frontline staff and senior decision-makers to understand the value added by these approaches. 
4. Resistance to change: established organisations are often hesitant to adopt new, external solutions that might disrupt current processes.

Over the next year, we will design and test two new initiatives that could help the sector take advantage of digital innovations like collective crisis intelligence (CCI). These initiatives will help reduce the risks associated with humanitarian AI and build a culture of collaborative innovation around CCI.  

1. Systems Innovation Accelerator for new collective crisis intelligence solutions

We're scoping the potential of creating an accelerator to foster the development and adoption of groundbreaking CCI innovations. This collaborative approach will bring together major agencies to create new shared services and products. Our objectives include:

• developing and testing the concept of a Systems Innovation Accelerator
• supporting a multi-agency collaboration to quickly adopt shared CCI solutions and digital infrastructure
• building commitment from key humanitarian actors to trial this innovative approach.

We’re designing and testing the feasibility of the accelerator together with Start Network, a global network of more than 80 humanitarian agencies.

2. The AI Safety Label

We're exploring the creation of an AI Safety Label, a system to audit and label AI tools for humanitarian use. This label will boost confidence for non-technical users and guide ethical risk management. Our goals are to:

• prototype a process to assess technical biases and social and ethical risks of AI tools in various contexts
• design a label that communicates trust and compliance with humanitarian standards
• develop the end-to-end process for a gold standard labelling regime, including institutional arrangements.

We’re designing and testing the feasibility of the AI Safety Label process with Sphere – who set standards for humanitarian action, promoting quality and accountability.

We will also build capability and interest in using CCI through an interactive online course that introduces the fundamentals of AI and collective intelligence. The course will be hosted on the Humanitarian Leadership Academy’s Kaya platform from September 2024.

AI & CI Digital Academy

We've created a digital academy course to improve the sector's understanding and confidence in CCI technologies. This course is designed for anyone in the humanitarian sector who wants to learn more about leveraging the potential of community intelligence and AI, and it does not require any prior knowledge of AI. The content will be relevant for different operational roles and levels of seniority. We want it to:

• help humanitarian staff recognise the potential and risks of collective crisis intelligence
• enable learners to identify where and how these solutions can benefit their work and align with organisational goals.

Through these three initiatives, we’re aiming to embed CCI into the humanitarian system.

To increase our chances of success, we’re delivering this work together with core design partners with deep expertise in data science, humanitarian innovation, and community engagement:

Data Friendly Space - an international nongovernmental organisation working across six continents to make modern data systems and data science accessible to the humanitarian and development communities.

CDAC Network - the global alliance of organisations working to ensure people can access safe, trustworthy information and communicate during crises.  

Gray Dot Catalyst - consultancy with expertise in humanitarian innovation scaling and adoption, business model development and supporting humanitarians to innovate. 

This work is funded by a grant from the UK Humanitarian Innovation Hub (UKHIH). UKHIH is funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and hosted by Elrha, a global humanitarian organisation and the UK’s leading independent supporter of humanitarian innovation and research.