Innovation at World Humanitarian Summit

Today and tomorrow world leaders meet in Istanbul to stand up for our common humanity and take action to prevent and reduce human suffering at the World Humanitarian Summit. The VN Office for Coordination of Human Affairs (OCHA) is organizer of the summit and the Netherlands will play a leading role in this summit as EU president and one of the ten largest humanitarian donors in the world. Minister Ploumen will emphasize the role of innovation in humanitarian approaches, with specific attention for cash assistance for refugees and the use of big data.

In preparation for the summit Liliane Ploumen, minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, launched the Dutch Coalition for Humanitarian Innovation (DCHI) in March 2016. The goal of the coalition is to start innovative collaborations to improve the effect of humanitarian aid and decrease costs. Red Cross, Cap Gemini and VNO-NCW are leading organizations.

TNO is involved as innovation partner in this coalition. With TTC Mobile, University Leiden and Deloitte we are working on a solution for communication with the use of big data. If you look inside the bag of any refugee on a life-threatening boat trip to Europe, you see a few possessions that vary from one refugee to another. However, there is one thing they all carry with them: a smartphone. We envision a new telecom operator called Nomads Telecom that operates cost effective, over different countries and will provide information that refugees are seeking for. Our goal is to improve the self-reliance of refugees and to gain better insights and data to determine the needs of refugees and relieve organizations. Mobile technology would be the ideal solution for this. This innovative idea will be presented at the Summit as well.