Geospatial Data to Support Humanitarian Decision Making

This project is now closed.

What was the innovation?

Satellite technologies and geospatial information have the potential to transform humanitarian response by filling critical data and information gaps. These tools enable timely, evidence-based decision-making, support effective coordination, help prioritise areas of intervention, and improve the allocation of resources during crises.

In 2022, Caribou Space, in collaboration with the UK Humanitarian Innovation Hub (UKHIH), published the Beyond Borders Report, which provides a comprehensive overview of how satellite applications are currently being used in humanitarian settings. The report highlighted a wide range of initiatives, while also identifying key operational, technical, and knowledge-related barriers that limit the uptake and impact of these technologies.

By consolidating insights across the sector, this work raised awareness of both the opportunities and the challenges associated with satellite technologies, and explored how their use can be expanded to better support humanitarian action.

The need to innovate

Satellite data offers a unique and powerful perspective on people, infrastructure, and the environment. This makes it a valuable resource for anticipating and responding to humanitarian emergencies.

However, despite its potential, there is still limited guidance and understanding of where and how satellite technology can be used most cost-effectively and to achieve the best outcomes for people affected by crises. Barriers such as low awareness, limited technical expertise, and concerns around ethics, privacy, and data security continue to restrict wider adoption.

Addressing these challenges is essential to unlocking the full value of satellite-enabled insights in humanitarian decision-making.

What did we do?

Building on the findings of the Beyond Borders Report, Caribou Space worked to deepen understanding of these barriers and identify practical, high-impact actions to address them.

This included conducting interviews with humanitarian decision-makers to explore key challenges in greater depth, including:

• Low awareness of potential use cases for satellite technology, as well as resistance or mistrust
• Limited technical expertise, restricting effective use
• Ethical concerns relating to data privacy, security, and responsible use.

By tackling these barriers and improving understanding of cost-effective applications, there is a significant opportunity for public and private stakeholders to increase both the use and the impact of satellite technologies in humanitarian crises.

The process

The project applied an ‘Open Innovation’ process, which starts with researching the challenge in detail and understanding any past and existing attempts to address the challenge, before inviting fresh thinking and creativity in order to design (and then refine) new ideas that could be explored.

Using the outputs of the initial interviews with decision-makers and potential users of geospatial information and our research into existing initiatives, a set of Design Briefs were created, which formed the basis for further ideation to identify priority actions that could encourage and accelerate further uptake of satellite technologies in the humanitarian sector.

Convening opportunities

Our ideation session convened a group of humanitarians, technical advisors and ecosystem thinkers, bringing together diverse but complementary expertise to exchange ideas, challenge each other and co-create new possible initiatives using a systems-thinking approach, inspired by Wasifiri’s Systemcraft.

Watch: https://animoto.com/play/U97thTBH4hstqdz6xuNLmw

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Contact us to find out more about our recent ideation sessions on the potential of geospatial data to support humanitarian decision making