iMMAP Event: Innovation and Use of New Technologies in Humanitarian Crises

Discussions will revolve around Colombia's most critical humanitarian sectors and thematic areas such as health, food security, WASH, livelihoods, money transfers, and multi-sector efforts.





Since 2015, due to the socio-economic and political crisis, more than four million Venezuelans have been forced to leave their country. With a common border of more than 2,200 km, Colombia is the most affected neighboring country by the humanitarian crisis that is wreaking havoc on Venezuela. The massive departure of migrants and refugees from Venezuela has made Colombia the main hosting nation, while it is also used as a place of transit to other regional countries. In addition, the COVID-19 crisis has worsened the situation due to the quarantine decreed by the Government, preventing many migrants and refugees from engaging in their livelihoods in the informal economy.

As part of iMMAP's commitment to delivering information management services to support the most vulnerable populations, iMMAP Colombia is organizing and will deliver a series of free webinars from July 7 to July 10 on innovation and the use of new technologies in humanitarian crises: successful cases from several countries demonstrate that, through technology and innovation, more coordinated and effective assistance can be provided by responding organizations, in Colombia and the broader region.


During four days, iMMAP will facilitate insightful presentations and discussions on today's most innovative approaches to using technologies for information management and humanitarian support including mobile data collection, data analysis through artificial intelligence, the use of satellite imagery in creating detection models to identify informal settlements and calculating poverty, and new forms of visualizing information to enable decision making.

Mobile data collection activity in 2019

These discussions will revolve around Colombia's most critical humanitarian sectors and thematic areas such as health, food security, WASH, livelihoods, money transfers, and multi-sector efforts.

Some of today's most innovative minds in the use of technology for the humanitarian sector internationally will be ready to share their knowledge and expertise. On this occasion, we are pleased to announce the participation of key organizations such as Thinking Machines, Premise, RiWi, Dymaxion Labs, NukkAI, Mapbox, AirTM, World Vision, ESRI, Data-Pop Alliance, Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), Code 4 Venezuela, Data Friendly Space (DEEP), and ISI Foundation, together with several experts from the iMMAP team.

We encourage you to participate in this event!

Held virtually, and free of cost, the event will allow you to discover what is being done across the world to support humanitarian assistance through the use of technologies, and how these experiences can apply in Colombia and the broader region, with special emphasis on the assistance to Venezuelan refugee and migrant populations.