Q&A: The challenge of open data in humanitarian response

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When natural or man-made disasters occur, humanitarian actors need timely and accurate information to plan their course of action. Data, however, isn’t always easy to come by.

Capacity4dev spoke to Sarah Telford from United Nations OCHA's Centre for Humanitarian Data about the idea behind the Humanitarian Data Exchange platform, an online depository of data from more than 350 organisations.

"Imagine you’re a policy officer sitting at your desk here in Brussels, and you’ve just received a report. With how data is transmitted these days, it could be months old by the time it gets to you," Telford told us. 

"You’re always responding to the past and what has already happened. You never get to look at the real-time picture, let alone make predictions about the future."

Read our complete interview with Telford in the Voices & Views section.