(See a demo here)
As conflicts, famine, natural distasters and other crises emerge, the question of distributing funding also arises. Organizations like UN OCHA take on this task, analysing vast amounts of data to make sure that the money is given to those in need. However, working with humanitarian data is not easy for a few reasons. Firstly and most importantly, it represents real people, often in vulnerable situations, and they should not be treated as just data points. Secondly, crises are complex mechanisms that just cannot be condensed into a table or a plot.
Coordinators at organizations such as OCHA need tools that provide them with holistic, descriptive, and expert-level information. That's why we created Geo-Insight Assistant – an interactive brief generator. It focuses on providing a range of information regarding the queried topic in a one-sheet, ready-to-print text format. The user can select the country or area, the sector of needs (such as health, shelter, food etc.), and a timeframe. The data used is a conjunction of historical data provided by OCHA as well as recent humanitarian-oriented news. Importantly, it analyses figures, but doesn't discriminate because of them. When data is uncertain, missing, or otherwise suspicious, it informs the user about this fact so that no rushed decisions are being made.
See geo-insight's README.