Humanitarian ignorance

Does datafication of humanitarian action lead to more informed and better decisions?

With the turn to digital humanitarianism, contemporary humanitarian action increasingly relies on technology-driven quantification to expand the ability to collect, analyse, and present information. Utilising datafication processes, humanitarian organisations seek to assess ‘risk’ and mitigate ‘uncertainty’ more efficiently. Although central to their knowledge management and decision-making in low information circumstances, the conceptual notions of ‘risk’ and ‘uncertainty’ are inadequate to capture the full spectrum of non-knowledge in a time of digital humanitarianism.

To explore how datafication leads to more unknowns in humanitarian action, a group of DIIS researchers introduce the notion of ’Humanitarian ignorance’ in a new article in the journal Disasters.

Here, they argue that instead of introducing higher levels of control, insight, and certainty, the datafication characterising current humanitarianism in fact opens new expanses of ignorance and unknowns, further complexifying humanitarian decision making.