The speed of development in Big Data and associated phenomena, such as social media, has surpassed the capacity of the average consumer to understand his or her actions and their knock-on effects. We are moving towards changes in how ethics has to be perceived: away from individual decisions with specific and knowable outcomes, towards actions by many unaware that they may have taken actions with unintended consequences for anyone. Responses will require a rethinking of ethical choices, the lack thereof and how this will guide scientists, governments, and corporate agencies in handling Big Data. This essay elaborates on the ways Big Data impacts on ethical conceptions.

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Disasters have long been a scourge for humanity. With the advances in technology (in terms of computing, communications, and the ability to process, and analyze big data), our ability to respond to disasters is at an inflection point. There is great optimism that big data tools can be leveraged to process large amounts of crisis-related data (in the form of user generated data in addition to traditional humanitarian data) to provide an insight into the fast-changing situation and help drive an effective disaster response. This article introduces the history and the future of big crisis data analytics, along with a discussion on its promise, enabling technologies, challenges, and pitfalls.

With the explosion of social media sites and proliferation of digital computing devices and Internet access, massive amounts of public data is being generated on a daily basis. Efficient techniques/ algorithms to analyze this massive amount of data can provide near real-time information about emerging trends and provide early warning in case of an imminent emergency (such as the outbreak of a viral disease). In addition, careful mining of these data can reveal many useful indicators of socioeconomic and political events, which can help in establishing effective public policies. The focus of this study is to review the application of big data analytics for the purpose of human development. The emerging ability to use big data techniques for development (BD4D) promises to revolutionalize healthcare, education, and agriculture; facilitate the alleviation of poverty; and help to deal with humanitarian crises and violent conflicts. Besides all the benefits, the large-scale deployment of BD4D is beset with several challenges due to the massive size, fast-changing and diverse nature of big data. The most pressing concerns relate to efficient data acquisition and sharing, establishing of context (e.g., geolocation and time) and veracity of a dataset, and ensuring appropriate privacy. In this study, we provide a

The COVID-19 pandemic leads governments around the world to resort to tracking technology and other data-driven tools in order to monitor and curb the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Such large-scale incursion into privacy and data protection is unthinkable during times of normalcy. However, in times of a pandemic the use of location data provided by telecom operators and/or technology companies becomes a viable option. Importantly, legal regulations hardly protect people’s privacy against governmental and corporate misuse. Established privacy regimes are focused on individual consent, and most human rights treaties know derogations from privacy and data protection norms for states of emergency. This leaves little safeguards nor remedies to guarantee individual and collective autonomy. However, the challenge of responsible data use during a crisis is not novel. The humanitarian sector has more than a decade of experience to offer. International organisations and humanitarian actors have developed detailed guidelines on how to use data responsibly under extreme circumstances. This article briefly addresses the legal gap of data protection and privacy during this global crisis. Then it outlines the state of the art in humanitarian practice and academia on data protection and data responsibility during crisis.