Knowledge Organization Systems and cultural interoperability in open humanitarian settings

Abstract

This paper aims to identify the landscape of knowledge organization and representation applications developed in the open humanitarian data movement and consider how the high level of cultural interoperability can improve information exchange, the evaluation of humanitarian needs and the prioritization of humanitarian responses. Firstly, the paper presents reflections on the production, manipulation, and dissemination of open humanitarian data. Secondly, it discusses how knowledge organization meets the growing need to organize emerging forms of digital information. The case of Rohingya, a humanitarian disaster of historic proportion, is used to illustrate multilingual, cross-cultural, and social issues in knowledge organization and representation in humanitarian settings.