Reimagining Open Data during Disaster Response: Applying a Feminist Lens to Three Open Data Projects in Post-Earthquake Nepal

Abstract

Open Data has become a prominent ideal in humanitarian information work and is increasingly promoted for crisis situations to increase effectiveness, accountability, and empower citizens. However, like all socio-technical systems, open data platforms for disasters make implicit and explicit assumptions about data, data users, disasters, and the context of use. In this paper, we turn to feminist theory to examine three open data projects rolled out in the aftermath of the 2015 earthquake in Nepal. We used the seven principles of Data Feminism introduced by D'Ignazio and Klein to design an evaluative framework for the three projects. We use this framework to highlight and link the socio-political nature of both disasters and open data platforms. In our results, we highlight significant gaps in how these projects made labor (in)visible, engaged with affective aspects of disaster, addressed context, and challenged power. We argue that these gaps are reflective of dominant practices in open data for disasters and serve as opportunities for designers and crisis informatics researchers to reimagine the potential of such projects. We propose four ways of doing so based on feminist principles and values.

Towards the Development of an Anti-Colonial Critique of Climate and Disaster Risk Models

“…The assessment was considered to be robust and reflective of the best practices at the time and reflects typical regional hazard risk models that are used even today [32,33]. Furthermore, our authoring team has significant prior research on disaster risk information in Nepal [49,55,73,89,90] to contextualize this assessment. Because the methodology used in the Nepal multi-hazard risk assessment is closely aligned with similar efforts underway in many parts of the Global South [67], an analysis of this particular report provides valuable insight into the broader state of practice of disaster risk modeling.…”