Appendix A
Agenda
NAE-USIP Roundtable: Workshop on Sensing and
Shaping Emerging Conflicts
October 11, 2012
National Academy of Sciences
2101 Constitution Avenue NW, Room 120
Washington, DC
The Objective of this Workshop is to identify major opportunities and impediments to providing better real-time information to actors directly involved in situations that could lead to deadly violence. We will consider several scenarios of potential violence drawn from recent country cases, and consider a set of technologies, applications, and strategies that have been particularly useful—or could be, if better adapted for conflict prevention or mitigation by people in a position to do so.
AGENDA
8:30 a.m. – Breakfast
8:45 a.m. – Roundtable Charge to the Workshop
By the end of the day, we seek to identify promising strategies for direct application of technology tools and techniques to emerging conflicts. The goal is to provide insights and information to inform the design of field tests of collaboration between local actors, supportive peacebuilders, and expert technologists to increase the constructive impacts of sensing technologies and applications.
Roundtable Advisor:
Fred Tipson, USIP
9:00 a.m. – “Peacebuilders” Meet “Data Scientists”
How can various sensing technologies assist local populations and peacebuilders in zones of conflict or potential conflict to anticipate, understand, and prevent deadly violence?
Candidate Peacebuilding Problems/Settings
Joint Presentation:
Lawrence Woocher, SAIC
Dennis King, State Department
Fred Tipson, USIP
Candidate Technologies:
Joint Presentation:
Prabhakar Raghavan, Google
Duncan Watts, Microsoft
Patrick Vinck, Harvard Humanitarian
Initiative
10:30 a.m. – Break
10:45 a.m. – Recent Experience in Zones of Tension/Conflict
How was technology used by local actors, whether citizens, government agencies, or outsiders, to understand their situations and influence the outcomes of events?
Speakers:
Patrick Meier, Ushahidi (Kenya)
Sanjana Hattotuwa, ICT4Peace
(Sri Lanka)
Moderator:
Lawrence Woocher, SAIC
12:15 p.m. – Lunch and PeaceTech Lab Presentation
Speaker:
Sheldon Himelfarb, USIP
1:00 p.m. – Factors Affecting the Use of Technologies in Conflict Settings
What is the process, whether facilitated or not by outsiders, by which technologies are adopted/adapted in local settings? What are the challenges these capabilities could best address?
Speakers:
Chris Spence, National Democratic Institute
Emmanuel Letouzé, UN Global Pulse
Commentator:
Joseph Bock, University of Notre Dame
Moderator:
Prabhakar Raghavan, Google
2:30 p.m. – Break
2:45 p.m.
The Darker Side of Technologies Used to Sense Conflict
For all of the potential benefits of various technologies in facilitating political participation and change, various actors may take advantage of these very capabilities to repress change and even provoke deadly violence. What are the ways that repressive governments or reactionary groups have exploited technologies (or might do so) to stifle expression or target activists, and how can these “darker” uses be prevented or mitigated?
Speakers:
Ivan Sigal, Global Voices
Rafal Rohozinski, The SecDev Group
Moderator:
Lawrence Woocher, SAIC
4:15 p.m. – Next Steps
5:00 p.m. – Adjourn