Centre for Humanitarian Data
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The Centre for Humanitarian Data is focused on increasing the use and impact of data in the humanitarian sector. It is managed by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The Centre’s services are available free of charge to humanitarian partners and OCHA staff.
The Centre is focused on four areas: 1) data services; 2) data literacy; 3) data responsibility; and 4) predictive analytics. Its vision is to create a future where all people involved in a humanitarian situation have access to the data they need, when and how they need it, to make responsible and informed decisions.
To fulfil its vision, the Centre seeks three outcomes:
- Increase the speed of data from collection to published product.
- Increase the number and strength of connections with the Centre.
- Increase the use of HDX.
The Centre manages two products: the Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) and the Humanitarian Exchange Language (HXL).
The goal of HDX is to make humanitarian data easy to find and use for analysis. Launched in July 2014, HDX has a growing collection of datasets about crises around the world and has been accessed by users in over 200 countries and territories.
HXL is a data standard, described as a ‘simple standard for messy data’. The use of HXL is focused on spreadsheet formats such as CSV or Excel. HXL hashtags are added between the column headers and the data to allow software to process data more easily and create insights more quickly.
Read more about HDX and HXL in Data Services, in this one-pager, and in the Frequently Asked Questions for HDX.
The Sendai Framework Voluntary Commitments (SFVC) online platform allows stakeholders to inform the public about their work on DRR. The SFVC online platform is a useful toolto know who is doing what and where for the implementation of the Sendai Framework, which could foster potential collaboration among stakeholders. All stakeholders (private sector, civil society organizations, academia, media, local governments, etc.) working on DRR can submit their commitments and report on their progress and deliverables.