While the digitation of aid undoubtedly has benefits, large databases with ever increasing amounts of humanitarian data also create risk and potential harm for vulnerable individuals and communities.

A new book by Kristin Bergtora Sandvik investigates the digital transformation of aid as a form of humanitarian extractivism, with a focus on how practices of data extraction shift power towards states, the private sector and humanitarians.

Published by Manchester University Press, the book “explores new humanitarian spaces and practices such as the humanitarian drone airspace, wearable innovation challenges and ethics in global disaster innovation labs.”

Chapters include:

• Humanitarian extractivism: An introduction
• Digital bodies in aid
• The centralisation of vulnerability in humanitarian cyberspace: The ICRC hack revisited
• Power, risk and riskiness in digital humanitarian work
• UNICEF’s Wearables for Good Challenge: Unpacking private sector partnerships in humanitarian innovation
• The early humanitarian drone airspace: Flying high and failing fast
• Beyond the humanitarian innovation ethics gap: Everyday practice in field labs

This book is also available in e-book format. Find out more here.

Kristin Bergtora Sandvik is a Research Professor in Humanitarian Studies at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and Professor of Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo. Sandvik also leads the research project Do no harm: Ethical Humanitarian Innovation and Digital Bodies at PRIO.