The Standby Task Force is a group about 1,000 volunteers coming from 80+ different countries and many different backgrounds. All volunteer bios are visible on our dedicated Ning Site. The full list of SBTF Coordinators is available here and public stats on our volunteer network are available here. The following individuals are only the organizers of the initial SBTF effort and the team that deals with the overall organization of each project. All of them are also volunteers in this effort. They are listed alphabetically below.
MELISSA ELLIOTT
SBTF Deployments: HSI sim 2012, Samoa sim 2012, USAID Poverty Alleviation 2012, Samoa Evan 2012, Australia Floods 2011, New Zealand Earthquake 2011, Alabama Tornadoes 2011, Libya CrisisMap, Al-jezeera Balkans, Turkey 2011, Samoa Simulation 2011, Somalia Satellite, Hurricane Irene, Syria Crisis 2011, Syria Satellite, UNOCHA South Sudan, WHO Libya Health Facilities
Melissa is a communications expert, and has an overload of instant messaging and social networks to prove it. An avid supporter of the Haitian relief efforts, Melissa was an early adopter of the Ushahidi platform to coordinate aid after the Jan 2010 EQ, and has traveled to Haiti on multiple occasions to assist. Melissa is a member of CrisisCommons and CrisisMappers. She has presented social media techniques used in disaster relief to the American Red Cross during their Emergency Social Data Summit in Washington, DC; multiple presentations at the Canadian Governments DFAIT (Dept. of Foreign Trade & International Affairs); to The National Academies; and at the Global Engagement Summit. She has also consulted on crisis mapping policy considerations to the ICRC in order to incorporate digital volunteerism into the current humanitarian landscape. In her “spare” time, Melissa is Partner and Executive Producer at Blackbox Communications in Toronto. When not online, Melissa is probably dreaming of traveling to exotic locales.
Jeannine became interested in crisis mapping after studying disease mapping and various epidemiologic applications of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Prior to joining SBTF, Jeannine began as a volunteer with PakReport mapping SMS messages during the Pakistan Floods of 2010. As an SBTF volunteer, Jeannine worked on the South Sudan Referendum deployment mapping polling stations and submitting reports. Jeannine then participated in SBTF’s Libya deployment as a geolocation and media monitoring volunteer. Once the project was handed over to UN OCHA, she continued as the Coordinator of the Geolocation Team and co-Coordinator of the Media Monitoring Team providing support to more than 50 volunteers. She also worked closely with a small team on analyzing data trends to produce reports and maps to inform the local humanitarian response community in Libya on critical events and needs by region and humanitarian response cluster. Based in Paris, France and Colombo, Sri Lanka, Jeannine is a global health consultant working on leveraging private sector initiatives on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in the developing world by focusing on partnership-building and new technologies, such as mobile health (mHealth), to expand the reach of programs.
SENTIL PRAKASH CHINNACHAMY
SBTF Deployments: USAID 2012, Australia Floods 2011, New Zealand Earthquake 2011, Alabama Tornadoes 2011, Libya CrisisMap, Samoa Simulation 2011, Hurricane Irene, Syria Crisis 2011, UNOCHA South Sudan, WHO Libya Health Facilities, USAID Poverty Alleviation
Sentil belongs to a niche group of individuals that deal with ‘all things geo’ everyday. He is a GIS architect with specialization in the ESRI suite of products. He spent the early part of his career designing GIS systems and developing state-of-the-art GIS applications. His increasing interest in business shifted his career into business development and global marketing for GIS products & services. His professional experience traverse through several industries such as renewable energy, health care, transportation, local governments, and utilities.
Sentil’s recent interests include cloud GIS and innovative marketing strategies using social media/crowdsourcing trends. He believes that the future ecosystems evolve by interaction of social media, geo-spatial awareness, and environmental consciousness. He closely watches for the adoption and evolution of geospatial data in forms of social media maps / VGI application.
Irish vegetation ecologist based in NW Scotland. I specialise in mountain and bog habitats and much of my work involves translating information from the field in to map form. I’m closely engaged with community development where I live. I also have a lifelong interest in politics and history – particularly in North Africa and the Middle East. And I like, no, I love maps. I’m not especially techie, but I use GIS all the time and have to juggle and digest large tranches of data all the time, so have developed some spurious competence in these areas.
JUSTINE MACKINNON
SBTF Deployments: Philippines 2012, Samoa 2012, Kenya 2013
Previous life I was Airfield manager at London Heathrow Airport,managing the airfield on a day to day basis, including writing the emergency orders and contingency plans for the airfield. Acted as silver command during incidents. Was involved in designing and implementing the bi annual emergency exercises to be issued with the aerodrome licence awarded by CAA. My other affiliations: Co founder CrisisMappersUK; Community leader for Ushahidi; Member Humanity Road; Member CrisisMappers.net; Founder JusTech (empowering women to use emerging technology for disaster preparedness, reactionary disaster management, in under developed and crisis hit countries); Member of UNWomenUK; Writing paper on global com and control post disaster incl tech and vol groups. Have worked on many worldwide deployments including creating and leading the London Olympic 2012 deployment. Last year was awarded the Presidential (U.S) gold medal for humanity and volunteering services. My day job is consultant on varying subjects including lean six sigma, change and behavioral operational management ( well I have to finance doing all the above)! Please feel free to connect to me via LinkedIn on through JusComms.com website.
Svend-Jonas Schelhorn is a M.Sc. student of Geography at Heidelberg University. His main focus is on GIS, remote sensing, natural hazards research and last but not least in disaster-risk-management. He dedicates his academic career to advancing the frontiers of volunteered digital humanitarianism. He is fellow in the ASA scholarship program, which is dedicated to sustainable development and global learning. Within the context of this program he spent 4 months in the Philippines in 2011 working for a German state agency for international development in their Disaster Risk Management section. His experiences there made him focus his interest far more towards disaster risk management.
Per’s day job is as a tutor and tech teacher for students in visual communication at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design. Previously he served two periods as vice rector at the same institution, with special responsibility for QA and Learning Management, trying to create digital systems for a vivid art school.
He returned to teaching in 2011, and his interest has shifted towards the human aspects of connectivity through digital networks, which is one of the reasons for becoming engaged in SBTF. He is also a member of Crisismappers, supports the work of Avaaz and SumOfUs, and volunteers as a TED translator.
SARA-JAYNE FARMER
SBTF Deployments: Colombia Simulation 2010, Sudan Vote Monitor 2011, Libya Crisis 2011, Somalia Crisis 2011, Libya Health Project 2012, Regional Data Collectio 2012, HSI simulation 2012, USAID 2012, UNOCHA South Sudan 2012, ACAPS 2012, Uchaguzi 2012, Typhoon Bopha 2012, Kenya Elections 2013
Sara is CTO at Change Assembly. She designs and builds systems that link artificial reasoning, community-based mapping, open data, data science and unmanned systems, to organise development knowledge and help find early signs of crisis in very large data streams. She has a background in systems engineering, innovations management, information fusion, knowledge management, intelligent systems and autonomy. She is also a compulsive CrisisMapper.
The Team
The Standby Task Force is a group about 1,000 volunteers coming from 80+ different countries and many different backgrounds. All volunteer bios are visible on our dedicated Ning Site. The full list of SBTF Coordinators is available here and public stats on our volunteer network are available here. The following individuals are only the organizers of the initial SBTF effort and the team that deals with the overall organization of each project. All of them are also volunteers in this effort. They are listed alphabetically below.
SBTF Deployments: HSI sim 2012, Samoa sim 2012, USAID Poverty Alleviation 2012, Samoa Evan 2012, Australia Floods 2011, New Zealand Earthquake 2011, Alabama Tornadoes 2011, Libya CrisisMap, Al-jezeera Balkans, Turkey 2011, Samoa Simulation 2011, Somalia Satellite, Hurricane Irene, Syria Crisis 2011, Syria Satellite, UNOCHA South Sudan, WHO Libya Health Facilities
Melissa is a communications expert, and has an overload of instant messaging and social networks to prove it. An avid supporter of the Haitian relief efforts, Melissa was an early adopter of the Ushahidi platform to coordinate aid after the Jan 2010 EQ, and has traveled to Haiti on multiple occasions to assist. Melissa is a member of CrisisCommons and CrisisMappers. She has presented social media techniques used in disaster relief to the American Red Cross during their Emergency Social Data Summit in Washington, DC; multiple presentations at the Canadian Governments DFAIT (Dept. of Foreign Trade & International Affairs); to The National Academies; and at the Global Engagement Summit. She has also consulted on crisis mapping policy considerations to the ICRC in order to incorporate digital volunteerism into the current humanitarian landscape. In her “spare” time, Melissa is Partner and Executive Producer at Blackbox Communications in Toronto. When not online, Melissa is probably dreaming of traveling to exotic locales.
JEANNINE LEMAIRE
SBTF Deployments: Colombia Simulation 2010, Sudan 2011, Australia Floods 2011, Libya Crisis 2011, Somalia Crisis 2011, Samoa Simulation 2011, Alabama Tornadoes 2011, Somalia Crisis 2011
Jeannine became interested in crisis mapping after studying disease mapping and various epidemiologic applications of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Prior to joining SBTF, Jeannine began as a volunteer with PakReport mapping SMS messages during the Pakistan Floods of 2010. As an SBTF volunteer, Jeannine worked on the South Sudan Referendum deployment mapping polling stations and submitting reports. Jeannine then participated in SBTF’s Libya deployment as a geolocation and media monitoring volunteer. Once the project was handed over to UN OCHA, she continued as the Coordinator of the Geolocation Team and co-Coordinator of the Media Monitoring Team providing support to more than 50 volunteers. She also worked closely with a small team on analyzing data trends to produce reports and maps to inform the local humanitarian response community in Libya on critical events and needs by region and humanitarian response cluster. Based in Paris, France and Colombo, Sri Lanka, Jeannine is a global health consultant working on leveraging private sector initiatives on HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in the developing world by focusing on partnership-building and new technologies, such as mobile health (mHealth), to expand the reach of programs.
SENTIL PRAKASH CHINNACHAMY
SBTF Deployments: USAID 2012, Australia Floods 2011, New Zealand Earthquake 2011, Alabama Tornadoes 2011, Libya CrisisMap, Samoa Simulation 2011, Hurricane Irene, Syria Crisis 2011, UNOCHA South Sudan, WHO Libya Health Facilities, USAID Poverty Alleviation
Sentil belongs to a niche group of individuals that deal with ‘all things geo’ everyday. He is a GIS architect with specialization in the ESRI suite of products. He spent the early part of his career designing GIS systems and developing state-of-the-art GIS applications. His increasing interest in business shifted his career into business development and global marketing for GIS products & services. His professional experience traverse through several industries such as renewable energy, health care, transportation, local governments, and utilities.
Sentil’s recent interests include cloud GIS and innovative marketing strategies using social media/crowdsourcing trends. He believes that the future ecosystems evolve by interaction of social media, geo-spatial awareness, and environmental consciousness. He closely watches for the adoption and evolution of geospatial data in forms of social media maps / VGI application.
BRENDAN O’HANRAHAN
SBTF Deployments: Libya Crisis 2011, HSI sim 2012, Samoa sim 2012, USAID 2012, Philippines 2012, Samoa Evan 2012
Irish vegetation ecologist based in NW Scotland. I specialise in mountain and bog habitats and much of my work involves translating information from the field in to map form. I’m closely engaged with community development where I live. I also have a lifelong interest in politics and history – particularly in North Africa and the Middle East. And I like, no, I love maps. I’m not especially techie, but I use GIS all the time and have to juggle and digest large tranches of data all the time, so have developed some spurious competence in these areas.
JUSTINE MACKINNON
SVEND-JONAS SCHELHORN
SBTF Deployments: UNHCR Somalia 2011, Samoa Simulation 2011, AI-USA Syria 2012, HSI-Simulation 2012, South Sudan 2012, Philippines 2012, Samoa 2012
Svend-Jonas Schelhorn is a M.Sc. student of Geography at Heidelberg University. His main focus is on GIS, remote sensing, natural hazards research and last but not least in disaster-risk-management. He dedicates his academic career to advancing the frontiers of volunteered digital humanitarianism. He is fellow in the ASA scholarship program, which is dedicated to sustainable development and global learning. Within the context of this program he spent 4 months in the Philippines in 2011 working for a German state agency for international development in their Disaster Risk Management section. His experiences there made him focus his interest far more towards disaster risk management.
PER AARVIK
KEERA PULLMAN
Bio to be completed…
SBTF Deployments: