The intersection of technology, community, and sustainability offers a plethora of opportunities to innovate. We still live in an era where millions of people are under extreme poverty, lacking access to clean water, basic sanitation, electricity, internet, quality education, and healthcare.

Clearly, we need global solutions to tackle the grandest challenges facing our planet. So how can artificial intelligence (AI) assist in addressing key humanitarian and sustainable development challenges?

To begin with, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent a collection of 17 global goals that aim to address pressing global challenges, achieve inclusive development, and foster peace and prosperity in a sustainable manner by 2030. AI enables the building of smart systems that imitate human intelligence to solve real-world problems.

Recent advancements in AI have radically changed the way we think, live, and collaborate. Our daily lives are centred around AI-powered solutions with smart speakers playing wakeup alarms, smart watches tracking steps in our morning walk, smart refrigerators recommending breakfast recipes, smart TVs providing personalised content recommendations, and navigation mobile apps recommending the best route based on real-time traffic. Clearly, the age of AI is here. How can we leverage this transformative technology to amplify the impact for social good?

Accelerating AI-powered social innovations

AI core capabilities like machine learning (ML), computer vision, natural language understanding, and speech recognition offer new approaches to address humanitarian challenges and amplify the positive impact on underserved communities. ML enables machines to process massive amounts of data, interconnect underlying patterns, and derive meaningful insights for decision making. ML techniques like deep learning offer the powerful capability to create sophisticated AI models based on artificial neural networks.

Such models can be used for numerous real-world situations, like pandemic forecasting. AI tools can model and predict the spread of outbreaks like Covid-19 in low-resource settings using recent outbreak trends, treatment data, and travel history. This will help governmental and healthcare agencies to identify high-risk areas, manage demand and supply of essential medical supplies, and formulate localised remedial measures to control an outbreak.

Computer vision techniques process visual information in digital images and videos to generate valuable inference. Trained AI models assist medical practitioners to examine clinical images and identify hidden patterns of malignant tumors supporting expediated decision-making and a treatment plan for patients. Most recently, smart speakers have extended their conversational AI capabilities for healthcare use cases like chronic illness management, prescription ordering, and urgent-care appointments.

This advancement opens up the possibility to drive healthcare innovations that will break down access barriers and deliver quality healthcare to a marginalised population. Similarly, global educational programs aimed to connect the digitally unconnected can leverage satellite images and ML algorithms to map school locations. AI-powered learning products are increasingly launched to provide personalised experiences to train young children in math and science.

The convergence of AI with the Internet of Things (IoT) facilitates rapid development of meaningful solutions for agriculture to monitor soil health, assess crop damage, and optimise use of pesticides. This empowers local farmers to model different scenarios and choose the right crop that is likely to maximise the quality and yield, and it contributes toward zero hunger and economic empowerment SDGs.

Decoding best program practices

To deliver high social impact, AI-driven humanitarian programs should follow a “bottom-up” approach. One should always work backwards from needs of the end-user, drive clarity on the targeted community/user, their major pain points, the opportunity to innovate, and expected user experience.

Most importantly, always check whether AI is relevant to the problem at hand or investigate if a meaningful alternative approach exists. Understand how an AI-powered solution will deliver value to various stakeholders involved and positively contribute toward achieving SDG for local communities. Define a suite of metrics to measure various dimensions of program success. Data acquisition is central to building robust AI models that require access to meaningful and quality data.

Delivering effective AI solutions to the humanitarian landscape requires a clear understanding of the data required and relevant sources to acquire them. For instance, satellite images, electronic health records, census data, educational records, and public datasets are used to solve problems in education, healthcare, and climate change. Partnership with key field players is important for addressing data gaps for domains with sparsely available data.

Responsible use of AI in humanitarian programs can be achieved by enforcing standards and best practices to implement fairness, inclusiveness, security, and privacy controls. Always check models and datasets for bias and negative experiences. Techniques like data visualisation and clustering can evaluate a dataset’s distribution for fair representation of various stakeholders’ dimensions. Routine updates to training and testing datasets is essential to fairly account for diversity in users’ growing needs and usage patterns. Safeguard sensitive user information by implementing privacy controls like encrypting user data at rest and in transit, limit access to user data and critical production systems based on least-privilege access control, and enforce data retention and deletion policy on user datasets. Implement a robust threat model to handle possible system attacks and routine checks on infrastructure security vulnerabilities.

To conclude, AI-powered humanitarian programs offer a transformative opportunity to advance social innovations and build a better tomorrow for the benefit of humanity.

Representing the U of I’s Humanitarian Engineering Corps (HEC), five students traveled to the remote community of Challcha in the Andes Mountains, eight hours from the Bolivian capital city of Sucre.

Students work directly with community members to identify potential infrastructure projects to meet community needs. The team built privacy shelters and septic systems for a toilet and shower.

All building materials are funded through donations from Moscow and other Idaho communities to the student club. U of I students fundraise year-round to cover travel costs and to hire professional engineers and construction workers who are also on-site.

Mike Lowry, a civil engineering associate professor who also traveled to Challcha, said community members help with construction, developing background knowledge to maintain the facility after the project is complete.

“The travel is tough, and the work is incredibly hard,” Lowry said. “Having an engineer’s problem-solving mindset is part of what is needed, but this experience drives home the importance of communication and teamwork with the people we serve. Our students gain a deep understanding of the professional skills our society and industry demand through this once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

Mechanical engineering junior Jasmeen Manshahia said developing relationships with the families set the experience apart from a traditional internship or out-of-the-classroom experience.

“We stayed next to a single mother of four,” the international student from India said. “Interacting with her every day, we could truly understand her needs, the challenges she faces every day, and the problems we needed to solve. You don't get that deep understanding in an internship or a regular client scenario. It makes you remember what engineering truly is. It’s helping people.”

Manshahia traveled with students Ian Finnigan, a computer engineering senior from Idaho Falls; Olivia Haener, a civil engineering senior from Boise; and Matthew Troxel, a civil engineering senior from Parma, Idaho. Harrison Bashaw, a recent U of I civil engineering graduate from Coeur d'Alene, was also on the trip.

Since 2012, U of I students have traveled to Bolivia to support efforts to improve access to clean water and sanitation. This is done in partnership with Engineers in Action, an international nonprofit organization focused on developing sustainable systems and infrastructure for underserved communities.

The team recently completed a series of projects spanning five years for the community of Carani in Bolivia, building a gravity-fed water supply system to replace the dilapidated municipal system.

Media Note: Students are available for interview. Email Alexiss Turner at alexisst@uidaho.edu. Photos and video of the trip are available for download online.

Niyoyita wanted to learn how to tackle other issues such as access to quality health care, understanding different cultures, and becoming familiar with local policies. And she felt she needed to enhance her leadership and communications skills and learn how to manage projects.

Thanks to a scholarship from IEEE Smart Village, she is now getting that education through the master’s degree program in development practice from Regis University, in Denver. The program, offered virtually and in person, combines theory and hands-on training on topics such as community outreach and engagement, health care, the environment, and sustainability. It teaches leadership and other soft skills.

In addition to bringing electricity to remote communities, IEEE Smart Village offers educational and employment opportunities. To be eligible for its scholarship, the student’s thesis project must support the program’s mission.

Niyoyita, who attends classes remotely, is a process engineer at Africa Improved Foods, also in Kigali. AIF manufactures porridge from maize and other cereals and fortifies it with vitamins and minerals. She has worked there for more than four years.

“Smart Village wants to empower its members so that we can implement projects in our local community knowing what the best practices are,” she says.

She acknowledges she would not have been able to afford to attend Regis without help from IEEE.

Electronic medical records to improve care

Niyoyita is now in the second year of the degree program. Her research project is to assess the impact of digitizing the medical records of primary care clinics, known as health posts, in rural Rwanda.

“The health post records are mostly paper-based, and transitioning to electronic records would improve patient outcomes,” Niyoyita says. “This provides easy access to records and improves coordination of care.”

She plans to evaluate just how access to electronic records by health care professionals can improve patient care.

Her scholarship of US $5,045 was funded by donations to IEEE Smart Village. Since the educational program was launched in 2015, more than 30 individuals from 16 countries have participated.

“I was fortunate to receive this scholarship,” she says. “It has helped me a lot when it comes to soft skills. As an engineer, normally we tend to be very technical. Expressing ourselves and sharing our skills and expertise are the kinds of things you can only learn through a social science master’s degree.”

Many opportunities as an industrial engineer

As a youngster, Niyoyita was more interested in subjects that required her to reason and think creatively instead of memorizing information. She excelled at mathematics and physics.

“That was how I got into engineering,” she says, adding that she also was inspired by her brother, an engineer.

The degree from Regis is in addition to those Niyoyita already holds from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts, known as HES-SO Valais-Wallis, in Sion, Switzerland. She earned a bachelor’s degree in industrial systems engineering in 2015 and a master’s in engineering with a concentration in mechatronics in 2017.

She chose to study industrial engineering, she says, because she finds it to be a “discipline that offers numerous pathways to various fields and career opportunities. I’m able to understand concept designs—which includes mechanical and electrical—programming, and automation. You have a wealth of career opportunities and a chance to make an impact.”

“IEEE Smart Village wants to empower its members so that we can implement projects in our local community knowing what the best practices are.”

At AIF, she analyzes the company’s processes to identify bottlenecks in the manufacturing line, and she proposes ways to fix them.

“We receive these cereals and clean and grind them,” she says. “We have a cooking section and fortify the cereals through mixing. Then we package and sell them.”

She evaluates the production flow and checks on the performance of the equipment. In addition, she provides technological support when new products are being developed.

AIF is benefiting from the training she’s receiving from the master’s degree program, she says, as she is learning to lead teams, provide innovative solutions, and collaborate with others.

A successful IEEE power conference to Rwanda

Niyoyita joined IEEE while a student at HES-SO Valais-Wallis because she needed access to its journals for her research papers. After she graduated, she continued her membership and started volunteering for IEEE Smart Village in 2019. She served as a secretary for its Africa Working Group team, which worked on humanitarian projects.

She also got involved in organizing conferences in Africa. Her first event was the 2019 PowerAfrica Conference, held in Abuja, Nigeria. It covered emerging power system technologies, applications, government policies, and regulatory frameworks. As a member of the conference’s technical program committee, she helped develop the program and reviewed article submissions. She also was a speaker on the IEEE Women in Engineering panel.

Based on that positive experience, she says, she vowed to bring the conference to Rwanda—which she did last year. As cochair, she oversaw the budget, conference logistics, and other arrangements to “ensure that local and foreign attendees had an excellent experience,” she says. More than 300 people from 43 countries attended.

Providing entrepreneurs with skills to succeed

One project that Niyoyita has put on the back burner because of her work and school commitments is providing her country’s technicians with the skills they need to become entrepreneurs.

Many recent graduates of vocational technical schools in rural Rwanda have told her they want to start their own company, she says, but she has noticed they lack the skills to do so.

“Even though they provide problem-solving products or ideas, they often lack the marketing skills and financial literacy to be able to sustain their project,” she says. “They also need to know how to pitch an idea and make a proposal so they can get funding.”

She would like to create an after-school incubation hub to provide the technicians with training, access to the Internet so they can flesh out their ideas, mentorship opportunities, and advisors who can tell them where to find financing.

“I was able to get some of the skills from the master’s degree program,” she says, “but most of them I got from my work and also from my involvement in IEEE.”

“ICCM-5 is expected to be a watershed moment for international cooperation on chemicals and wastes”, said a statement released by the group of more than 30 experts.  

‘Once in a generation’ chance

“It is a once in a generation opportunity to deliver a robust outcome to confront the global toxic tide.”

They urged those attending the conference to be guided by human rights principles in line with a “post-2020 global policy framework on the sound management of chemicals and wastes.”

According to the experts, “the threats of infertility, deadly illnesses, neurological and other disabilities resulting from exposure to hazardous chemicals and wastes, reveal the widespread and systematic denial of basic human rights for countless persons and groups in vulnerable situations.”

The experts went on to list people who are mostly exposed to these toxic environments, including workers, women and children, the poor and Indigenous Peoples.

‘Toxification’ must stop

“Humanity cannot afford to further aggravate the toxification of the planet,” the experts added.  

“For ICCM-5 to deliver the ambition and strength needed to overcome the global toxic emergency facing humanity, it needs to explicitly embrace a human rights-based approach,” the group of UN experts warned.

Special Rapporteurs and other UN experts are not UN staff and are independent from any government or organisation. They serve in their individual capacity and receive no salary for their work. 

“Considering that children spend nearly one-third of their waking hours in school, and much of the peer pressure they encounter occurs within these educational environments, schools play a pivotal role,” WHO said.

Schools are in “a uniquely powerful position to play a major role in reducing the serious problem of smoking and other tobacco and nicotine use by kids”.

The appeal of e-cigarettes

Although smoking has continued to decline among European teens, WHO reported that there has been a rise in novel and emerging tobacco and nicotine products – including electronic cigarettes.

The UN agency pointed out these products have been made more affordable for young people owing to the sale of single-use cigarettes and e-cigarettes, which also typically lack health warnings. 

“If we don’t take urgent action now, we risk seeing the next generation of tobacco and nicotine users recruited through tobacco industries’ unethical practices,” said Dr Hans Henri Kluge, Regional Director for WHO European Region.

© Unsplash

 

Vaping involves heating a liquid and inhaling the aerosol into the lungs.

New guidance

The alert comes as the WHO released two new publications to coincide with the return to school of children in many countries of the global north: “Freedom from tobacco and nicotine: guide for schools,” and the “Nicotine and Tobacco-Free Schools Toolkit”.

The launch also coincided with a warning last month by regulators in the United States that companies must stop selling illegal e-cigarettes that appeal to youth by resembling school supplies, cartoon characters, and even teddy bears.

“Whether sitting in class, playing games outside or waiting at the school bus stop, we must protect young people from deadly second-hand smoke and toxic e-cigarette emissions as well as ads promoting these products,” said Dr Ruediger Krech, WHO Director of Health Promotion.

“It is deeply concerning that the tobacco industry is still targeting young people and makes vast profits, harming their health”, he continued.

Schools must be safe spaces for young people, where they are free from exposure to, or pressure to use nicotine products. Creating a smoke- and nicotine-free environment in school settings is fundamental to helping prevent young people from starting smoking”.

The WHO guides also highlight countries that have successfully implemented policies in support of tobacco and nicotine-free campuses. They include India, Indonesia, Ireland, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, Qatar, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Ukraine.

‘Whole-of-school’ approach

WHO emphasized a “whole-of-school” approach to creating nicotine and tobacco-free campuses. Input is needed from teachers, staff, students and parents, WHO maintained. 

The UN health agency’s documents include information on how to support students wanting to quit, education campaigns, implementing policies and how to enforce them.

Advice to educators and policymakers includes:

• Banning nicotine and tobacco products on school campuses 
• Prohibiting the sale of products near schools 
• Banning direct and indirect ads and promotion of nicotine and tobacco products near classrooms
• Refusing sponsorship or engagement with tobacco and nicotine industries, for instance for school projects.

Dangers of tobacco smoke

Speaking to journalists in Geneva, WHO medical officer Dr Kerstin Schotte warned that tobacco kills “eight million people every year, or one person every four seconds”.

Meanwhile, 1.3 million people who die from tobacco smoke don’t even use the product themselves but breathe in second-hand smoke.

Dr Schotte noted that “half of the world's children breathe tobacco polluted air and as a consequence, 51,000 children die every year due to exposure to tobacco smoke”. 

It is the second malaria vaccine recommended by WHO, following the RTS,S/AS01 vaccine, which received a WHO recommendation in 2021.

According to WHO, malaria “places a particularly high burden on children in the African Region”, with nearly half a million children dying each year.

“As a malaria researcher, I used to dream of the day we would have a safe and effective vaccine against malaria. Now we have two,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.

Unprecedented demand

Demand for malaria vaccines is unprecedented; however, RTS,S is in short supply.  The addition of R21 to the list of approved shots is expected to result in sufficient supply to benefit all children living in areas where malaria is a public health risk.  

Tedros described it as “a vital additional tool to protect more children faster, and to bring us closer to our vision of a malaria-free future.”

WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti said the shot “holds real potential to close the huge demand-and-supply gap. Delivered to scale and rolled out widely, the two vaccines can help bolster malaria prevention and control efforts and save hundreds of thousands of young lives in Africa from this deadly disease.”

Next steps

WHO is now reviewing the vaccine for prequalification. Having got approval that will enable GAVI [a global vaccine alliance] and Children’s Fund UNICEF to buy the vaccine from manufacturers, added Tedros.

The vaccine will be rolled out in some African countries, including Burkina Faso, Ghana and Nigeria in early 2024, and will be available in mid-2024 in other countries, Tedros said, adding that doses would cost between $2 and $4.

According to Tedros, WHO approved the new malaria vaccine based on the advice of two expert groups: Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) and the Malaria Policy Advisory Group (MPAG).

Recommendation on dengue, meningitis

WHO also recommended Takeda Pharmaceuticals’ vaccine against dengue for children aged six to 16 living in areas where the infection is a significant public health problem.

Dengue, common in tropical and subtropical climates, is a viral infection spread from mosquitoes to people.

WHO’s advisory group SAGE also recommended that all countries in the African “meningitis belt” introduce what it described as (Men5CV) into their routine immunization programmes. It said a single dose scheduled at nine to 18 months of age should fight the disease.

WHO added that “in high-risk countries, and countries with high-risk districts, a catch-up campaign should also be conducted at the time of the introduction of Men5CV, targeting all individuals aged 1 to 19 years.”  

Average surface temperature reached 16.38°C, or 0.5°C above the previous record in September 2020.

Last month was roughly 1.75°C warmer compared to the pre-industrial period. It was also  0.93°C warmer than the 1991-2020 baseline which is used as a practical tool for climate sensitive sectors like agriculture.

The heat is on

WMO said this continues an extended streak of extraordinary land and sea-surface temperatures and is an ominous signal about the speed with which greenhouse gases (GHG) are changing the climate.

"The temperature anomalies are enormous – far bigger than anything we have ever seen in the past. Antarctic winter sea ice extent was the lowest on record for the time of year,” said Petteri Taalas, the agency’s Secretary-General.

“What is especially worrying is that the warming El Niño event is still developing, and so we can expect these record-breaking temperatures to continue for months, with cascading impacts on our environment and society,” he added. 

A ‘dubious honour’ 

Samantha Burgess, the C3S Deputy Director, stressed that September 2023 is one for the record books.

“This extreme month has pushed 2023 into the dubious honour of first place – on track to be the warmest year and around 1.4°C above pre-industrial average temperatures,” she said. 

With the COP28 UN climate change conference taking place in Dubai next month, “the sense of urgency for ambitious climate action has never been more critical,” she added. 

Climate conference looms

WMO uses the C3S data for its State of the Global Climate monitoring reports. The UN agency will release the 2023 provisional report at the start of COP28. 

The Israeli Defense Forces tweeted that according to their intelligence information, rockets fired by Islamic Jihad militants towards Israel were responsible, having deviated off course.

Mr. Guterres stressed in his message on X that hospitals and all medical personnel are protected under international law.

He condemned the strike and an attack earlier on Tuesday on a school run by the UN agency that assists Palestine refugees, UNRWA, which killed at least six people, his spokesperson said in a statement.

The UN human rights chief described the strike on the hospital as "totally unacceptable".

"We don't yet know the full scale of this carnage but what is clear is that the violence and killings must stop at once," said High Commissioner Volker Türk in a statement.

Displaced civilians were reportedly seeking shelter at the hospital, following Israel’s order to evacuate to the south in advance of what is expected to be a ground assault.

“WHO strongly condemns the attack,” agency chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote in a post on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter. 

“We call for the immediate protection of civilians and healthcare, and for the evacuation orders to be reversed,” he added. 

Human rights chief Türk said hospitals are sacrosanct and must be protected at all cost, adding that "those found responsible must be held to account.”

On Tuesday night in New York, the United Arab Emirates said they along with Russia have called for an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Palestine, including the strike on the hospital in Gaza City. 

Evacuation order 'impossible to carry out'

Al-Ahli Arab Hospital was operational, with patients, health and caregivers, and internally displaced people sheltering there, WHO said in a statement.

It was one of 20 hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip facing evacuation orders from the Israeli military.

"The order for evacuation has been impossible to carry out given the current insecurity, critical condition of many patients, and lack of ambulances, staff, health system bed capacity, and alternative shelter for those displaced," WHO said.

The UN agency appealed for the immediate active protection of civilians and healthcare. "Evacuation orders must be reversed. International humanitarian law must be abided by, which means health care must be actively protected and never targeted."

The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) also took to social media to condemn the strike.

"Attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure must cease, and healthcare facilities must never be a target," the UN's reproductive and sexual health agency posted on X.

Healthcare in the crosshairs

During a virtual press conference held later on Tuesday, senior officials underlined WHO’s condemnation over the strike on the hospital.

There have been over 115 attacks on healthcare across the Occupied Palestinian Territory since the start of the conflict on 7 October, sparked by Hamas’s bloody incursion into southern Israel.  

Of this number, 51 occurred in the Gaza Strip, with 15 healthcare workers killed and 27 injured, said Hyo-Jeong Kim, Lead of WHO’s Attacks on Health Care Initiative.  The remaining incidents took place in the West Bank.

Not even hospitals are safe

Gaza has a population of more than two million and the crisis has displaced some 600,000 people.  Many have sought safety in hospitals which are already overwhelmed with rising casualties and deaths, and as fuel and medical supplies dwindle.

Dr. Richard Peeperkorn, WHO Representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, highlighted the dilemma facing people on the run.

“They go to these hospitals because they expect they are safe places. Now, even a hospital is not a safe place anymore, what is?” he wondered.

Running on empty

Food, water and critical medicines and health supplies are running out in Gaza. Out of 35 hospitals there, four are not functioning due to severe damage and targeting, he said. Additionally, only eight of the 22 UNRWA primary healthcare centres were partially functional.

Dr. Peeperkorn reported that all hospitals, especially the largest ones, are running short on essential supplies and medicines, including for treating non-communicable diseases such as diabetes.  Blood banks only have a week of supply left.

“Besides the whole essential medicines, we also have to think about simple things - cleaning materials, hygiene materials - to avoid infections,” he added.  “Already now in the hospitals, in the key hospitals, they see a lot of infections, infected patients, because of that.”

Aid at the border

Meanwhile, trucks carrying lifesaving aid remain lined up at the Rafah crossing, the sole border crossing between Gaza and Egypt. Dr Richard Brennan, Regional Emergency Director for WHO in the Eastern Mediterranean, described the situation as “extremely frustrating”.

“There are a lot of different dynamics going on, we understand.  There is a lot of, frankly, finger-pointing on this, and we also know that there's a lot of diplomacy,” he said.

“Senior UN officials are arriving tonight in Cairo and tomorrow, and I hope that they will be able to negotiate with all the relevant parties to get the opening going as soon as possible.”

Stop the violence

A journalist asked if aid could be airlifted into Gaza, but that option was ruled out by Dr. Mike Ryan, WHO Director of Emergencies and a veteran of Ebola, polio and, most recently, COVID-19 response.

He explained that the volume of aid that can be airdropped is so much lower than what can be delivered overland, particularly as some two million people in Gaza are in need. 

Dr. Ryan said the Rafah crossing is the simplest, safest and most effective way to get aid into Gaza.  

“And it’s not just the Rafah crossing: it’s what happens on the far side of that crossing,” he added, highlighting the need for safe access to hospitals and people.

“It's not just an issue of opening or closing the gate at the border. It's going to require very, very high-level diplomacy between multiple countries," he said.

"The violence has to stop, the bombing has to stop, and we have got to get assistance to the people of Gaza. And that needs to happen now, that needs to happen tonight, that needs to happen tomorrow morning. This cannot wait. It simply cannot wait.”