1. On the recent UN Report on Deaths of SyriaIn support of the
United Nations, Benetech has just released a report on the
estimated number ofdeaths in Syria, which has reflected an
exhaustive analysis of 7 different sources of casualty
reportingwithin Syria, including our collaboration partners,Syrian
Martyrs.We, atSyria Tracker (a project of Humanitarian
Tracker),highly endorse theconclusions of this report, and the UNs
encouragement of such analysisafter it was forced to stop
collecting its own casualty figures nearly a yearago. This report
has provided a very balanced analysis of both the strengthsand
limitations of crowd reporting data, and provides a blueprint for
howsuch data can be used in the future.There are several key
conclusions in this report that can increase theunderstanding of
anyone accessing data from Syria Tracker or similar
sites:TheOverall Number of Deaths listed by most sites may be
greatly underreported:From theperiod of March 2011 through November
2012, many of the non-government reporting siteshave come up with
casualty figures in the 40,000 range. One of the most interesting
findings inthe Benetech report is that, when comparing reports of
named individuals, there were overlaps,and more importantly, gaps
between the different sources, often by geographic region.
Theconclusion was that nearly 60,000 deaths have occurred.Extreme
Violence can reduce the number of deaths reported:The report has
also identifiedpotential effects of violence on reporting networks
within the country. For example, we noticeda drop of reported
deaths in the final siege/assault in Bab Amar, which may have
beenunderreported due to the deaths of witnesses or citizen
reporters. We would also suspectunderreporting in regions such as
DayrAzZor, where there may have been less access to
satellitecommunications equipment.Each Site may have its own
biases: It is realistic to assume that the data from each
organizationmay have its own biases, including its methodology for
collecting data. Anti-government sitesmay not consider it their
duty to record deaths among government troops or revenge
killingsagainst government sympathizers. The government source may
not wish to reveal the fullextent of casualties among its troops,
and would also not wish to report on collateral deathsamong
civilians. We welcome Benetech reports open-minded approach in
applying analysisacross sources.Crowdmapped Data isnt perfect, but
it is better than nothing:At Syria Tracker we must admitthat weve
been puzzled when some people have critiqued our data as being
prone to bias, andsuffers from a lack of academic rigor in the
collection. However, once one steps outside theclassroom, it is
necessary to confront the realities of a constrained data
collection [email protected] |
http://www.humanitariantracker.org 2. where people are reporting at
the risk of their lives. We feel that the Benetech report gets
it,and understands both the value and limitations of crowdmapped
data. For all of its limitations,the fact that SOME data is coming
through in near-real time is a major breakthrough. One canonly
wonder what might have happened if similar reporting was possible
in Bosnia, Rwanda, oreven during the Holocaust. In addition to
drawing attention the tools (mobile and webtechnology) used to
collect crowdmapped data, we also need more attention drawn
todetermining the best analytical approaches to drawing reliable
conclusions from the data. Themethodology used in the Benetech
report seems indeed a useful one.From Syria Tracker, you are only
seeing the tip of the iceberg:Although we dont make claimsof having
the definitive count, the death reports we release from Syria
Tracker have beensubjected to a great deal of cross checking and
de-duplication. We tend only to include reportsof named
individuals, or those where a media record is provided. Only 6% of
citizenreports thatwe receive directly (via email, web-form,
twitter, etc.) have been published publicly. Asignification portion
of those that have not are not duplicates, but rather ones that
weve nothad the time or resources to verify. We are keeping these,
as well as the results of the socialmedia mining and web crawling
capabilities we have implemented, in order to document themost
comprehensive portrait possible. It is our hope that, when
investigation is possible after aregime change, that our records
can be pooled with those of other efforts to help assemble themost
complete record possible. We feel that the analysis performed by
Benetech provides anexcellent start in that direction.We invite you
to read this report by Benetech, and welcome any questions you may
have about the datathat comes from Syria Tracker. We have been
making row level data available from this site untilrecently, but
with the increasing amount of data, we are redesigning how we share
it. In the meantime,please contact us if you wish access to our
data for your own analysis, and we can arrange something.We are
also providing data in Shapefiles at our site if you wish to load
it into a Geospatial InformationSystem, and in KML if you wish to
download it or view it in Google [email protected]
| http://www.humanitariantracker.org
