Snap Truth to Power: Using Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain to verify and secure imagery from conflict affected areas
THE CHALLENGE
While humanitarian assistance provides a crucial lifeline in areas affected by conflict, reliable data to inform, monitor and evaluate its delivery remains a huge challenge in an age of distrust and disinformation. Organizations currently rely on reports and imagery whose metadata and even truthfulness are difficult to verify. Apps such as WhatsApp strip metadata away, while others allow users to manipulate content, creating a gap of trust between people in need and the organizations delivering aid. Verification is often impossible or else requires significant time and resources. As such, humanitarian actors need a technology that allows them to more effectively verify and report data concerning vulnerable populations’ needs and aid access.
THE SOLUTION
To address this need, the Global Strategy Network LTD developed Sealr—a mobile app that uses artificial intelligence and blockchain technology to verify and secure imagery from conflict-affected areas, protecting against false data inputs and enhancing remote collaboration. Under CHIC funding, Sealr was used as a monitoring and evaluation tool for the Facilitating Urban Recovery and Transition (FURAT+) program—a reconstruction and rehabilitation project aimed at restoring essential services and key infrastructure destroyed during the conflict in Northeast Syria. Such infrastructure included infrastructure for water, roads, waste management, sanitation, capacity building, and emergency response. Whilst monitoring and evaluating FURAT+, Sealr verified a total of 3,097 photos between June 26, 2020 and September 30, 2021 and reached 32 partners through outreach and awareness activities. This improved the delivery of the FURAT+ project, increasing access to basic services which had been rehabilitated whilst cutting time and costs by 50%. In providing a platform for citizen engagement, Sealr also increased inclusiveness in governance structures, especially concerning representation of women, religious and ethnic minorities, youth, internally displaced people, and other marginalized populations.
