Satellite Technology for Humanitarian Decision-Making

This document was originally developed by Caribou Space for the UK Humanitarian Innovation Hub, a pilot initiative of the UK Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office. The document was produced as part of a project focusing on the use of satellite technologies in humanitarian decision-making and in follow-up to the Beyond Borders research, published in 2022.

The Beyond Borders research identified a dozen barriers that may be delaying or preventing the use of satellite-enabled data in humanitarian decision making. This document is a deeper analysis of three of those barriers:

• Low awareness of potential use cases or resistance to or mistrust of these tools.
• Low technical expertise, restricting the use of satellite technology.
• Concerns relating to the ethics of using satellite data and privacy and security implications of its use and storage.

Based on interviews with actors humanitarian sectors and landscape research, the document offers eleven key insights on using satellite technologies in humanitarian decision-making.