No Ordinary Purpose. No Ordinary Place.
Peace Tech Lab
FPO Tahrir Square, 2011 (Source: Getty Images)
No Ordinary Purpose. The PeaceTech Lab will work at the intersection of technology, media, and data to devise effective means of reducing violent conflict around the world. The world has changed. Technology has shifted the power of media and mass mobilization from corporate and state-controlled organizations to communities and individuals. At the same time, new insight into human dynamics and sentiment — the DNA of conflict — is being shared on social networking sites and analyzed more rapidly and profoundly than ever before. The confluence of these factors is producing a transformation in conflict management and peacebuilding. From Kenya to Colombia, Afghanistan to Indonesia, we are seeing media and technology being used in innovative ways to inflect age-old drivers of conflict, ranging from election violence and interethnic hatred, to resource shortages and gender violence.
Yet we can do better. We can accelerate the development of these new tools. We can distribute them faster. And we can engage more people in early warning, early response, and collaborative problem solving. We believe the answer lies in moving beyond ad hoc innovation towards a more deliberate model, where engineers and scientists from industry and academia work each day alongside experts in peacebuilding from government, NGOs and the conflict zones themselves. The Lab will be an opportunity to do just this – the first facility of its kind, located in USIP’s expanding campus on the National Mall, and in close proximity to US and International agencies with the influence and resources needed to scale new solutions.
The PeaceTech Lab on the USIP campus
No Ordinary Place. The PeaceTech Lab will be a model of applied innovation, its physical space designed to enable cross-discipline collaboration and real-time communications with the field. Designing technology tools for successful deployment in-country requires close attention to local conditions and conflict dynamics. The Lab will therefore be a collaborative space where experts in technology work with experts in conflict management and with fellows from the conflict zones themselves to imagine, develop, and deploy new tools for the field. Ultimately, however, solutions developed at the PeaceTech Lab must be vetted and embraced by local communities. To achieve this, the Lab will draw on the experience of other innovative global organizations, adopting best practices and technologies for communicating across geographies and time zones in order to connect with local networks.
Finally, the Lab must be agile, given the dynamic nature of conflict itself. The physical space must therefore accommodate a working rhythm that is 24/7 and often as urgent as war itself. The Lab will be located in Navy Hill Building 6, on USIP’s expanding campus adjacent to its main headquarters. Once the site of the Old Naval Observatory and the Naval Bureau of Surgery, this is a historic center for science and technology and therefore a fitting venue for what will be the nation’s first facility where engineers and scientists work alongside experts in peacebuilding to save lives.
Inside the PeaceTech Lab Convene The heart of the PeaceTech Lab will be a flexible, scalable space for collaboration comprised of communal work tables and mobile workstations. The flex space can also be transformed into a
large virtual staging area where Lab staff, peacebuilders, and technology volunteers can convene en masse in response to crises around the world.
PeaceTech at Work Together with Facebook and big data analysts like Palantir, the PeaceTech Lab co-hosts a gathering of volunteer technologists to monitor social medial reports from Burma for signs of possible election violence.
Collaborative Flex Space
Connect The Lab’s Open Situation Room, outfitted with multiple monitors and staffed around the clock, is designed to provide a real-time connection with the world’s hotspots. Staff members can gather here to monitor, analyze, and share information coming in from local media, citizen journalists, and
video conversations with our partners on the ground. In a city full of closed “situation rooms” the Lab will provide a unique open space for informed decision-making, ensuring that responses from DC are rooted in groundtruth and local needs.
PeaceTech at Work A coup occurs in Zimbabwe, and political violence ensues. The Lab analyzes cable news reports, social media feeds, and crowdsourced Ushahidi maps from the field to identify escape routes and nearby medical facilities. A security response specialist from UNHCR and a mobile phone expert from FrontlineSMS strategize with local partners via videoconference to identify immediate needs.
The Open Situation Room
Build At any given time, the PeaceTech Lab will be home to multiple cross-disciplinary teams working intensely on small group projects. Glassed-in meeting rooms of various sizes, each equipped with monitors and conference tables, will create a dedicated space for each project to develop. When not in use as project
spaces, these rooms can host breakout sessions, small meetings, and conference calls. Additionally, the Lab will have a 21st century workshop equipped with rapid fabrication technology (such as 3D printers and laser cutters) for hacking and prototyping new applications of off-the-shelf technology.
PeaceTech at Work The Lab brings together a software developer from Nokia, a media communications strategist from CNN, and an Afghan rule of law expert to transform USIP’s electoral violence curriculum into a mobile phone application designed to inform and educate Afghans prior to the 2015 Wolesi Jirga elections.
Project Rooms
Inspire The PeaceTech Lab will work with peacebuilders locally and throughout the world to design and implement new communication strategies across all types of media — radio, television, social media, print, etc. — to inspire change in the attitudes and behaviors that incite violence.
Back at home, the PeaceTech Lab will be a place where people of different backgrounds, disciplines, and skills can inspire each other. Workstations at communal tables help to break down traditional research siloes.
PeaceTech at Work The Lab hosts a virtual meeting between Kenyan civil society and technologists to develop a network of local volunteers to counter hate speech on social media. A network engineer from Cisco provides help with designing the collaboration platform.
Dedicated Work Stations
UNITED STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE | 2301 Constitution Avenue, N.W. | Washington D.C. 20047 | www.usip.org
The PeaceTech Lab is a project in development at the U.S. Institute of Peace. The use of company names in this brochure is for illustration and imagination purposes only. The U.S. Institute of Peace does not intend to suggest that any of those companies or organizations participate in the PeaceTech Lab, had any role in creating this brochure, or endorse any activity of the U.S. Institute of Peace or any statement or idea described in this brochure.