Humanitarian OSM Team/Board/Board Meeting Minutes/20 June 2013

Summary

Another busy Board meeting building on previous discussions and introducing new topics; main points are as follows. The HOT strategy document continues to be worked upon as does input into the Activation Protocol / Activation and Technical Working Groups. Meetings for the later two were to be held with the community on IRC (these will have happened by the time these minutes become public). We will soon be interviewing / appointing somebody for the advertised Sys Admin position. We are looking to nominate a HOT member to the position of CyberSteward with CitizenLab. We discussed the possibility of a Board face-to-face meeting; SotM Birmingham is one possible potential, although not all Board members will be able to attend. We will continue to investigate funding potentials for a meeting that can be better attended. On the subject of funding, there was some confusion as to the requirement of a solicitation license; we are still unclear about the rules in this area and will assume for now that a license is required and that we are currently unable to solicit for donations.

UAV usage for HOT produced imagery was discussed considerably. Board members agree that this technology is exciting and of enormous possible benefit, but concerns were raised regarding HOT's liability as both an imagery producer and in the event of damage or injury caused by our use of these vehicles. At present we are not insured against the consequences of a UAV accident and we are unaware of what the potential liability may be; in this respect UAV usage is dramatically different from our other activities in the field. We are aiming to answer our current questions and draft a policy concerning the use of UAVs. Mikel raised the issue of making our project reports openly accessible and informed us that Robert Soden will be writing an account of the Haiti response. Kate raised the issue of project scoping on paid time as currently this is an activity that often goes unfunded; this fits with a broader issue of time tracking and needs to be discussed further. Nicolas introduced a number of topics that we were unfortunately unable to discuss due to time constraints; these can be followed up via email.