Student app helps predict threats to education in conflict zones

This year’s CarnegieApps Hackathon included a new category with a humanitarian goal: to use technology to help protect education in conflict zones. The category was sponsored by Education Above All’s program, Protect Education in Insecurity and Conflict (PEIC).

At a presentation at CMU-Q this week, the winners of the category, Shahan Ali Memon, Syed Mehdi, Ibrahim Soltan and Sharjeel Khan, described how their application, combs media reports to collect data on attacks on education, creates a confidence score, and maps the attacks to help predict future incidents.

Peter Klanduch, the director of legal advocacy at PEIC, explained the threats facing education in conflict zones. PEIC focuses on the legal aspects of protecting education, and has advised on the Safe Schools Declaration, which is a global initiative endorsed by 63 states aimed at protecting students, teachers and schools from attacks.

CMU-Q alumna Haya Thowfeek, who now works as an information management officer at PEIC, noted the need for quantitative and qualitative data about attacks on education. PEIC is currently working on a global data service that would collect this data and trigger early warnings of attacks.

Learn more about Hackathon 2017.