Jean-Martin Bauer: How Data Enables the World Food Program to Effectively Feed a Country - MBM #26

Minds Behind Maps

Jean Martin Bauer is the Country Director for the World Food Programme in Haiti, where his job is in simple terms to ensure the population does not run out of food. This conversation focuses on the use of data - specifically satellite imagery & maps - and how it helps feed the country.

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Episode Sponsor: Element84
Dan Pilone’s appearance on the podcast
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About Jean-Martin:

- Twitter
- LinkedIn
- World Food Programme

Shownotes:

• World Food Program
• Hunger Map
• WFP’s Prism
• WFP’s Van Project
• FEWS NET: Famine Early Warning System Network
• Stanford’s Monica Lam
• Jean-Martin Bauer on the Humanitarian AI Today Podcast

Books & Podcasts Recommendations:

• Masters of the Dew by Jacques Roumain (”Gouverneurs de la rosée” in French)
• Stuffed And Starved: Markets, Power And The Hidden Battle For The World Food System by Raj Patel
• Humanitarian AI Today Podcast

Time-stamps:

- 00:00 Introduction 01:53 Conversation Starts: Jean-Martin presents himself
- 03:08 Humanitarian Geography
- 10:31 Jean-Martin's current role: WFP's Haiti Director
- 16:39 How do we know the food situation in a country?
- 21:10 Gathering Data To Understand the Food Situation in a Country
- 26:18 Modelling at a Global & Local level
- 31:03 Distributing Data is also hard
- 32:14 Getting people involved
- 35:56 Online Human Rights
- 40:34 What New Space means for WFP
- 45:21 What's in it for Private Companies to work wit NGOs?
- 48:57 Building Trust when Predictions come First from Machine Learning
- 52:25 Disruption is Not Always the Goal
- 53:32 Financing Collecting Data in the Humanitarian World
- 01:01:19 The Role of Data for Jean-Martin's role as Country Director
- 01:05:56 Making Hard Decision when Numbers represent real People's Livelihood
- 01:09:58 Jean-Martin's Critical Look on the Data Science Community
- 01:14:19 Books & Podcast Recommendations
- 01:17:16 Outro

Please feel free to reach out, I truly do want to hear what you think of this :)
- Website
- My Twitter
- Podcast Twitter
- Previous Newsletter: Why I want to do more interviews in person