Yale Humanitarian Research Lab

Yale HRL’s project will transform remotely sensed data into actionable early warnings for nearby communities, speed deployment decisions for UN peacekeepers, support faster and more targeted humanitarian assistance delivery, and provide accurate and timely evidence to accountability mechanisms.

How does your project support peacebuilding and/or conflict resolution efforts in the context of a humanitarian crisis or developmental context?

Yale HRL produces early warning, evidence of crimes, and actionable humanitarian information that protects civilians in conflict and holds perpetrators of mass atrocity crimes to account. HRL’s methods fuse remote sensing and open source data to better understand the human impact of conflict and mass atrocities in nonpermissive environments. HRL innovates both open source and humanitarian analytic methods with a core commitment to develop and uphold the highest standards of ethical practice. Over five years, HRL’s work has catalyzed indictments by the ICC against Vladimir Putin and five others, provided early warning of the genocidal massacre of El-Fasher, and documented attacks on hospitals.

In what ways does your project contribute to the existing PeaceTech ecosystem and research efforts in a compelling way?

The Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health detects, warns, and documents humanitarian emergencies, mass atrocities, and other threats to vulnerable populations through near-real time analysis. HRL’s food security methodology fuses scientific and investigative techniques using remote sensing data and open source data to warn, document, and to support both humanitarian response and international justice and accountability.

With the award funds, how would you expand the scope and applicability of your project or research beyond its initial pilot?

With the Kluz Prize for PeaceTech award funds, HRL will deploy the methodology beyond the Sudan pilot to South Sudan, demonstrating applicability and testing generalizability across different conflict, displacement, and agricultural contexts. The project will establish whether indicators developed through the El Fasher pilot can reliably detect patterns of agricultural destruction and civilian harm in new contexts, laying the foundation for broader deployment across conflict-affected communities.

How does your work leverage collaborations and partnerships to unlock new opportunities and maximize impact?

Everything HRL does is with partners, both formal and informal: humanitarian organizations, UN Agencies, local civil society, commercial and public data providers, policymakers, advocates, and media. Our actionable research on humanitarian crises and war crimes investigations allows HRL to provide verifiable analysis on the impact of conflict and crisis on vulnerable populations.