"Patrick Meier is a passionate evangelist for the power of big data to help us respond to natural disasters and other crises. He is also a careful scholar who thinks deeply about the limits and potential dangers of data-centric approaches. His book offers both inspiration for those around the world who want to improve our disaster response and a set of fertile challenges to ensure we use data wisely and ethically."—Ethan Zuckerman, Director, MIT Center for Civic Media and author of Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection

"I dare you to read this book and not have both your heart and mind opened. Patrick Meier writes compellingly about his first-hand accounts of people around the world working together to help disaster victims through advanced computing solutions." —Leysia Palen, Associate Professor and Director of Project EPIC—Empowering the Public with Information during Crises, University of Colorado, Boulder

"Something very like the fog of war afflicts crisis response. On the ground, simply knowing what is wrong — who is suffering? where is the danger? — is both critical and difficult. In Digital Humanitarians, Patrick Meier, a scholar and practitioner of crisis response, shows us how simple digital tools, built and staffed by a worldwide network of volunteers, are providing faster and more comprehensive data for disaster response efforts. Working from examples like the Haitian earthquake and the Arab Spring, Meier shows how tools from artificial intelligence to aerial drones, and techniques from crowdmapping to distributed fact-checking, are helping to dispel some of that fog."—Clay Shirky, Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, New York University and author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations