Natural language processing for humanitarian action: Opportunities, challenges, and the path toward humanitarian NLP
Natural language processing (NLP) is a rapidly evolving field at the intersection of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence, which is concerned with developing methods to process and generate language at scale. Modern NLP tools have the potential to support humanitarian action at...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2023-03-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Big Data |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fdata.2023.1082787/full |
| _version_ | 1797861054221385728 |
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| author | Roberta Rocca Nicolò Tamagnone Selim Fekih Ximena Contla Navid Rekabsaz Navid Rekabsaz |
| author_facet | Roberta Rocca Nicolò Tamagnone Selim Fekih Ximena Contla Navid Rekabsaz Navid Rekabsaz |
| author_sort | Roberta Rocca |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Natural language processing (NLP) is a rapidly evolving field at the intersection of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence, which is concerned with developing methods to process and generate language at scale. Modern NLP tools have the potential to support humanitarian action at multiple stages of the humanitarian response cycle. Both internal reports, secondary text data (e.g., social media data, news media articles, or interviews with affected individuals), and external-facing documents like Humanitarian Needs Overviews (HNOs) encode information relevant to monitoring, anticipating, or responding to humanitarian crises. Yet, lack of awareness of the concrete opportunities offered by state-of-the-art techniques, as well as constraints posed by resource scarcity, limit adoption of NLP tools in the humanitarian sector. This paper provides a pragmatically-minded primer to the emerging field of humanitarian NLP, reviewing existing initiatives in the space of humanitarian NLP, highlighting potentially impactful applications of NLP in the humanitarian sector, and describing criteria, challenges, and potential solutions for large-scale adoption. In addition, as one of the main bottlenecks is the lack of data and standards for this domain, we present recent initiatives (the DEEP and HumSet) which are directly aimed at addressing these gaps. With this work, we hope to motivate humanitarians and NLP experts to create long-term impact-driven synergies and to co-develop an ambitious roadmap for the field. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-09T21:55:52Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-fa275e38538b405bb2177d11c8a349d6 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2624-909X |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-09T21:55:52Z |
| publishDate | 2023-03-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Big Data |
| spelling | doaj.art-fa275e38538b405bb2177d11c8a349d62023-03-24T05:51:13ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Big Data2624-909X2023-03-01610.3389/fdata.2023.10827871082787Natural language processing for humanitarian action: Opportunities, challenges, and the path toward humanitarian NLPRoberta Rocca0Nicolò Tamagnone1Selim Fekih2Ximena Contla3Navid Rekabsaz4Navid Rekabsaz5Department of Culture, Cognition and Computation, Aarhus University, Aarhus, DenmarkData Friendly Space, Richmond, VA, United StatesData Friendly Space, Richmond, VA, United StatesData Friendly Space, Richmond, VA, United StatesInstitute of Computational Perception, Johannes Kepler University, Linz, AustriaLinz Institute of Technology, AI Lab, Linz, AustriaNatural language processing (NLP) is a rapidly evolving field at the intersection of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence, which is concerned with developing methods to process and generate language at scale. Modern NLP tools have the potential to support humanitarian action at multiple stages of the humanitarian response cycle. Both internal reports, secondary text data (e.g., social media data, news media articles, or interviews with affected individuals), and external-facing documents like Humanitarian Needs Overviews (HNOs) encode information relevant to monitoring, anticipating, or responding to humanitarian crises. Yet, lack of awareness of the concrete opportunities offered by state-of-the-art techniques, as well as constraints posed by resource scarcity, limit adoption of NLP tools in the humanitarian sector. This paper provides a pragmatically-minded primer to the emerging field of humanitarian NLP, reviewing existing initiatives in the space of humanitarian NLP, highlighting potentially impactful applications of NLP in the humanitarian sector, and describing criteria, challenges, and potential solutions for large-scale adoption. In addition, as one of the main bottlenecks is the lack of data and standards for this domain, we present recent initiatives (the DEEP and HumSet) which are directly aimed at addressing these gaps. With this work, we hope to motivate humanitarians and NLP experts to create long-term impact-driven synergies and to co-develop an ambitious roadmap for the field.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fdata.2023.1082787/fullNLPhumanitarian responsemachine learningtransformerssocial good |
| spellingShingle | Roberta Rocca Nicolò Tamagnone Selim Fekih Ximena Contla Navid Rekabsaz Navid Rekabsaz Natural language processing for humanitarian action: Opportunities, challenges, and the path toward humanitarian NLP Frontiers in Big Data NLP humanitarian response machine learning transformers social good |
| title | Natural language processing for humanitarian action: Opportunities, challenges, and the path toward humanitarian NLP |
| title_full | Natural language processing for humanitarian action: Opportunities, challenges, and the path toward humanitarian NLP |
| title_fullStr | Natural language processing for humanitarian action: Opportunities, challenges, and the path toward humanitarian NLP |
| title_full_unstemmed | Natural language processing for humanitarian action: Opportunities, challenges, and the path toward humanitarian NLP |
| title_short | Natural language processing for humanitarian action: Opportunities, challenges, and the path toward humanitarian NLP |
| title_sort | natural language processing for humanitarian action opportunities challenges and the path toward humanitarian nlp |
| topic | NLP humanitarian response machine learning transformers social good |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fdata.2023.1082787/full |
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