Geospatial analysis: a new frontier in humanitarian health research?

Abstract

The complexity and brutality of modern conflicts, with Yemen as a prime example, pose threats to humanitarian providers and reduce access to affected communities. Humanitarians and researchers alike have increasingly used remote methods to study health challenges, monitor health violations, and deliver interventions. Remote methods can be as simple as Skyping local providers or more sophisticated such as machine learning-based monitoring of social media reports. In The Lancet Global Health, Kent Garber and colleagues1 explore a grossly underused remote method in humanitarian health research, that is, geospatial analysis.