Crowdsourcing Risk Assessments: Wisdom of the Crowds?

To see presentations from the Crowdsourcing Risk Assessments Session at the Understanding Risk conference, click HERE.

Crowdsourcing is a new methodology enabled by the introduction of new technologies like Ushahidi. Crowdsourcing refers to the act of outsourcing a task to the crowd. More formally, crowdsourcing is defined as “the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.”

Can crowdsourcing really provide added value as a different way to collect data for risk assessments? For example, can crowdsourcing be used to collect risk data directly from beneficiaries or disaster affected communities? What role might a Diaspora play in the crowdsourcing of risk assessments? How does one know whether the information collected is representative let alone accurate? Should issues on data quality be enough to dismiss the potential value of user-generated content altogether?