Mobile Surveying Platform & Borderlands Knowledge Hub
While consulting with the Danish Refugee Council in East Africa on a 6 month contract, Nathan was responsible for scoping out, creating, and implementing a mobile surveying platform with the following objective:
Create a mobile platform to securely and anonymously collect survey data on Android smart phones in the field reliably, working in off-line mode, and using an interface that is intuitive and easy to train non-technical staff in using.
This platform ultimately fed into another DRC project, the Boarderlands Knowledge Hub– which is a cross-organizational resource for various NGOs and aid organizations to communicate around the issues on the Kenya/Somalia border region. Nathan lead to development of this tool as well, managing the development with local Kenyan talent.
Borderlands Knowledge Hub
The Hub was designed to achieve three objectives:
1. Present current information on borderlands conflict dynamics in an intuitive, accessible fashion. This will include visualisation of actors, commercial routes of both legal and illegal goods, land contestations, and conflict incidents, among other dynamics.
2. Provide a library of research on borderlands programming and good practice, categorized by geographical area.
3. Provide an opportunity for actors such as NGOs, UN bodies, universities, and national and regional governments to see the current situation in terms of both research and programming, and to address gaps, share learning, and collaborate on interventions accordingly. The Hub is ultimately designed to become the basis of an inter-agency secretariat on border issues.
“Mr. Nathan Lubeck is an intelligent and motivated individual and it was only when we put his attitude to work looking at international border issues that we fully capitalized on his time with us. With the help of his team, supervising two employees, he produced high quality products and never missed a deadline.
He would be an asset to any organization […] he is diligent, timely, and deliberate in his thinking but also a blast to be around. He is supremely well- read and well versed with theories in international political relations and volunteered during his last week to help pilot the pioneering of this new technology.”
