Layman's Talk: Brian Masinde on Accountable Geo-intelligence

In this new series, we invite PhD candidates to come in and deliver their layman's talk, to make their research accessible to a wide audience. 

Our first guest is Brian Masinde. 

As humanitarian organisations increasingly use GIS, big geodata, and AI to guide aid delivery, concerns are growing about privacy, bias, and accountability.

In this episode, Brian explains his research on protecting demographically identifiable information (DII) within geo-intelligence workflows while upholding humanitarian principles.

He discusses the risks of demographic profiling, group privacy harms, and biased data-driven systems, along with practical solutions such as geodata triage, auditing, and causal methods for bias detection.

His research highlights how humanitarian organisations can move from reacting to data harms toward embedding privacy and accountability into technology design from the start.

Check back here soon for more layman's talks from PhD candidates.