The Global Pulse initiative has begun a series of consultations to solicit new and creative thinking for the development of the Global Pulse platform. As part of this series of consultations, the Global Pulse initiative hosted a Blue Sky Thinkers Workshop at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Bellagio, Italy, from 6-8 April 2010. The event brought together a diverse group of 13 thought leaders from academia, the private sector and civil society to help the Global Pulse Team brainstorm around some of the project's most challenging conceptual issues. Some of the questions that were debated during the two-day workshop included:

(a) Is the nature of global crises changing, and if yes, how? What are the possible implications of this for vulnerable populations?

(b) What are the challenges and opportunities that need to be overcome/seized to close the information gap between when a crisis hits and when information becomes available to decision makers?

(c) What are the existing and new sources of data that could help decision makers better understand this new context?

(d) What are some of the emerging technologies that could be applied to help inform the design and development of a next generation of analysis and decision support tools? 

Throughout the 2-day discussion, the Blue Sky Thinkers emphasized that the GIVAS initiative needed to be relevant at multiple levels of decision making. Several participants suggested that the GIVAS initiative should be conceived as a bottom-up empowerment model rather than a top-down decision making initiative. In the end, there was general agreement that the GIVAS initiative needed to fuse community empowerment with a decision support system that could help improve real-time data flows between all three levels of decision making. Specifically, the Blue Sky Thinkers recommended that the GIVAS initiative perform the following functions:

• Provide evidence to enhance global advocacy in the face of unfolding crises;
• Provide tools and information to inform national decision making to protect vulnerable populations; and
• Provide information and services to support local community resilience.

The Final Report from the workshop and the List of Participants are now available.