Philippines, 18 Dec – MapAction has concluded its final rotation of people to the Philippines to provide mapping support to the humanitarian response after six weeks and nearly two hundred mission days. Fifteen of MapAction’s volunteers generously gave their time to assist based initially in Manila and then in Tacloban, one of the worst affected areas. Unusually for MapAction, each team consisted of four to five people for the majority of the mission demonstrating the extent of need for mapped analysis. MapAction provided detailed information to Region VIII (in which Tacloban is located) and in parallel, provided overview information to the humanitarian community.
Initially producing reference maps and situational analysis maps, and working on sharing data with other information management providers, MapAction introduced an automated three W mapping series building on the manual system previously used. These maps describe Who, What, Where of the humanitarian response for each sector in every district (seventeen districts and eleven sectors in total). This series, the first of its kind for MapAction was updated twice a week generating several hundred maps a week. In addition maps for cash programming (including the distribution of market assessments) and the demographics of the affected population have been produced indicating the move from the life saving and immediate relief distribution activities of the earliest stages of an emergency to the recovery and vulnerability targeting activities of the next stage of the response.
MapAction is currently completing its monitoring and evaluation process and will undertake an internal lessons learned exercise with its team in January. A report will be available on the website in February.
MapAction thanks the employers who willingly released their staff at very short notice to form the team of professional volunteers MapAction deployed to the Philippines humanitarian response.
There are benefits potentially both ways. As one employer said,
“This has been probably the most motivating thing for my team all year. Just knowing that in a small way we were helping to get Darren there we felt part of it too. This year, we specifically worked at getting the work he does for Argyll manageable so that he could be deployed at short notice, plus Landmark HR really came through with offering time off.”
Jez Nicholson, Argyll Environmental
Without this support MapAction could not do what it does. We are grateful to: Argyll Environmental, Calesurvey, Environment Agency, EPA (Environmental Protection Agency, ESRI UK, Exprodat, Harrow Council, Landmark Information Group, Sinclair Knight Merz, Sustain, UwArc (Underwater Archaeology).