MapAction’s largest ever intake of new volunteers is latest commitment to building resilience

This weekend a total of sixteen new specialist data volunteers will be welcomed into MapAction’s volunteer cohort. It is the largest ever single intake by the expanding UK-based humanitarian mapping and information-troubleshooting charity.

MapAction staff and volunteers at an induction course for new volunteers this weekend. Photo: MapAction.

The new volunteers come from a panoply of sectors: healthcare, energy and higher education, to mention but a few. They will support MapAction’s work in emergency response, anticipatory action and health programmes, as well as developing data tools for training and innovation. 

“Our volunteers are not just skilled professionals; they are also compassionate and selfless people who generously commit their time, expertise, and energy to supporting disaster-affected communities around the world,” says Marina Kobzeva, director of programmes and partnerships at MapAction. “Their expertise in mapping and data analysis plays a crucial role in informing humanitarian response efforts during emergencies, enabling aid agencies to deliver assistance more effectively and efficiently. Their impact however extends far beyond the immediate aftermath of a disaster. Our volunteers are also deeply committed to building resilience and empowering communities to better prepare for future crises,” adds Marina. 

MapAction volunteers are often data specialists who want to make the crossover to humanitarian work. 

“I wanted to join MapAction because I wanted to actively be part of humanitarian solutions to disasters,” says software developer Elena Jung, who works for Octopus Energy. 

Elena is one of six women who joins in this recruitment window, together with Monika Patel, who works with Ordnance Survey. 

“Throughout my career, I’ve successfully worked with and led many teams internationally and nationally delivering operational goals and products; gaining invaluable experience in data analysis, disaster/incident response, GIS and much more,” says Monika, who now brings this experience to support MapAction’s work. 

READ ALSO: MapAction conducts simulated volcanic eruption response exercise on Isle of Cumbrae

Data scientist Harry Matchette-Downes works in healthcare but has also worked as “a freelance cartographer and geospatial data scientist, using skills learnt during my physics degree and seismology PhD. I’ve always enjoyed field mapping, and I want to do good, so that’s why I joined MapAction,” says Harry. Land surveyor and GIS professor at University College London (UCL) Pippa Cowles says she was inspired to join by two of her students who are currently also MapAction volunteers. 

New volunteers talk with MapAction staff on Friday March 15th, 2024. Photo: MapAction

The MapAction Induction Course, spread over a March weekend each year, is the beginning of a six-month training programme that culminates in November: it prepares new volunteers to be deployable to the sites of major disasters or as support GIS or data officers in humanitarian contexts. The training covers tech and humanitarian protocols and includes several simulation exercises. 

WATCH ALSO: What is MapAction?

MapAction’s internal and external capacity building programmes are funded by USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA).

Meet a MapAction pioneer on International Women’s Day

She survived a volcanic eruption and helped rebuild her island afterwards. Meet Lavern Ryan, a MapAction volunteer and GIS aficionado.

Lavern Ryan in Cottesmore, UK, for HEAT training. Photo: Lavern Ryan

‘Be the change that you want to see in the world’ is a quote often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi but on International Women’s Day 2024, MapAction volunteer Lavern Ryan says it captures her thoughts. “I would like to encourage women and girls worldwide to do just the same. Whatever one sets their mind to, it can be accomplished with strength, determination and prayer,” she adds. 

Lavern is the living proof of her own words; her story reads like a triumph of willpower over circumstances. In 1995, Lavern was displaced from her home island of Montserrat due to a volcanic eruption.

Displaced by volcano

“I remember it like it was yesterday although it was 28 years ago,” Lavern recalled recently in a podcast with GeoMob. Lavern went on to recollect how many people on the Caribbean island of Montserrat tried to head north amidst the “chaos and panic” to get away from the erupting Soufriere Hills volcano. The current population of Montserrat is approximately 5000 people.

HEAR MORE: Podcast: Towards disaster resilience with CDEMA in the Caribbean

Lavern first moved to Antigua, the closest island to Montserrat, but found misfortune to have travelled with her. In September 1995, the Category 4 Hurricane Luis struck Antigua, meaning Lavern had now experienced two major natural disasters within three months. Lavern was 13 at the time.  She went on to complete her secondary school education in Antigua and then a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science in Trinidad and Tobago. She later also studied at Edinburgh University and the University of Dundee in Scotland.

GIS to the rescue

When Lavern did return to Montserrat a few years later, the southern part of the island – still inaccessible today – was covered in pyroclastic flows. Her newfound skills in GIS and remote sensing were serendipitous however, “to identify where the best places were to occupy the northern part of the island.” Timely work as the volcano has continued to erupt since 1995, making half of the island uninhabitable. 

Since 2002, Lavern has been the GIS Manager for the Government of Montserrat. She works closely with the Island’s disaster management authorities and cares for a broad portfolio: from leading hydrographic surveys and conducting aerial drone mapping to training the next generation of enthusiastic humanitarian mappers on the island.

“I really admire Lavern’s attitude to her life and work,” says MapAction’s Alan Mills, who has worked with Lavern for many years. “She not only juggles all her government duties on Montserrat with her priorities  to her family and friends, she still has time to advocate across her community, kids and adults alike, of  the importance of maps and geoinformation in everyone’s lives and apply all those skills with energy to spare.”

Lavern is interviewed by BBC Scotland at a MapAction simulation exercise in May 2023. Photo: MapAction.

So what has Lavern’s work entailed most recently? “The capturing and processing of drone aerial images in Montserrat was an important aspect which helped with the successful implementation of enumeration for the 2024 Montserrat population and housing census,” Lavern told the MapAction communications team. 

VIDEO: What is MapAction?

Never stop learning 

Despite having more than 20 years GIS experience under her belt, Lavern continues to refresh and broaden her skillset. During a recent visit to the UK, Lavern attended courses, training and talks at key institutes. 

At the UK Hydrographic Office in Taunton, Lavern had the opportunity to meet with other UK Overseas Territory delegates and engaged in discussions on hydrographic action plans, governance and marine spatial planning. There was also a focus on the need to upskill her use of software to conduct hydrographic surveys as part of Montserrat’s commitment to the International Convention on Safety of Lives At Sea (SOLAS). “This helps us to fulfil our international safety obligations,” says Lavern, the technical lead for conducting hydrographic surveys on the island of Montserrat.

READ ALSO: Gender in Maps, a MapAction report (2023)

“I also visited the Joint Nature Conservation Committee  (JNCC) offices in Peterborough,” adds Lavern. “My focus there was to wrap up a project we were working on with respect to storm surge modelling.”

Lavern also managed to squeeze in a refresher security course, a prerequisite for all MapAction volunteers who deploy. Lavern began to volunteer with MapAction in 2019 and has been involved in several remote responses to natural disasters in the Caribbean since 2020. She expects to be involved in more this year, often together with the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA). After all, the Caribbean has its own season, she told GeoMob: “Hurricane Season,” from June to November each year. Her skillset will forever be needed.

READ ALSO: “We see real outcomes.” MapAction impact in Central Asia in partnership with CESDRR

MapAction’s internal and external capacity building programmes are funded by USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA).

Podcast: Towards disaster resilience with CDEMA in the Caribbean

Renee Babb, GIS specialist with the Caribbean Disaster and Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) – a longterm MapAction partner – and Lavern Ryan, a GIS specialist with the government of Montserrat and also a MapAction volunteer, talk with MapAction’s Alan Mills MBE on the GeoMob podcast about CDEMA and MapAction’s decade-long relationship.

Find out why they say there is a fifth season in the Caribbean: “Hurricane Season.”

READ ALSO: MapAction renews partnership with the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency

A longer version of this podcast was originally broadcast by GeoMob here.

This work was supported with funds from USAID’s Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance.

CoP 28 : Good use of data is key to mitigating the climate emergency 

MapAction urges world leaders and stakeholders gathered at COP28 to promote data-driven solutions to improve the lives of people on the front lines of climate change. (A version of this article was first published before CoP27 in Egypt in 2022. It was updated for CoP28 in November 2023. )

In recent years we have seen a large increase in the number of natural disasters worldwide. Regular climate-related disasters are exacerbating water and food insecurity. 

How emergency relief stakeholders and governments coordinate their responses to the climate emergency can impact the recovery of affected communities. That is why good data is key to preparedness and mitigation, especially in locations with limited resources. 

Ice and snow on the Hindu Kush mountain range, which runs along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, is melting and causing devastating floods in both countries. Photo: MapAction

As the changing climate ravages and displaces some of the world’s poorest communities, good data use will not prevent such climate-driven occurrences. It can only soften the effects by helping the affected communities, and stakeholders, to be prepared and to coordinate relief strategies. Good use of data in decision-making at key moments can reduce the human cost of the climate emergency. 

“Data, often visualised through maps, can help identify who the most vulnerable people are, where they are, and highlight need,” said Nick Moody, MapAction’s chair of trustees, before CoP27 in 2022. “At CoP27 there was a recognition that while this information is critical during a crisis, it can have an even greater effect if used in advance. MapAction has a huge role to play in helping others to build resilience through data.”

Why MapAction?

Since MapAction’s inception over 20 years ago, the charity has provided data and specialist technical geospatial and data volunteers in more than 140 crises, many climate-related, worldwide. Our team has supported responses alongside UN, regional and national agencies as well as INGOs and local civil society organisations, providing relief to some of the most vulnerable climate-exposed people worldwide. 

READ ALSO: MapAction urges wider adoption of GIS for disaster resilience at UN Expert Meeting

Our 70+ volunteers come from across the ever-growing range of sectors using data and geospatial technology, bringing a huge diversity of technical expertise. MapAction gives them the training, operational experience and support needed to operate effectively in humanitarian situations. 

Working in collaboration with many emergency relief partners, our teams create unique situation maps, data visualisations, data sets and other products that help coordinate disaster relief using the best available information in the most insightful ways. The improved decisions they enable can help mitigate, for example, the impact of droughts, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, famines and health crises, to save lives and protect communities. In 2023 alone, MapAction has provided data products, volunteer mapping teams or experts to support emergency response, anticipatory action programmes or capacity building in a dozen countries in five continents.

READ ALSO: MapAction continues to strengthen global disaster preparedness in summer of 2023

From response to anticipation

While MapAction’s initial expertise was in support of emergency response, our work is increasingly moving into early warning and preparedness. Anthropogenic climate change has been proven to alter both the likelihood and the severity of extreme weather events around the world, and the growing frequency of these can be predicted, if not precisely then generally. Being ready to spot the indicators, triggering early support for anticipatory action can be life-saving. Predictive analytics can allow us to define the mechanisms that trigger these actions by analysing current and historical data and developing models, as long as the data is reliable.

READ ALSO: Why we must address the gender gap in humanitarian data

“It is more important than ever to be able to respond effectively to such events, but also to be able to anticipate them, in order to more effectively mitigate their impact,” Daniele Castellana, former lead Data Scientist at MapAction, commented before CoP27. “Through our collaborations with the Centre for Humanitarian Data and the Start Network, MapAction has been working on this flourishing component of humanitarian aid.” MapAction launched its own InnovationHub in 2022.

READ ALSO: MapAction Data Science Lab: the story so far

Early action is one of the most effective ways to address the ever-growing climate impacts. That is why MapAction has partnered with the START Network, a coalition that focuses on humanitarian action through innovation, fast funding and early action; Insurance Development Forum is also a partner in this work. START Network brings together 55 international non-governmental organisations and 7,000 partners worldwide. MapAction is also working with INFORM to support updating forecast and risk models with select national disaster management agencies worldwide.

READ ALSO: 7 Country Missions Completed Successfully as Part of Phase 1 Programme for Anticipatory Action and Disaster Risk Reduction

From commitment to action

MapAction has made concrete commitments to actively seek solutions to reduce the impact of climate change. In October 2021, we signed the Climate and Environment Charter for Humanitarian Organisations. The charter was developed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), and guided by a 19-person strong Advisory Committee which included representatives of local, national and international NGOs, UN agencies and National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, as well as academics, researchers and experts in the humanitarian, development, climate and environmental fields.

Signing that charter commits us to being a part of the solution and helping people adapt to a changing climate and environment. It will also help strengthen our own resolve and efforts to be environmentally sustainable. Most of all, it recognises that our efforts must be a collective endeavour – no organisation can tackle this alone.

Together with a growing range of partners, looking to engage ever more locally, we are using geospatial data, data visualization and data science to start laying the groundwork for climate resilience. The objective is to improve preventive actions and strategies in humanitarian response. 

Because what we map today we can mitigate tomorrow and in the future. That is why the science of how we source, analyze, shape, share and deploy data must be at the heart of all current and future discussions on adapting to climate change. 

For more info on MapAction’s work, please drop by our website

You can also follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram

If you haven’t yet done so, please do subscribe to our newsletter to receive regular updates on our work. 

A version of this article was first published before CoP27 in Egypt in 2022. It was updated for CoP28 in November 2023.

MapAction looking for volunteers to unlock information management barriers in humanitarian sector

MapAction is looking to fill six new volunteer positions with candidates who have the right skills to support work in the following fields: geospatial, development of geospatial training content, data science, data visualisation, software development and data engineering. Help MapAction and the humanitarian sector mitigate climate change and health emergencies through innovative use of software, geospatial technology and training, visualisations and data solutions.

Every day we hear news of how climate change is having devastating consequences for communities worldwide. As the effects become more clear and prominent – floods, droughts, hurricanes and natural disasters  – it is easy to feel helpless before the mitigation task at hand. 

At MapAction we are working to strengthen early warning systems, anticipatory humanitarian action, so that communities exposed to climate change and health emergencies can be more prepared and resilient. 

Frontline communities affected by a health or climate emergency depend on humanitarian agencies getting decisions right. These decisions, in turn, depend on good use of data. 

At MapAction, we are always looking for innovators who can bring their skills and experience to create data solutions that can support saving lives in humanitarian disasters. That is why we are inviting a software developer who can unlock information management barriers with innovative data solutions, a data engineer who can unlock devops challenges and review data and code hygiene issues, as well as a data scientist who can design innovative data-delivery breakthroughs for humanitarian agencies and partners. The geospatial volunteers will help us to continue to place the benefits of mapping and geospatial analysis at the service of humanitarians. 

Data scientist and data visualiser

The data scientist performs statistical analysis of geospatial data and helps us create data visualisations and dashboards. They review literature, collaborate with partners and help design and provide internal and external training. The data visualiser, on the other hand, will maintain the highest standards for visual communication, produce and test reports and dashboards, as well as charts and infographics. Each of these roles will work closely with the others. 

IN IMAGES: MapAction conducts simulated volcanic eruption response exercise on Isle of Cumbrae

Each role, however, is designed to streamline the work MapAction does: delivering a more efficient and data-driven humanitarian operations field, to support decision-makers in getting it right, so that lives are not needlessly lost or negatively affected. For a data engineer this might mean running a prototype environment to review how MapAction integrates software projects alongside mapping/data projects. It might mean cleaning script redevelopment – code hygiene – or deploying source controlled python scripts into a project workspace. For a data scientist, it might mean working with a software engineer or a specific disaster model or a tool to support early warning or relief decisions. Data and software engineers will also review coding standards and guidelines. 

Geospatial specialists

For a geospatial volunteer, it might be one map that opens up a huge aid solution or unlocks critical early funding for a CSO or humanitarian resilience network. In 2023 alone, our geospatial volunteers have responded to major crises alongside the UN in Turkiye, Libya, Kosovo and Peru. As a geospatial training content developer, you might engage in any number of activities: from providing support to CSOs in Southeast Asia or Southern Africa, to working with regional partners like the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) or developing simulation for specific disasters, such as hurricanes. 

Many of these roles will entail opportunities to travel and work with some of the world’s leading humanitarian organisations: from the UN, WHO or WFP, to regional disaster response coordinators in four continents. 

READ ALSO: MapAction disaster mapping volunteers supporting UN on response to floods in Libya

Working closely with MapAction’s inhouse tech and geospatial departments – which include software engineers and data scientists –  as well as the UN’s Centre for Humanitarian Data in the Hague and other global partners, whoever fills these roles will get the opportunity to develop software, maps, training programmes, visualisations and data solutions that will broadly impact the humanitarian sector, as well as regional and national disaster relief agencies. These will pave the way for long-term impact and resilience. Working closely with national disaster agencies through the Start Network and INFORM, our innovation and tech team review national disaster models and preparedness worldwide, with a frontrow seat to enact sustainable change.

It is an opportunity for people with the right tech skills to see how the wider humanitarian system operates from the inside and where data and geospatial solutions play a role:  a front row seat to understand global trends and pressures driving world events and their consequences on people

Volunteers also provide vital support to UN agencies and other partners in emergency operations centres worldwide, both in-person and remotely. MapAction has been involved in more than 140 emergency responses worldwide in the last 20 years. 


Like what you’ve read and want to get involved? Please click here to see the full list of roles and to apply.

This work is made possible with funds from USAID’s Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance (BHA)

“Adds value to humanitarian response”

Volunteer Ant Scott talks to the GeoMob podcast about volunteering at MapAction.

Ant Scott (centre) at MapAction’s emergency response simulation event on the Isle of Cumbrae in May 2023. Photo: MapAction.

Below is an edited excerpt of a podcast produced by GeoMob and featuring long-time MapAction volunteer Ant Scott talking about MapAction’s work. Listen to the full podcast here.

Urgent appeal : Humanitarian Response Fund

Thank you for opening MapAction’s Humanitarian Response Appeal. We need your urgent help as we seek to fund our continuing responses to humanitarian crises in 2023 and beyond. 

If you fund MapAction you won’t be buying blankets, water, shelter or food. You will be making sure that as those items arrive they get to where they are needed most, as quickly as is possible.

The maps we make help to inform the activities of many different streams of aid, making sure that the most up-to-date information is being used to identify the greatest need. Understandably situation maps and data are not the first thing you might think of when hearing about a response, but just imagine trying to plan search and rescue, emergency health care or efficient aid delivery without maps showing you what is happening, where, and just as important, where the needs are.

Roberto Colombo Llimona, Head of the UN OCHA Assessment & Analysis Cell for the first phase of the Turkiye response, had to support humanitarian decision-makers immediately after the Turkiye earthquake. He said: “Investing in MapAction is a great way to support humanitarian operations…supporting Mapaction is supporting response directly”. 

MapAction’s field teams are the most visible part of our activity, but more often MapAction members are supporting situations remotely, making maps, preparing data, each as qualified and experienced as the team members in the field.

Above : MapAction Field Team members working in the UN Onsite Operations Coordination Centre in Gaziantep, Turkiye.

Why Support MapAction?

MapAction has a unique capability to help in humanitarian crises. Turkiye/Syrian Arab Republic is MapAction’s 12th earthquake and our 137th response: we bring a wealth of knowledge, know-how and operational insight.  Immediately after news of this latest devastating earthquake broke, UNDAC, one of many long-standing partners of MapAction, requested support.

MapAction responded immediately, as we always want to do. However there is a significant cost for MapAction to maintain and provide well-trained, well-supported teams, very rapidly. As an organisation we aren’t large enough to receive funds from the big TV and newspaper appeals, so we must raise the money however we can. This is increasingly a combination of trusts and foundations, corporate support, (often from mapping, geospatial and data-related businesses) and private individuals. We are grateful to them all.

If MapAction’s support can’t be provided when its asked for, responses to disasters may be less effective and more costly. Supporting MapAction can save lives, and make scarce resources go further. 

Please help us to continue this vital work. Whilst highly-valued and regularly requested, MapAction’s response missions have no direct funding right now.  We no longer need immediate funding for the Turkiye/Syria earthquake response, but we do need funding for the next mission and those after that, to ensure we can get on the plane without hesitation . Any donation, big or small, matters right now.

Donations can be made direct to MapAction in the UK, or to MapAction USA as a 501c3, who can also receive funds for this urgent work.

Please partner with MapAction to ensure that all aid gets to where it is needed most, for the many people affected by humanitarian emergencies. Thank You.

A volunteer-driven disaster relief model: a glimpse into a MapAction training weekend

Dogs patrol volunteer tents after a bout of rain at a recent MapAction training weekend. Photo: Cate Seale.

MapAction is a hub of 80 data, geospatial and geography professionals who volunteer as humanitarian mappers for disaster relief. Our new Head of Communications Alex Macbeth shares his views below of a recent training weekend, providing an insight into how and why volunteers at MapAction do what they do.

The GPS points towards a small community hall in a village not far from Oxford. As I approach, a row of wet tents in a field catches my eye. A couple of covered gas canisters outside suggest there has been cooking. Inside the sparsely-adorned hall, about 50 people are sitting on plastic chairs or leaning on pop-up tables.

The breakfast snacks on a table are thrifty: bread, tea, a handful of digestives. Laptop bags and raincoats line the edges of the room, like landmarks parked between the rivers of cables and extension leads. A few well-behaved dogs are roaming around, although it isn’t clear what geospatial credentials any of them have. Laptops are out; all eyes are on the map on the projector. 

A foremost expert among dogs on Geospatial Information Systems (GIS)? Photo: Luis Velasquez.

Lean and green event

I wasn’t sure what to expect at my first MapAction training weekend after recently joining the humanitarian mapping charity as head of communications. Many aid events I have attended or that I have been a part of in the last 10 years in the sector have often had the aesthetics of a high-society gala rather than a community feel. This was less Champagne Sunday, more lean and green.  

MapAction, a charity that works alongside UN, regional and civil society disaster relief agencies to map disaster landscapes and strengthen disaster preparedness, holds regular training events for its cohort of nearly 80 volunteers. These events create a platform to simulate disasters and the response expected from MapAction. They also serve as a way for volunteers who have been on deployments or worked on projects to provide feedback to each other, their peers and to the broader team at MapAction. These circular procedures and reviews are fundamental to how MapAction assesses impact. The learnings from these events ultimately get fed back to our InnovationHub, where new tools, projects, approaches and solutions are developed. 

New recruits

Early in 2023, MapAction added 12 new recruits to its volunteer cohort after a diligent and long interview and screening process. They come from an incredible range of fields and work for leading research institutes, businesses and other bodies, including the British Geological Survey, the British Antarctic Survey, Arup, Informed Solutions, the University of St Andrews and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, to mention but a few.  

MapAction volunteers, old and new, brainstorming in a session at a recent training weekend outside Oxford, UK. Photo: Alan Mills.

Their skill sets for the job are proven but it is their life experiences that jump out. One is a former National Park ranger in Taiwan; another made maps for an Oscar-winning actor while yet another was himself a child actor on screen. They come from half a dozen countries, including Andorra. 

As I drove to the training weekend through endless roundabouts on a particularly rainy Sunday morning, I kept asking myself: why do successful mapping and data professionals give up their time and drag themselves to or across England in late March to camp by a wet community hall for a weekend? The answer was obvious once inside the room.

United community

The shared sense of commitment to humanitarian values was overwhelming. Volunteers don’t bemoan the sacrifice. If there is a personal cost to the work they do with MapAction, they hide it well. Passion brings them time and time again. The sense of passion for being able to support and inform key relief decisions in humanitarian crises is something money cannot buy. That shared sense of community – that shared commitment – was tangible. 

The training itself focused on the procedures for mapping in humanitarian situations: naming maps and admin boundary colour schemes, archiving data, different symbology (good to distinguish the humanitarian icon for bacteria from that for bottled water), as well as templates, toolbars and software used by MapAction. There was also a review of MapAction’s recent earthquake response in Turkiye and Syrian Arab Republic.

Many of the 50 or so volunteers in the room were ‘veterans’ of recent deployments: whether it be MapAction’s response to the earthquakes in Turkiye or the team that deployed to Democratic Republic of Congo at Christmas last year in response to floods. Some volunteers professed to having weaker cartography skills than others; others were evidently linguists or experienced project managers. It was easy to see how this combination of skill sets is needed to tailor the right response to a vast range of natural disasters in so many global territories. 

Always ready

And that is really the point. No two disaster responses look the same. For MapAction to be committed to saving lives when disasters strike, this fundamentally generous network of professionals needs to constantly update its skills and training to be on standby to respond. Volunteers outnumber staff by 4 to 1 at MapAction. That prevalence of volunteer spirit is MapAction’s soul; the shared sense of purpose cannot be rivalled with other incentives. 

After a brief editorial exercise and an attempt to sign up these awesome women and men to produce content, it was time to pack up and leave. Tables, chairs, cables and projectors were dismantled with clinical efficiency. I couldn’t see them but I suspected even the dogs were trained to do something, like update software or pack away tents. 

All said and done, the volunteers returned to different parts of the UK or Europe. One was seen setting off for a major transport hub miles away by bike. With them all went a little more disaster preparedness into the world.

This work is made possible with funds from USAID’s Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance (BHA)

How maps can save lives when disasters strike

Prompt mobilisation of MapAction volunteers is helping the earthquake response in Türkiye and Syria. But as natural disasters intensify, the charity is appealing for funds to meet growing demand

A batch of maps printed for disaster relief field teams in Gaziantep, southeast Turkiye, in February 2023. Photo: MapAction.

Read more in the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Land Journal.

MapAction signs WHO partnership agreement underlining growing support for health emergencies

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

MapAction has signed the Standby Partnership Agreement with the World Health Organisation (WHO) which will allow the UK-based emergency response and disaster preparedness charity to have greater impact in health emergencies. 

The agreement will see MapAction volunteers ready on standby to deploy to any health emergency operations at the request of the WHO. This will help bring the organisation’s unique data-driven approach to saving lives in even more health crises worldwide. 

The Standby Partnership Agreement will streamline and simplify how MapAction can deploy to WHO emergency operations at short notice. The agreement states that MapAction will “maintain a roster of standby personnel….for the rapid mobilisation and deployment of pre-screened individuals…to WHO emergency operations.” 

“We will provide some surge support that will be relevant to WHO emergency operations,” MapAction’s CEO Liz Hughes says of the agreement, noting that it is an important step to being able to deploy faster and more efficiently alongside WHO teams in emergency operations. “We have a growing knowledge of health needs through our own work” adds MapAction’s CEO. 

MapAction has already lent data management, geospatial and mapping support in 13 health-related emergency deployments worldwide since 2014. Teams of volunteers from the Oxfordshire-based charity were involved in providing support in the Ebola crisis in West Africa, as well as during the more recent COVID-19 pandemic. A team of MapAction volunteers is also currently working on a project to reduce the impacts of cholera in Malawi. 

MapAction personnel have also contributed to a leading sector title on how to respond to health emergencies (In Control: A Practical Handbook for Professionals Working in Health Emergencies Internationally).  

Besides deployments to emergency health crises, MapAction has also developed, with partners, the Integrated Humanitarian Data Package (IHDP) tool, designed to aid final mile vaccine delivery planning and logistics. It contains selected data sets, information explaining the data (‘metadata’) as well as GIS and coding tools which allow users to easily develop situation-specific items such as maps and other graphics. 

The IHDP was trialled during the roll out of COVID-19 vaccines in South Sudan.

It was adapted in Burundi in late 2022 to combat the impacts of malaria. 

MapAction reinforces pivot towards early warning work after 20 years of focus on disaster response

By MapAction CEO Liz Hughes

Photo: Hermann Traub/Pixabay.

MapAction’s 2022 Annual General Meeting celebrated 20 years of humanitarian service. The event in early December also served as a platform to announce the organisation’s increasing pivot towards early warning work – to consolidate global resilience to the climate emergency, health epidemics and conflict.

20 years ago a small group of people started MapAction from humble beginnings in a village in Oxfordshire. The organisation has grown – via more than 130 deployments alongside international, regional and national relief agencies – to encompass a cohort of more than 60 volunteers and 20 staff with a global footprint of projects in five continents. 

In 2022 alone, MapAction was involved in responses to disasters in Paraguay, Suriname, Madagascar, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, The Gambia and the Philippines (to mention but a few), responding to cyclones, floods, droughts, conflict and food security emergencies. 

This year, MapAction volunteers and staff completed 59 projects. Our teams produced hundreds of maps and trained more than 100 professionals in GIS and data and information management worldwide. With the help of five major donors and many individual donations, we were able to work with 26 key partners globally. A majority of our cohort of volunteers attended 14 training events in the UK. 

New dawn

Coming into 2022 we knew it would be an inflection point for the organisation, with different routes we could travel. Twenty years on from our beginnings, that seems appropriate. 

We have had a front seat alongside emergency relief agencies in more than 130 disaster responses since we started providing maps, data analytics and IM services to humanitarian emergency relief coordinators. Thousands of maps later, we are using that experience to create new, and better, ways of working.

Grassroots resilience

Perhaps the most striking change compared to the humanitarian sector 20 years ago when MapAction was founded is the shift away from global relief agencies towards local and national leadership for response, anticipatory action and preparedness. We recognised a while back that we will not always be the ones providing the maps; others will do so. That is why we are increasingly focusing on a strategy of ‘global localisation’: supporting regional and grassroots response capacity.

MapAction works with regional and local disaster relief bodies and civil society organisations worldwide to strengthen resilience and preparedness vis-a-vis any disaster. In Asia, we work with the Asian Disaster Reduction and Response Network (ADRRN), the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance (AHA Centre) – an intergovernmental organisation consisting of 10 southeast Asian nations – as well as the Center for Emergency Situations and Disaster Risk Reduction (CESDRR) in Central Asia.

In the Caribbean, MapAction works with the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA). Equivalent projects are also underway to create partnerships and opportunities for knowledge exchange among humanitarian data analytics practitioners in Africa. 

InnovationHub

We support organisations to streamline preparedness for any disaster through enhancing response with innovation and new ideas. That is why we are increasingly placing resources and energy into our InnovationHub, which identifies, prioritises and explores needs and opportunities in the humanitarian data analytics sector. Our ultimate goal is for no one to be left behind. 

We see the potential of building communities of like-minded people to use geospatial and data analysis to help decision-making effectively. We wanted to globalise the wonderful data-crunching culture of MapAction, our own community of practice. Such communities can cross national boundaries working collaboratively and in solidarity to use data and tech to solve problems and answer questions

Looking to 2023

In 2023, we are already earmarked to work in Bangladesh, Burundi, Madagascar, Philippines and South Sudan on preparedness and anticipatory action, as well as on health microplanning. The calendar for next year in general is looking exciting.

In January, MapAction will lead ‘geo-surgery’ sessions as part of the State of the Map Tanzania conference. In April, our annual disaster simulation Gilded will bring together more than 50 data professionals on the Isle of Cumbrae off the west coast of Scotland. Our InnovationHub will continue to collaborate with the Predictive Analytics team at the UN Centre for Humanitarian Data to push the boundaries of innovation. 

As the final days of the year loom, I can honestly say 2022 was everything we anticipated. We end the year having achieved what we set out to do, with perhaps the strongest team that we’ve ever had. We will carry this momentum into 2023, fully aware that very real challenges lie ahead of the horizon. One of the greatest challenges we will face will be to secure the resources that we need to achieve the impact that we strive for. I know that MapAction will continue to work to fill this funding gap with determination, innovation and conviction. 

All that remains for me to say is to wish all of our donors, partners, volunteers, members, staff, friends and followers all the very best for the festive season. Merry Xmas! 

MapAction helps combat malaria in Burundi with data

MapAction’s work has always applied its geospatial and data expertise in order to provide information on humanitarian needs. Now, due to the changing world around us, we are expanding our focus on issues such as health and in other areas. Our activities will increasingly aim to use data and geospatial information to combat major health challenges that affect vulnerable populations. 

We have previously used our expertise in health related areas during the Covid-19 crisis and are now turning our focus to other challenges, the first being malaria. Malaria is one of the leading causes of death, suffering, poverty and underdevelopment globally. Every year 500 million people become severely ill from malaria and more than a million people die, the great majority of them women and children in sub-Saharan Africa.

We know that data and geospatial information and good knowledge management can help reduce these figures. Our IHDP tool (Integrated Humanitarian Data Package) was designed to aid vaccine delivery planning and logistics. It contains selected data sets, information explaining the data (‘metadata’), and GIS and coding tools which allows users to easily develop situation-specific items such as maps and other graphics.

Having trialled the IHDP in South Sudan for Covid 19 vaccine delivery planning, we are now testing it in a second country, and with malaria. In Burundi malaria cases have almost doubled since the early 2000s, reaching 843,000 cases per million inhabitants in 2019.  

To kick-off our programme of work, two MapAction team members travelled to Burundi to meet with partners from the Programme National Intégré de Lutte contre le Paludisme (PNILP – the National Integrated Malaria Control Programme). Our aim was to support them with digital data collection and to assess the need for more support.

The PNILP team distributes long-lasting insecticide treated bednets to households across the region. In the past, they have used a paper-based survey to estimate the number of bednets needed but they want to use a digital survey to make the process more effective.

The two teams discussed how we might work together and the MapAction team demonstrated how KoBo – a software app for mobile data collection and management – could be used for future surveys.

MapAction volunteers, Daniel Soares and Chris Jarvis, provided KoBo training to 12 members of the team. The participants already had a foundational knowledge of KoBo, which meant that MapAction could work with the team at a faster pace.

The training session looked at how to design KoBo forms for the survey teams who will be using smartphones, and how to then upload the collected data for analysis and planning.

In addition, the session also covered how to make data collection more secure and effective, by restricting access to the data and ensuring privacy, and how to streamline the data collection process for faster data analysis.

PNILP were interested in digital data collection for other activities too, and the focus is now on continuing to support the PNILP team with specific technical needs when necessary.

London Marathon caps ‘year of endurance’ for MapAction volunteer, Alice

MapAction deployable volunteer, Alice Goudie, is running the London Marathon in support of the charity’s work, on Sunday 2 October, 2022. Read Alice’s inspiring story below and please consider making a donation to help Alice on her way.

The Marathon won’t be the only amazing thing Alice has done this year; in February MapAction deployed her to Madagascar to provide specialist mapping and data support for the humanitarian relief effort following Cyclone Batsirai. 

Alice says: “I was delighted to see that one of our UN colleagues from the Madagascar response has sponsored me in the Marathon. MapAction is a fantastic charity that works to ensure humanitarian responders have access to the maps & data they need to save lives & relieve suffering. It needs every penny to make sure we can always be there to respond when asked, so this support means a lot.”

To qualify as a deployable MapAction volunteer requires comprehensive training as deployments can be under extreme pressure. In addition to Madagascar Alice deployed to support The Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian (2019) and Equatorial Guinea following a munitions blast (2020). She has also volunteered remotely on projects supporting Libya and Kenya and led a project with civil society organisations in Niger, Indonesia and Nepal, where she helped improve the use of GIS in urban responses where communities are affected by climate change. In her day job Alice is a Senior Location Intelligence Analyst for Emu Analytics. 

The Marathon rounds off a remarkable ‘year of endurance’ for Alice, who cycled from London to Paris in 24 hours last autumn, and from Lands End to John O’Groats this spring.  

If you feel inspired by Alice’s incredible efforts, whether in endurance or what she does when volunteering with MapAction, you can sponsor her run and support MapAction here.

Improving disaster response through training in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan

CESSDR training in Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan training, CESDRR members

One of MapAction’s aims is to help disaster management agencies around the world to use vital geospatial and data analysis tools in their work. By doing so we can deepen how effective and impactful the sector can be, both when emergencies strike or in advance by enabling regional communities and organisations to reduce their risks. 

With this in mind, we work with our partners at the Centre for Emergency Situations and Disaster Risk Reduction (CESDRR), a body established to decrease the risk of emergencies across Central Asia. In line with our usual training programme, we worked together to develop and deliver three training sessions in April and May of this year.

The initial training was in Tashkent – the first time MapAction has trained personnel in Uzbekistan. Three of our members – Alistair Wilkie, Katharina Lorenz and Richard Phillips – provided a week-long course of tailored basic training aimed to introduce and raise awareness of humanitarian and emergency mapping, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Information Management, allowing attendees to become familiar with some basic techniques.  

In mid-May MapAction members Chris Ewing, Mark Gillick and Colin Spiller delivered training in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan. As we have trained many CESDRR members in basic techniques over the past few years, this was a more advanced course exploring operational readiness and testing participants under time and pressure constraints in simulated scenarios. 

CESDRR training in Kyrgyzstan
Training CESDRR members in Kyrgyzstan

Finally, at the end of May, Members Alistair Wilkie, Dominic Greenslade and Mark Gillick, delivered another advanced course for the regional and national offices of the emergency agencies in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where we have delivered several courses previously.  

The courses were all well received and helped to cement and enhance MapAction’s long-standing partnership with CESDRR, and to strengthen valuable GIS skills that are crucial in disaster response and humanitarian aid distribution. Again with CESDRR, we are planning to deliver training in Tajikistan next year. 

One of the Nur-Sultan course participants commented, “I would like to note the work of the best specialists in the field of QGIS mapping, wonderful MapAction (members) – Mark, Colin and Chris, who trained the participants of the training for 5 days, and distinguished themselves by their literacy, cognition, accessibility, professionalism, feedback, responsiveness and decency.”

USAID logo


We are grateful to USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance for supporting this work. 



This piece about CESDRR training forms part of a series of blogs which highlight our disaster preparedness training programme.

One volunteer’s experience of her first preparedness training mission

A significant part of what MapAction does as an organisation is making sure other agencies around the world are ready to respond when crises arise and can use vital GIS tools in their work. 

One of our volunteers, Yolanda Vazquez, talks about her experience of training with the UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team in Peru.


UNDAC team training, Peru

For a week in June, my MapAction colleague Darren and I supported the training of almost 30 members of the UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team, which is part of the international emergency response system for sudden-onset emergencies. 

The training event was held in Lima, Peru which not only meant a long flight but everything, including the training, was in Spanish. As a native speaker, this was ideal for me! Having also just undertaken MapAcion’s ‘Operational Readiness Course’, it felt like the perfect time to go on my first official ‘deployment’ as a MapAction volunteer. 

MapAction often works with UNDAC during emergencies, so it was a great opportunity to make some contacts and meet others in the humanitarian sector, often people from different backgrounds and with a wide range of experiences. It was really beneficial for me to understand the way in which UNDAC works, and for me to ascertain the levels of knowledge of the new trainees in terms of GIS and the data that needs to be collected. 

Sunday was all about introductions and ensuring the team knew about MapAction, how we work and how we support UNDAC in emergency situations. Monday saw the start of a three-day and three night simulation exercise which involved delegates being split into four teams and ‘travelling’, along with ourselves, to a ‘country’ that had just experienced an earthquake. 

Darren and I had dual roles; we participated as MapAction and supported all of the teams in the geospatial elements of the simulation, we were also part of the exercise coordination team. From the data collected during the exercise, Darren and I developed a number of GIS products and maps that helped identify humanitarian needs and tell the unfolding story of the crisis. Although they were long days, being part of the team 24/7 meant that we made some really strong bonds.

As well as it being great for my personal and professional development, and confidence building, I now feel more confident that I can handle the pressure of a deployment to a humanitarian crisis. 

Aside from volunteering, I work as a Geospatial Consultant at the Satellite Applications Catapult and I am part of a team focused on ensuring that the International Development & Humanitarian sector is maximising the opportunities that satellite-enabled geospatial data and technologies can provide.

This first ‘deployment’ has also allowed me to travel around Peru and visit some extraordinary places such as Machu Picchu. It was a very valuable experience and I now feel ready to deploy when an emergency happens. 


USAID logo

MapAction is grateful to the US Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) who funded this work.

This piece by MapAction Volunteer Yolanda Vazquez forms part of a series of blogs which highlight our disaster preparedness training programme.

MapAction aids UN flood response in The Gambia

Heavy rainfall in recent weeks has affected the majority of the country (particularly the West Coast, North Bank and the Greater Banjul areas), causing significant floods and flash floods which have resulted in casualties and widespread damage.

MapAction has sent a two person team of experts with the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination team to support the national authorities who are coordinating the response.

Recently, the country has experienced the heaviest rainfall in decades, which is affecting most areas. The resulting floods have caused multiple casualties and widespread damage to buildings and infrastructure. Some people have been displaced and many families are in need of urgent assistance. 

As a low lying country, dominated by the Gambia River, Gambia is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, such as sea level rise and an increase in rainfall and temperatures, leading to droughts and floods. These are affecting the country’s economy, including the agricultural sector which is dominated by rain-fed agriculture, as well as the tourism sector.

MapAction will be supplying situational data analysis, visualisation and geospatial expertise. A remote team will also be helping with data gathering and map generation. This will support coordination and aid delivery decision-making.

Find our latest maps and data on this emergency when prepared here.

What do team members learn from a MapAction disaster simulation?

MapAction team members get ready for deployment through our annual disaster simulation exercise

In June MapAction volunteers from all over the world headed to Gloucestershire for their biggest deployment team training event in the calendar.

These simulations are a chance to practise many of our standard operating procedures, and an opportunity to build team cohesion.  

This year’s simulation focused on reinforcing field skills and rapid analysis whilst operating with limited connectivity in a demanding setting. The scenario took place in a fictional country, where an ongoing 15-month drought was causing food insecurity. A sudden migration event tipped this into an emergency and triggered a MapAction ‘deployment’ in support of an alliance of international and national NGOs. 

As with previous simulations, facilities were deliberately basic and participants had to camp. One night also involved an overnight stay in work areas as venturing outdoors was deemed to be ‘currently unsafe’ within the scenario. Team members might encounter such insecurity on a field deployment.

For MapAction Volunteer Alice Goudie, who joined us in 2018, the training was a good opportunity for her to test out some of the skills she’s picked up on deployment:

“GIS skills are only part of what we do, a lot of the skills are more to do with working in harsh environments, communicating, and working under pressure.”

Alice has been on a number of deployments with us but knows that each situation is a learning experience,

“In the four years that I have been deployable I have been on an International Search and Rescue Advisory Team (INSARAG) mission to Armenia, two emergency deployments to The Bahamas and Madagascar, one emergency deployment which ended up being remote for Equatorial Guinea, and I’ve done two remote covid projects in Libya and Kenya and worked on a CSO project in Nepal and Indonesia.“

Laverne Rogers volunteers for MapAction’s Caribbean section. She normally works as a GIS Manager for the Government of Montserrat. She was inspired to join MapAction following the devastation that hurricanes Irma and Maria brought to the Caribbean. She recently deployed to support one of our partners, CDEMA, following a volcano eruption in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. 

Our training events are also a time where we can mentor and develop new team leaders in a safe but challenging environment.

For this simulation exercise, Laverne had the opportunity to be a Team Leader:

“I learnt how to manage a team during a disaster response, understanding safety and security requirements for the team and also being able to understand the situation on the ground in order to provide suitable support to our partners and guide the team members to do that.”

MapAction attends UN Global Geospatial Information Management event

MapAction’s Chief Executive, Liz Hughes, and senior geospatial expert member, Alan Mills, are at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. They are representing MapAction at the twelfth session of the United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM), under MapAction’s official observer status.

The event, held from 3 – 5 August 2022 (side events from 1 August), comprises designated Member State experts and relevant international organisations. It seeks to promote international cooperation in global geospatial information management and provide an international forum for coordination and dialogue. 

Led by Member States, UN-GGIM sessions seek to address global challenges regarding the production, availability and application of geospatial information, including in development agendas and policymaking. This includes joint decision-making and setting directions towards nationally integrated geospatial information management within national, regional and global policy frameworks and development agendas.

MapAction’s Alan Mills presented and was a panel member at the ‘Geospatial Information and Services for Disasters’ side event on 1 August. He discussed the challenges and suggested ways to apply geospatial information across complex humanitarian problems. 

Disaster responses can take many forms and include multiple stakeholders, but he put forward that whatever the combination of these complex dimensions, reliable, consistent and well presented information, geographical information in particular, is essential. This will allow those involved to understand and identify the vulnerabilities and risks, what is happening, who has been affected and what resources people need to recover.

He drew on the experience MapAction has in supporting governments, international and regional agencies, civil society organisations and communities. He then outlined four brief scenarios that highlight the need for sharing timely, accurate, information, analysing it effectively and communicating through good visualisation. The intention was to show that UN-GGIM can and should provide the gold standard, allowing humanitarian and emergency response workers to relieve suffering and leave no one behind.

MapAction Chief Executive Liz Hughes said: “MapAction has been working to help manage global humanitarian crises for 20 years. We therefore have a lot of experience to share, in terms of how we have worked with governments, UN and other agencies and civil society organisations. We want to strengthen the system and are looking at ways to increase protection and reduce vulnerability. UN-GGIM provides a great forum to meet with other experts in the field and to jointly set the future agenda.”

Further mapping and data analysis support provided to the Ukraine humanitarian response

Map - Reports of damage in Ukraine (6.4.2022).
Sources: Admin divisions: UN GIS and State Scientific Production Enterprise “Kartographia”, Media reporting: VIINA/ Violent Incident Information from News Articles.

MapAction continues to support humanitarian efforts relating to Ukraine. Most recently this has been through the Information Management and Analysis Cell (IMAC) at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) headquarters in Geneva.

We have seconded a team member to map and analyse data and information relating to the many humanitarian needs and responses in Ukraine. This includes refugee movements to and from neighbouring countries. The work feeds into IMAC situational analysis briefings.

The IMAC supports better decision making around how, when and where limited humanitarian resources are most effectively used. It is set up during major crises where the picture is likely to be complex and fast moving. IMAC partners include the United Nations country response teams, the Inter-Cluster Coordination Group (ICCG), UNICEF, the World Health Organisation (WHO), the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). MapAction are also working with Data Friendly Space.

Map of displaced people and refugees in Ukraine (22.4.2022).
Data sources: Refugees: UNHCR (20.4.2022), IDPs: IOM 17.4.2022, Border crossings: Multiple sources, Administrative divisions: UN GIS and State Scientific Production Enterprise “Kartographia”.

MapAction are very grateful to RenaissanceRe for funding this important work, as part of the new funding partnership formed in 2021.

MapAction uses mapping and analysis to aid the Ukraine crisis

The escalation of the conflict in Ukraine has resulted in a steep rise in humanitarian needs as civilians flee the fighting into other parts of Ukraine and surrounding countries. MapAction’s range of mapping, data visualisation and analysis skills can obviously be of great help to humanitarian coordinators who need to make the best decisions for affected people.

The UN estimates that 12 million people inside Ukraine will soon need relief and protection, while 4 million Ukrainian refugees may need protection and assistance in neighbouring countries over the coming months.

MapAction is already supporting several long standing humanitarian partners, including the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA). We have one team of three already physically deployed to the region and others standing by and working remotely. We are in conversation with several other partners and will provide further updates soon. 

We anticipate that immediate MapAction support will be met from within existing budgets but if, as appears likely, this crisis will require extended or wider support then we will need to seek urgent additional funding. 

View some of our maps created to support the crisis.

German Federal Foreign Office logo
We’re grateful to the German Federal Foreign Office for funding this work.

MapAction Madagascar teams handover at Heathrow 

After two weeks in Madagascar responding to multiple cyclones MapAction’s humanitarian mapping team flew into Heathrow on Wednesday February 23. They had a handover meeting with our next team who are now en-route to Madagascar to replace them. Normally these handovers are in-country but travel challenges mean it was impossible this time.

They will join up with the United Nation Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) surge capacity team in Nairobi and fly to the island of Reunion, working from there for a while before joining the wider UN team in Madagascar until 6 March. 

Madagascar is still reeling from storms Ana and Batsirai and has now been hit by yet another tropical cyclone – Emnati. The MapAction team will continue to provide situational data analysis, data visualisation and geospatial expertise. The crises will continue to be supported by a remote MapAction team in the UK who will gather, process and check data and create products.

View previous posts on our deployment to Madagascar

MapAction sends team to aid Madagascar Cyclone response

MapAction has mobilised a team to support the humanitarian response following Storm Batsirai, which hit Madagascar on Saturday evening. The team is due to leave on Tuesday.

Batsirai, a category three cyclone, swept away cars and houses, causing loss of life, flooding, landslides, destruction of infrastructure. It arrived with the country still reeling from Storm Ana which killed 55 people just weeks ago.

The scale of the situation is still emerging and MapAction’s team will help with that task. However media reports indicate that 250,000 people have been affected, more than 50,000 may be displaced and at least 10 people are known to have died so far. Many more may be affected as river levels are continuing to rise.

The United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination team (UNDAC) have requested MapAction’s situational data analysis, visualisation and geospatial expertise. MapAction will deploy a two person team to Kenya from where they will be able to enter Madagascar. We will then assess the situation and decide whether additional support might be necessary. 

MapAction has already started to produce maps and collate data and are making them available here: https://maps.mapaction.org/event/2022-mdg-001 

MapAction’s services are in ever more demand because of the increase in climate related events, be they food, infrastructure or conflict related. Although these events can’t be stopped, we can help mitigate the effects of these events and are actively working towards this goal. 

Read our latest news.

German Federal Foreign Office logo
We’re grateful to the German Federal Foreign Office for funding this work.

Welcoming the new Head of GeoSpatial services

As well as many other things, MapAction provides UN and other international and regional agencies with the information and data they need, in the most useful visual formats, to enable them to be as effective as possible.

We are actively working to apply fast developing geospatial expertise to tackle some of today’s biggest humanitarian challenges, in collaboration with our partners around the world.

We have just welcomed our new Head of GeoSpatial Services, here she introduces herself and talks about what she’ll be doing.


Hi, I’m Gemma Davies and I joined the staff team at MapAction this month as the Head of GeoSpatial Services.

Prior to joining MapAction I worked for a long time as the GIS Officer at Lancaster University, applying GIS to a wide variety of research projects as well as delivering teaching and training.

Having had a long-term interest in working within the humanitarian sector, I joined MapAction in 2020 as a volunteer and have loved being part of such a great team and getting involved in a variety of response and preparedness work. 

As I step into this new role I look forward to working alongside the team to grow and develop the geospatial support that we can provide to our growing range of international partners. I also want to ensure that emergencies are sufficiently supported with GIS capability and am keen to help evolve MapAction’s Geospatial offers. 

It looks set to be an exciting year full of new challenges and opportunities.

View a short video of Gemma.

Volunteering with MapAction

One of our volunteers, Steve Hurst, shares his experience…

When I went travelling back in 1996 with my now wife, I had the realisation I wanted to somehow be involved in humanitarian work. For many years, this never came to fruition as I liked my hometown in Dorset and was enjoying (and continue to enjoy!) a fulfilling career in software development at the OS.

However, in 2015 when you could argue my mid-life crisis kicked in, I began looking for a volunteering opportunity within a charity. I wanted to find somewhere I could apply software skills I had acquired through project work here at OS.

I came across MapAction and, after discovering their long-standing relationship with OS, it was obvious; MapAction was the perfect fit.

At this point in time, I was delighted to discover that MapAction needed experts in GIS (Geographic Information System) and geospatial software development. I applied and, after a rigorous selection process and interview, I joined MapAction in March 2016 as part of their small Software Development Group.

MapAction GIS screenshot
Training weekends are typically held on a farm or at a college and you must bring your own accommodation.

Every month there is either a team training weekend or a development day. They cover soft skills, GIS techniques, software skills, information management and first aid. However, I’ve also been taught how to negotiate with the military and heard from guest speakers representing organisations such as Save the Children, the World Food Program and UNOCHA which offers updates on crises around the world from people ‘on the ground’ with first hand perspectives.

The team

MapAction volunteers are not only trained in GIS, but also in how the humanitarian system works. Many aid agencies have their own GIS experts, but they can’t always deploy in the first response phase. Even if they are in-country, they are there to support their own organisation’s needs first, whilst MapAction provides a mapping service to anyone who needs it be that charities, government agencies or relief organisations. MapAction is often the lead mapping cell for the central response coordinator.

As well as responding to sudden onset events, MapAction provide training courses and simulation exercises by providing mapping support and humanitarian mapping workshops to other humanitarian organisations. To name a few, this year MapAction teams have empowered regional and national agencies to be better equipped by providing preparation training in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Iraq, Thailand and the Caribbean.

My role

Presenting the improved GIS tools.

When I joined MapAction my children were a lot younger, so I have only recently marked myself as ‘deployable’. So although I haven’t deployed yet (which makes me feel slightly like an imposter), I am happy knowing the work I have been able to do from this country has been beneficial to the overall cause.

I have extended and improved MapAction’s GIS tools, meaning that the deployed teams are more effective in the field.

I have developed a menu-driven automated map generation tool. This builds on an existing structured ‘crash move folder’ containing standardised layers of data. Using pre-defined definitions from the MapAction’s Map Catalogue, it builds base maps in seconds rather than hours.

I’m particularly proud of this and am delighted to say there has been a great deal of enthusiasm from the team. One volunteer said they’d been wanting it for years and another sent an email to say how awesome it was. It was because of my work on this tool that I was given the ‘Volunteer of the Year’ award in 2019. It’s been incredibly rewarding.

Screenshot showing the results of the MapAction Automation tool.

There are so many positives to being a MapAction volunteer. It’s long been recognised that volunteering improves one’s mental health and being a MapAction volunteer gives employees a chance to boost their own wellbeing by giving something back by using skills gained in the office.


This article was written by Steve Hurst and originally published on the Ordnance Survey website.

MapAction has received long term support from Ordnance Survey (OS) since 2006. In addition to donations, OS also allows its employees to take 10 days volunteer leave.

MapAction and OS have also worked closely on influencing the international agenda at the UNGGIM (United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management), successfully lobbying for the availability of crucial geospatial data in the aftermath of a humanitarian disaster.

MapAction wins Lloyd’s Market Charity Award

MapAction has been awarded £25,000 by the Lloyd’s Market Charity Awards in recognition of our disaster response and preparedness work. 

The award will be used to enhance MapAction’s operational capability to help different regional and national emergency management bodies prepare for future humanitarian emergencies, and to help with responses to shocks and emergencies when they occur. 

We were selected to receive this generous donation thanks to the efforts of MapAction volunteer and Trustee, Chris Ewing. He applied for the award on our behalf in his role as Head of Client Management at Impact Forecasting, the catastrophe model development centre of Aon Reinsurance Solutions. It’s one of a handful of awards that the Lloyd’s Market hand out every year in response to individual efforts of those who work across the Lloyd’s Corporation and market.

Over the past 12 months Chris has helped produce drought indicator maps for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), as part of a larger UN project using satellite imagery and machine learning to quickly identify areas for pre-emptive funding. He also volunteered through MapAction on a COVID-19 dashboard project with UNICEF and the Mexican Government Ministry of Education. 

Chris said: “This award is really fantastic, quite unexpected and we’re really very very grateful for it. I know how crucial every penny is for MapAction and this will help our efforts to mitigate and to respond to crises.”

Deepening the impact and effectiveness of humanitarian information

MapAction has begun an important and exciting programme of work funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (USAID BHA)USAID logo

The new grant, aimed at strengthening the sector, runs from 2021-2024. It will see MapAction working with local, regional and international organisations to ensure that Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and information management processes are at the heart of humanitarian operations, including preparedness, anticipatory action and emergency response activities. 

This work builds on the achievements of a previous BHA-funded programme that took place from 2017-2021, which helped improve the use of GIS and spatial analysis across the humanitarian response sector through preparedness work and training with key partners.

Specifically, the new fund will help us to address the key data and information management gaps at regional and national levels, as well as working with Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and urban authorities at the local level. This will enable us to build on localisation initiatives and establish context-appropriate surge capacity.

It will also allow us to continue our work to develop best practice for managing information in humanitarian contexts and enhancing the policy environment. 

It will be implemented by MapAction’s team of experienced and highly skilled staff and volunteers who will work closely with partner organisations to build on the relationships and foundations we have already established and develop new relationships with regional and national partners.

Our experience, skills and expertise, including in data science, means that we are uniquely placed to build on and share what works well in humanitarian information management, combined with the latest thinking in key areas related to data quality and preparedness.

By applying the best geospatial technologies to humanitarian problems, partner organisations can gain critical insights, enabling them to multiply their effectiveness.

Ultimately, this fund will mean that decision makers are better informed so they can more effectively anticipate, prepare for and respond to emergencies.

Volunteer intake boosts skills and capacity

2021 volunteer intake - four new volunteers with Mapction T-shirts smile at the camera in an office with a map behind them.
From left: Chris Tilt, Cate Seale, Piet Gerrits and Yolanda Vazquez

MapAction’s work is built around the skills and dedication of its volunteers. They work in numerous different fields in their day jobs and join us to undertake emergency and planned assignments both around the world and remotely. 

This year, after a careful selection process, we are delighted to welcome two data scientists, a data engineer and a GIS expert onboard. They will help us to broaden and diversify our skill base and increase our analytical capacity. 

We are now beginning the process of equipping the new intake with additional knowledge and competences they’ll need to function effectively in humanitarian contexts.

Chris Tilt (Data engineer)

My background is software development, primarily with .NET.  I find building software fun when it helps people or when it solves an interesting problem. 

Having not worked in this sector previously, for me the learning curve may be steep to begin with.  However, joining MapAction is an opportunity that’s hard to find.  There are many interesting people here and the work speaks for itself, so I’m looking forward to getting involved!

Outside of work or my interest in tech, I’m an avid runner, and enjoy learning new things, civilised arguments about politics and Scandinavian crime thrillers. 

Cate Seale (Data scientist)

I was always torn between the academic and creative. Mapping and data science allows me to do both. I like thinking about the art of the possible, and figuring out and implementing algorithms. But also making design decisions on how to communicate that information in graphs and maps.

I love the idea of people with different skills all coming together to work towards common goals of rights, respect and dignity.

In my spare time, I am addicted to podcasts! My current favourites are Heavyweight and 99% Invisible.

Yolanda Vazquez (GIS)

I am currently working as a Geospatial Consultant at the Satellite Applications Catapult where I am part of a team focused on International Development and Humanitarian work. I wanted to join MapAction because the humanitarian character of the organisation aligns with my personal and professional values, and because I know it is full of passionate map geeks like me who want to use their skills to help people affected by humanitarian emergencies.

What inspires me about the humanitarian sector are its principles and the work that humanitarians do to support people in need with respect and dignity, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion and social status.

In my free time, I love travelling and all things music related; playing, dancing, gigs and festivals.

Piet Gerrits (Data Scientist)

I am currently a PhD researcher at the University of Glasgow and work as a GIS technician at the University of Cambridge. I’m passionate about long-term human-environment interaction and so studied landscape archaeology. After being introduced to GIS and Remote Sensing, I made a career change to Geospatial Data Science and have worked on several research and capacity building projects in Turkey and Iraq that bring together historical data such as maps, censuses and (historical) satellite information. 

Joining Mapaction provides the opportunity to be part of a team that brings together spatial data with the purpose of making people’s lives better.

In my free time, I enjoy learning new things, travelling  and often go kayaking on the river Cam and elsewhere in the UK.

How maps helped the response to the Haiti earthquake

MapAction volunteer Chris Jarvis and a colleague from the Americas Support Team.

MapAction has been involved in the response to the earthquake that took place in Haiti on 14 August, helping our partners with data processing, analysis and mapping. This has helped those coordinating operational teams to understand what types of aid are needed in different locations and what other organisations are already doing to help. At the time of writing, this work is ongoing.

At the end of August, we scaled up our support to the UN Disaster Assessment & Coordination (UNDAC) and other responding organisations. Two MapAction volunteers traveled to Haiti to provide in-person assistance, supported remotely by our wider team. As well as using their annual leave to do this, both were required to self-isolate for 10 days after returning to the UK, in accordance with COVID rules. We are grateful to them both for their invaluable efforts.

This StoryMap looks at some of the maps that have so far been created during the response to the earthquake and how they have been used to help the situation on the ground.

South Sudan data package to support effective and equitable Covid vaccine delivery

COVID-19 has been tough for all of us but the development of COVID-19 vaccines should offer a lifeline to the whole world. However, for many, especially those in the world’s poorer countries, it’s yet to make an impact. 

As part of the drive to provide equitable access to vaccines, international agencies involved in COVAX need to ensure that countries are ready to accept delivery and coordinate the roll-out.

With this in mind, MapAction, with funding from the Calleva Foundation, partnered with expert geospatial colleagues from CartONG, OpenMap Development Tanzania, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, Afrimapr/LSTHM, Mapbox and Esri, to create a novel concept called the Integrated Humanitarian Data Package (IHDP). This aims to give quick and easy access to key geographic data that underpins the planning and delivery of vaccination programmes. 

The single package contains not only selected data sets, but also information explaining the data (‘metadata’), together with a set of GIS (geographic information system) and coding tools to easily develop situation-specific items such as maps and other graphics, depending on user-need. This will give organisations managing vaccine delivery in vulnerable countries a running start, once vaccines become available. 

Nick McWilliam, IHDP project lead at MapAction said, “High quality mapping and data analysis are key to understanding how many people need vaccinating, where they are, and how and where the vaccines can be safely stored and delivered. We know that access to good data is a major issue in many countries. Even where data exists, it’s frequently patchy and not in a format that is usable by most people, as well as lacking crucial information about the local context. The IHDP concept is intended to remove barriers to good information that are otherwise likely to hinder vaccine delivery.”  

The pilot project focused on creating an IHDP for South Sudan, however, the lessons learned are applicable across many other countries where population information is often too poor for effective logistics.  

The IHDP is designed to be used by non-GIS experts with coordination and management responsibilities and ensures that they can easily use good quality data in a readily usable format. It’s also designed to reduce the time and effort needed, removing barriers for responders so they can quickly understand and respond to often complex situations. 

The data produced will be freely accessible via MapAction’s Map and Data repository and also published on The Africa GeoPortal

“The COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented demand for data in the humanitarian sector, but persistent data gaps remain. With every country in the world affected by COVID-19, the disparity in data availability in countries experiencing humanitarian crises became more clear.”

The State of Open Humanitarian Data, 2021: Assessing Data Availability Across Humanitarian Crises. OCHA Centre for Humanitarian Data and Humanitarian Data Exchange

We are also sharing this information amongst the humanitarian community and international agencies involved in the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out.

See a video interview with Nick McWilliam, IHDP Project Lead.

Contributing to excellence in emergency response

We are working with our colleagues in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management (AHA Centre) to share valuable insights and experience, and to learn about how AHA is adapting and developing the expertise of its team.

The centre recently ran a series of virtual sessions which provided the opportunity for graduate members of ASEAN’s Emergency Response and Assessment Team (ASEAN-ERAT) the chance to hone their technical skills and consult with experts. The programme also refreshed members’ memories and enhanced their technical competencies.

MapAction ran a session on response mapping which included guided tutorials and self-paced learning on how to make use of Excel and Google Earth in an emergency. Participants learned how to use the tools and techniques quickly and efficiently in the early stages of a response and how they might also support decision makers in the response teams. These techniques were built on during the other sessions led by AHA staff on data collection and analysis, data visualisation and developing information management dashboards. The sessions were tested during a four hour online simulation exercise.

The online course was composed of eight people from across the ASEAN region including Brunei, Laos, the Philippines and Indonesia who had graduated from previous courses. 

USAID logo
This work was made possible thanks to the generous support of the U.S. Agency for International Development as part of a programme to improve the use of geospatial analysis and services across the entire humanitarian response sector.

MapAction and the AHA Centre have signed a Memorandum of Intent with each other which formalises our joint efforts to help build mapping and information management capacity among humanitarian actors in the ASEAN region, as well as helping them prepare for disasters by putting in place essential geospatial information and resources. This training forms part of this ongoing activity.

Mapping COVID crises with GIMAC

So far, the COVID-19 pandemic has reportedly caused 214 million illnesses and killed nearly four and a half million people worldwide (Google statistics). The impact on the poorest and most vulnerable people is immense, especially where populations are already facing several humanitarian crises. 

Maps and charts showing a breakdown of the number displaced individuals in private accomodation, camps, critical shelters or unknown in Iraq as at 30 August 2020

MapAction has been working with GIMAC (the Global Information Management, Assessment & Analysis Cell) which was set up by several UN agencies and other international bodies to coordinate, collate, manage and analyse COVID-19 related information. The organisation also established a ‘field support’ mechanism, available to 25 countries currently implementing a Humanitarian Response Plan. On the ground, this meant providing technical support to a number of countries already facing significant ongoing humanitarian problems and keen to update their plans in light of Covid-19.

MapAction’s role was initially funded by the H2H network, and saw us assimilating the rapid data collection to provide GIS mapping and spatial analysis to support good decision-making. To do this, one of our team was seconded to the programme for two days a week. 

As well as helping to gather initial data, we also used our GIS skills to provide mapping and other visualisations to countries on an open source basis. 

Our work on the programme is now coming to a close but throughout our time on the programme, we provided extensive geospatial analysis and data visualisation support. Overall we produced and provided around 60 maps and graphics on the impacts of the virus and any secondary shocks, alongside the ongoing humanitarian crises. These included baseline populations, food security levels, public security and educational accessibility.

Fawad Hussain, GIMAC Coordinator, OCHA, said, “MapAction has provided exceptional support to GIMAC and the country teams and it has been a pleasure to work with Matt and other MapAction colleagues.” 

Map showing the variety in the number of commodities being sold in market places in Ethiopia January 2019 to April 2020.

Responding to the Volcanic Eruption in St Vincent and the Grenadines

By Lavern Ryan, MapAction volunteer.

Selfie of Lavern Ryan outdoors with sea visible in the distance behind her

“Alert Check: Volcanic Eruption St Vincent and the Grenadines, please sign up your availability.” Those were the words which greeted me as I checked my MapAction email. Simple words, but so profound for me. They really hit hard, and hit home! I could not ignore that call for action. I signed up for remote deployment. It turned out to be my first official response deployment as a MapActioner!

Like many people within the region, I have been observing the volcanic dome growth in St Vincent and the Grenadines since late 2020. As it grew, magma continued to fill the space around the old 1979 dome, as depicted in the images below.

aerial photo with annotation showing growth of magma dome on 11 dates between 27 Dec 2020 and 12 Feb 2021
Source: Scientific Resource Centre
aerial photo of La Soufriere volcano showing dome on 6 Jan 2021
Photo credit: NEMO, St. Vincent and the Grenadines
aerial photo of greatly enlarged magma dome with gases escaping
Photo credit: NEMO, St. Vincent and the Grenadines

A period of elevated volcano-tectonic (VT) earthquakes, which began on 23rd March, 2021, indicated to scientists that the situation at La Soufrière had deteriorated. An evacuation order was issued on April 8, 2021 by Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves.

The very next day, on April 9, 2021, La Soufrière Volcano erupted! The eruption was very visible to people around the world due to the prominence of posts on social media. It was easy to see live feeds and video posts as the action unfolded. Images of the massive mushroom plume created by the eruption brought back so many memories for me. It was beautifully dangerous!

photo of very large and impressive gas plume

Having experienced the eruption of our very own Soufrière Hills Volcano in Montserrat and having lived with an active volcano for the past two decades, I empathised with the residents of St Vincent and the Grenadines. Being displaced from one’s home to live in a shelter is no easy feat. Having to leave behind the beloved island you call home is even more challenging. I knew the road ahead for many people would be long and difficult. Hence my conviction to help in the best way I knew: – by providing geospatial support.

It was great news to discover that Mike was also selected as a member of this remote deployment team for the St. Vincent Response. Mike and I were recruited at the same time in 2019 to form part of the Caribbean Section of MapAction. The picture below is a throw-back to June 2019 in Trinidad. We had several days of intense conversion training sessions. In retrospect, those days really set the foundation for our ability to deliver during this response.

Our team was led by Matt who resides in New Zealand. He is very knowledgeable and has significant experience in deployments. We also received additional support from another volunteer, Pip, who is located in the UK. We supported the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) for a period of three weeks. Subsequently, another two volunteers, Ant and Jorge, were deployed to support the environmental work of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) response. We represented different time zones and locations from across the globe.

map of the world showing locations of team members working for CDEMA and  United Nations Environment Programme and the La Soufriere volcano

This unique team selection, worked out very well, as it offered 24 hour coverage for the St. Vincent response. Mike and I, being located in the Caribbean region, were uniquely placed to attend briefing meetings in our local time zone and follow up with any new developments; while Matt provided another level of support from New Zealand, as his day began when ours was coming to an end. No sleep lost – I guess! Our daily briefing meetings allowed us to report our findings during that day and to strategise the allocation and completion of tasks.

MapAction has mastered the ability to use different tools to share and work together in a remote working environment. In my opinion, the COVID-19 pandemic has only strengthened this area. The image below highlights some of the main tools we used to ensure smooth deployment coordination.

logos, names and applications of different tech tools:
Jira - task management
Slack - internal comms
Google File Stream - file storage and sharing (streaming)
Gmail - external comms and sitreps
Confluence - rolling documentation specific to the response and SOPs (standard operating procedures)

One of the major needs of any emergency response is geospatial data. The ‘data scramble‘ as the term is coined, involves the researching, collating and organising of all the spatial data available for a particular location, ensuring that it is fit for purpose. The data collected was prepared by transforming it into the correct projected coordinate system to allow for overlay and integration between different datasets. Datasets included administrative boundaries, such as parishes, census districts, shelter locations, elevation data, transportation networks, buildings, land use, hazard zones, and health centres, just to name a few. These were placed in appropriately themed folder locations so that it would be easy for deployed members to find them during the response.

Coordinating with CDEMA, MapAction provided mapping support to to aid in visualisation of the situation on the ground.

One of the first maps prepared is a reference map of the area. I consider this to be one of the most important maps to be prepared, as it gives context to the area of interest. Everything else is built upon this.

The basemap shown on the left below is detailed with settlement locations, roads, parishes, village names, rivers and elevation data. The baseline map sown on the right, highlights the population figures of St.Vincent derived from the most recent 2012 census survey. This allowed us to understand how the population is distributed throughout the affected areas.

To provide further understanding, situational maps were prepared. Data being shared through situation reports from the Emergency Management Agency allowed us to create visual representations of what was happening on the ground. The map on the left, shows movement of displaced people from affected communities in the red, orange and yellow zones. The map on the right shows the location and status of the shelters.

Additionally, a 3D webmap was created showing the key volcanic events and hazards of the La Soufrière volcano. This dynamic map allows you to explore the data which was used to create the maps above and offers a better understanding of the risk posed by the volcanic eruption in St. Vincent.

3D webmap showing volcanic hazards

Working so closely with the data from St. Vincent during this period of time, allowed me to become very familiar with areas and village locations on the island. Seeing feeds on social media allowed me to identify quickly with where things were happening. Names such as as Chateaubelair, Troumaca, Byera, Owia and Fancy stood out to me!

During my remote deployment, some acronyms were mentioned frequently during our briefing meetings. I eventually got the hang of them! These all form part of the response mechanism which helps the crisis on the ground to be addressed. Each of the teams highlighted below, played a very important function in being able to get supplies into St. Vincent, assessing the needs of the population and understanding the impact of the disaster on the island.

Table of humanitarian acronyms and their meanings:
ACRONYM	DESCRIPTION
CDRU	CARICOM Disaster Relief Unit
COST	CARICOM Operations Support Team
DART	Disaster Assessment Response Team
RCC	Regional Coordination Centre
RNAT	Rapid Needs Assessment Team
SRC	Seismic Research Centre
UNDAC	United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination

A number of other international organisations responded to the crisis in St Vincent and the Grenadines by activating their disaster response mechanisms and programmes. The links below provide additional insight into their response activities.

  1. Copernicus Emergency Management Service
  2. The International Charter Space and Major Disasters
  3. Maxar: Open Data Program
  4. Nasa Disaster Program

Satellite images like the ones below were captured as time progressed and further mapping and analysis was carried out. Derived information proved useful to responders on the ground.

satellite image of the Owia Bay area
satellite image of the Rabacca Bridge and Chatoya National Park

MapAction is known to respond in-person during an emergency response deployment. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has limited this, my experience through this remote response deployment has shown that MapAction’s involvement is still significant in providing geospatial information to support the humanitarian needs of people in crisis. I do look forward to future deployments with MapAction!

Lavern in the back of a truck driving through a rural tropical location, wearing a MapAction teeshirt with a large logo on her back.

This article was first published on Lavern’s own blog on 24 May 2021.

Training moves online for emergency responders in Central Asia

GIF showing process of selecting a map layer

During April and May, MapAction is providing online training in mapping and data tools and techniques to emergency responders in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

This is part of an ongoing programme of work with the Central Asian Center for Emergency Situations & Disaster Risk Reduction (CESDRR) to improve and expand disaster preparedness, relief and recovery activities across Central Asia through mapping and information management. The learning is being used, among other things, to support search and rescue operations and document regular situational overviews of emergencies, enabling more effective responses.

CESDRR logo banner

Earlier this month, around 40 participants from the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Kazakhstan took part in a three-day online course including videos, exercises and live interactive sessions, culminating in a disaster simulation exercise providing an opportunity to test out new-found skills. This was the first time this course, which is designed to give participants an understanding of what geographical information systems (GIS) are capable of and how to use the open source QGIS platform, has been delivered online and remotely. A substantial amount of work was involved in converting the course content into an digital format and translating it into Russian.

Screen shot of live online training session

In May, MapAction is running Advanced Humanitarian Mapping training for a select group of emergency management professionals from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan who have previously completed our introductory course and are ready to deepen their skills. The week-long, online course will cover data management, data preparedness and the different types of maps to use in particular emergency scenarios and phases.

We’re grateful to USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) for funding this work, which is bringing great benefits to humanitarian response across Central Asia.

Find out more about MapAction’s training and preparedness services >>

MapAction and HeiGIT partner to further geoinformation innovation

The Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology (HeiGIT) and MapAction have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) outlining their plans to collaborate in a number of areas.

Both organisations share a common vision to support humanitarian mapping by providing innovative geoinformation services for humanitarian response, mitigating risk, anticipatory action and economic development. This includes developing up-to-date disaster maps based on OpenStreetMap (OSM).

In order to fulfil these objectives, HeiGIT and MapAction will work together on various activities involving research and development, teaching, outreach and fundraising.

Examples of current and emerging services we plan to jointly develop include OSM analytics such as Humanitarian OSM Stats, which provides detailed statistics about humanitarian mapping activities in OSM, as well as OSM data-quality assessment and improvement. Here, the ohsome quality analyst is of particular interest, which provides end users such as humanitarian organisations with information on the quality of OSM data for a specific region and use-case.

Further tools may include apps for crowdsourcing, data collection, navigation, routing and logistics services and machine-learning-based methods for data processing and enrichment.

We will also share knowledge, with MapAction contributing experiences aligned to HeiGIT’s teaching curriculum, and HeiGIT, in return providing teaching materials and research results to MapAction.

MapAction partners to support COVID-19 vaccine delivery

Administering billions of shots of COVID-19 vaccine around the world is a logistical challenge of unprecedented proportions. It is even more complex in countries lacking basic healthcare infrastructure, cold storage or comprehensive transport networks, or where accurate population information is not available.

Understanding how geospatial analysis can help, MapAction is partnering with other geographic information specialists to help coordinate the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines in 15 low-income countries with acute humanitarian needs. 

The Geographic Information Management Initiative for COVID-19 Vaccine Delivery (GIM Initiative), which launches today, aims to help local partners tackle critical issues such as the selection of distribution sites, the planning of healthcare workers’ journeys to remote locations when no up-to-date maps exist, how to record doses and follow up with vaccinated people, and challenges around accessing the most vulnerable communities, including settlements that aren’t yet mapped. 

MapAction is joined in the GIM Initiative by Alcis, CartONG, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap and iMMAP.

Mapping people who are moving

December 18 marks The United Nations (UN) International Migrants Day, recognising the efforts, contributions, and rights of migrants worldwide.  In light of this, we decided to share some of the work we did this year during the Syria crisis to highlight some of the challenges of meeting the needs of migrant populations, and also explore the role that maps can play when people are displaced from their homes.

MapAction was asked by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) to send a team to Turkey. Their mission: to help humanitarian teams there and in Northwest Syria supporting almost one million people – 60% of them children – that arrived in the region during January-March 2020, following an upsurge of fighting in Aleppo. 

A population displacement of this scale and speed results in great vulnerability for those involved, as well as many unknowns for humanitarians about people’s access to essential things like food, water, sanitation and shelter. And that’s before you factor in the added complication of COVID.

MapAction was asked to support two groups of humanitarian organisations collaborating to manage around 1,000 refugee camps – the Camp Coordination and Camp Management (CCCM) Cluster, and the Shelter /Non-Food Item (SNFI) Cluster

Camps vary enormously, from just a few tents to the size of a small city, and from temporary to long-term settlements. Some are isolated, while others are grouped together. Getting clean, up-to-date data about them is essential for the Clusters to coordinate life-saving aid. 

MapAction’s aim was to grant the Cluster coordinators a ‘single source of truth’ about the locations and sizes of the camps, to enable them to understand their population density and meet the needs of the people arriving and living in them. The imminent threat of COVID-19 made this even more urgent and important – not to mention more difficult. 

‘Data cleaning’ is a vital part of the process. Camp data is often captured by collectors with varying levels of training, network connectivity and other obstacles. Sometimes geographical coordinates are estimated from a central location instead of using GPS, or transcribed manually, introducing human errors. The same data might be captured several times by different organisations, with different results. All of this can make it difficult to pinpoint the exact locations of camps and could cause them to be missed or double counted, resulting in delays or complete omissions in aid delivery. 

Camps vary enormously, from just a few tents to the size of a small city, and from temporary to long-term settlements. Some are isolated, while others are grouped together. Getting clean, up-to-date data about them is essential for the Clusters to coordinate life-saving aid. 

The MapAction team compared a core list of 700 sites against a further list of 600 camps, and used GIS analysis to deduplicate against location, site name and then visually against the latest satellite imagery, to confirm locations. Over three iterations, they were able to support the CCCM Cluster to improve the core list from 700 to around 1,000 sites. 

To aid this process in Syria, our team created two data tools. One helped to identify anomalies in the camp location coordinates. The other automatically performed location analysis, determining in which Administrative District each camp was situated. As a result of creating these tools,  they were able to save 60-70% of the time it took to manually clean and assess camp location data – around half to one day of a Cluster team member’s time, once or twice a week – freeing them up for higher value tasks. They also enabled faster identification of unrecorded camps, speeding up the delivery of aid to people in need.

Next they drew polygons of the camps, mapping their size and extent. This major task, involving creating digital maps of most of Northwest Syria using OpenStreetMap imagery, gave context to the coordinates. It hadn’t been done before and was described by the Clusters as “fantastically helpful”. 

Migration mapping resources

The above describes the outputs of one MapAction mission in support of displaced people. To support the various aid agencies we work with, we also publish resources about the types of maps that can be helpful in different humanitarian situations, and information about their use. 

These resources include: core maps; maps to help with work in humanitarian clusters, and specifically, where there is vulnerability or access problems during a response (e.g. food, shelter, water and sanitation, etc.); and maps that are produced in response to a particular hazard such as armed conflict. 

In the case of migration, population maps, including baseline population, languages and population displacement maps, are often the most relevant. These maps may be produced in response to extensive population displacements driven by natural disasters, political unrest or a complex emergency situation. They are both strategic and operational in nature and can help all responders coordinate camps and aid response planning, including effective communication with affected people. 

Map of migration within and via West and Central Africa, including towards Europe: key drivers and routes

When it comes to migration, there are some things to bear in mind when mapping. For example, where migration is because of political persecution or war, recording camp boundaries and tagging them on a widely available map could pose a serious security risk. In these instances, it is common for some camp locations not to be shared. 

Thought should also be given to the most effective way to depict on maps the movement of groups who may go through different phases of displacement. In these cases, infographic methods of sharing the data may be more suitable than maps, showing summary information and key issues without publishing sensitive locational data.

Cluster maps are used in conjunction with core maps and can specifically show where there is a particular or probable vulnerability or access problem during a response, e.g food, shelter, hygiene facilities. Within this, the camp coordination or camp management cluster helps inform planning and operation of camps. They may show camp population figures, infrastructure, hazards or resources. Planning of camp locations is driven by many spatial factors including safety and access to resources.

According to the UN Office for the Commissioner on Human Rights, an estimated 258 million people, approximately 3% of the world’s population, currently live outside their country of origin, with an increasing number being forced to migrate due to a complex mix of issues including poverty, water, food and housing. We will continue to seek and develop ever more effective mapping and geospatial data tools to support our partners who are working tirelessly to help people caught up in any situations that cause them to leave their homes. 

Guatemala – video report from the airport

In this video, MapAction volunteer Emerson Tan gives a report from the airport on his way home from Guatemala.

MapAction was mobilised to help the international response to the catastrophic impacts of Hurricanes Eta and Iota which have caused tremendous suffering across Central America, on top of the COVID pandemic.

MapAction welcomes six new volunteers

It takes a special kind of person to join MapAction’s band of very dedicated and highly skilled volunteers. Following a competitive recruitment process, six new faces have joined our team, expanding our capacity to provide knowledge and practical support to organisations around the world preparing for and responding to different types of emergencies.

The new recruits each bring valuable skills and experience in either GIS, software development or data science, as well as the special mix of passion, team spirit and professionalism that are prerequisite qualities for MapAction volunteers. They will now begin a rigorous induction and training programme which will equip them with the knowledge they need to apply their expertise in different types of humanitarian contexts. Here’s a little bit about our new colleagues:

Gemma with her hand on a colourful statue of a leaping dolphin on a sunny day. She is smiling to camera.

Dr Gemma Davies – Straight after finishing her MSc in Geographic Information for Development, Gemma started working at Lancaster University providing GIS support for what is now the Lancaster Environment Centre. Over twenty years, the role has evolved and equipped her with a wide range of skills in applied GIS. As well as teaching, she has been involved in researching numerous topics including climate change, epidemiology and food security, culminating in the completion of her PhD by Published Works in 2019. When not absorbed in the world of GIS she loves to travel, swim and play saxophone.

“I am most looking forward to being part of a team of like minded people, using their professional skills to make a positive difference in the lives of people affected by humanitarian crises.” – Gemma

Daniel on a sunny mountain top wearing a backpack and smiling to camera. Another climber is visible in the background also looking to the camera.

Daniel Soares – With an academic background in applied mathematics and mechanical engineering, Daniel is a data scientist at data and deep tech company nam.R where he works mainly with geospatial data applied to energy efficiency projects. He is greatly interested in the application of technical skills to humanitarian, social and ecological challenges. In his free time he loves to listen to all kinds of music, including jazz, heavy metal and Latin, and plays percussion in a group.

“My favourite thing about applied mathematics to engineering problems is the diversity of fields my skills can be applied.” – Daniel

Samir Gandhi – Although he recently took the plunge into a data analysis role at the UK government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Sam’s heart is really in maps. He moonlights as The Jolly Geo, hosting quizzes, freelancing and blogging about fun geo stuff like camera trapping and solargaphy. He is also keen on tennis, karting, trail running and football and is a big Leeds fan.

“GIS is a powerful blend of art and science. I could (and do) stare at my outputs for hours! I’m looking forward to being part of a community of like-minded people, just doing what we love doing. You can’t beat a geographer!” – Sam

Emma Hall and her dog Woody each standing on a tree stump on a sunny Austrian mountainside, looking to camera.

Emma Hall – Emma began her career as a GIS specialist working in local government before moving to the world’s first green energy company and then entering academia where she taught GIS and used it in her conservation-based research. She is an environmental advocate, with a passion for conservation ecology. She is currently conducting doctoral research at Kingston University London, using predictive modelling to assess plant species’ adaptations to climate change in Madagascar. When not working or volunteering, you’ll find her hiking, wild swimming, or cycling in the mountains, with her rescue dog, Woody.

“One of my favourite GIS tools is Global Forest Watch because it combines GIS and spatial analysis in an accessible way so that anyone can use it to support the protection of our global forest ecosystems.” – Emma

Hugh running through a chest-deep tank of cold muddy water on a Tough Mudder type race.

Hugh Loughrey – While working in local government as a GIS technician, Hugh spotted the trend of people wanting to interact more and more with maps online, prompting him to learn more about web technologies. He’s worked in both the public and private sectors in the UK and New Zealand automating complex data processes and is currently a software engineer for an online estate agency. Originally from Belfast, Hugh lives in Birmingham with his wife and two young daughters. He plans to complete the Breca Loch Lomond Swimrun in August 2021.

“The news is regularly full of reports of humanitarian disasters around the world and I wanted to use the skills gained throughout my career as a GIS analyst turned software developer to help MapAction assist in as many as possible.” – Hugh

Head and shoulders shot of Felix Fennell smiling to camera

Felix Fennell – With a background in geography, Felix is a geospatial developer in the mapping team at the British Antarctic Survey. He is interested in data discoverability, automation, data processing and building tools and services for location tracking, situational awareness and planning in Antarctica. He’s been involved with MapAction partner Missing Maps for a few years and is looking forward to deepening his contributions to humanitarian work. He enjoys hiking, challenging his fear of heights and mostly losing at board games.

I enjoy saving people time, either by automating routine or complex tasks or building things that are intuitive and easy to use. The broad range of projects and expertise within MapAction is really exciting and interesting, if a little daunting at this point. – Felix

Responding to Hurricanes Eta and Iota

Countries in Central America are facing catastrophic winds and flooding as Hurricane Iota, a Category 5 storm, makes its way across Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador.

With wind gusts of up to 250km/hr and torrential rain, Iota made landfall in northeast Nicaragua last night. It is compounding the damage and devastation inflicted by Category 4 Hurricane Eta, which killed at least 178 people in the region a fortnight ago and destroyed food crops for thousands of families.

Map of flood extent and land cover in Ulua Basin, Lower Aguan Basin and Choluteca Lower Basin, Honduras, as of 6th/7th/11th November 2020

MapAction has been remotely providing full emergency support to the Latin American and Caribbean regional body of the UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), known as ROLAC, since 6 November to assist the response to Eta and now Iota. This includes mapping storm tracks, flood extents, building damage, affected populations and information about what assistance humanitarian teams are already providing in different locations so that gaps can be identified and rapidly addressed. This work represents a scaling-up of the ongoing support to ROLAC we have been providing since September, in preparation for Hurricane season and other humanitarian issues across the region.

“Iota is hampering the response to Eta, severely degrading logistic routes and complicating the information picture,” said MapAction’s Operations Director Chris Davies. “Our maps are helping teams on the ground direct resources where they’re most needed, as safely as possible. We will continue to provide support to our ROLAC colleagues and are anticipating and preparing for additional requests for our assistance.”

Map of humanitarian presence overview by department, Honduras, as at 16 November 2020

We’re grateful to the German Federal Foreign Office for supporting our response, as well as to the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the UK FCDO for their continued support of MapAction’s response capacity. 

MapAction contributes to webinar on emerging urban challenges

Aerial view across the suburbs of a city to the sky scrapers of the central business district on the horizon.

Two MapAction members contributed to a one-hour discussion of how use of collaborative networks and advances in geospatial technology can improve humanitarian outcomes in urban settings. Professor Melinda Laituri of Colorado State University and the Secondary Cities initiative was Chair of the event, with talks from Alan Mills and Chris Ewing, both of MapAction.  

Entitled Cities, humanitarianism and using geospatial analysis to mitigate risk, the online event looked at collaborative approaches to addressing global humanitarian issues.

Alan Mills and Chris Ewing shared insights gleaned from their work aimed at supporting urban resilience and emergency preparedness and response, in particular through working with, building, supporting and mobilising civil society networks. They also discussed recent technical innovations such as automated mapping.

This was followed by a question and answer session exploring some aspects further as questioned by the audience.

Chaired and Hosted by:

Speakers

  • Chris Ewing, MapAction Trustee and Volunteer – a keen physical geographer, Chris has over 10 years’ experience in the (re)insurance and engineering sectors. In his day job at Aon Impact Forecasting, Chris helps organizations better quantify natural catastrophe risk. He has volunteered with MapAction since 2007.
  • Alan Mills, MapAction Consultant and Volunteer – a volunteer since 2005 and former trustee, Alan also leads on building data preparedness partnerships. He has his own consultancy business specializing in GIS and remote sensing in international development and has 30 years experience in operations.

The full one hour Webinar can be viewed below.

Ten tips for making simple, informative maps in a pandemic

MapAction has been collaborating for a number of years with French NGO and fellow humanitarian information management specialists CartONG.

Four people participating in an online meeting, two from MapAction, two from CartONG

In addition to our operational activities, we thought it would be worthwhile to pool our collective knowledge to create an informative article. The ten-minute read aims to give some helpful tips for people creating maps intended to assist humanitarian responses to the Corona virus and other pandemics.

Between us, we have a lot of experience of using geospatial analysis and visualisations to inform decision-making in this and previous epidemics, such as Ebola, as well as the current pandemic. We wanted to share this knowledge more widely and felt that, by working together, we could create something really useful and reach more people. Although it was written with pandemics in mind, many of the points apply to all kinds of map making.

You can read the article on the CartONG blog below.

AFD, H2H Network and UK aid logos

This project was co-funded by the French Development Agency (AFD) and the H2H Network’s H2H Fund, the latter supported by UK aid from the UK government.

MapAction’s Moonshot – origins and ambitions

By Juan Duarte, Technical Director, and Monica Turner, Data Scientist, MapAction

Close up of left hand side of the moon
Photo: Adam Scott

History will always underscore how landing on the moon represented a significant milestone in the space race, yet what is often less spoken about is the number of technologies that might not have ever made it without space travel.

These include the all-important ability to take pictures on our phone, thanks to the technology originally created by a team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the technique used to develop diamond-hard coatings for aerospace systems that can now be found on scratch-resistant spectacles. Inventions that originally started life with a bigger purpose but have filtered down into solving some of the challenges in our everyday lives.

This brings us onto MapAction’s own Moonshot initiative – an ambitious programme of work encompassing step changes in the way we use different technologies in the course of our work. This includes things like how we triage, assign and manage the requests for support we receive, and how we can automate certain repeat activities. 

One of the first projects we are working on within the Moonshot programme will enable us to produce seven to nine key maps for 20 of the world’s most vulnerable countries automatically, using technology we’re developing that will provide benefits for many years to come. This is being funded through our partnership with the German Federal Foreign Office.

In the humanitarian sector, a perennial challenge is access to high-quality data. This need is even more acute in the chaotic aftermath of a humanitarian emergency, when data and maps are crucial to make rapid sense of the situation and plan the best response to save lives and minimise suffering. 

In the early hours of a crisis, one of the first tasks facing our team is to produce standardised ‘core’ maps that will be used throughout the response, regardless of the nature of the emergency. These provide contextual and reference information about, among other things, the local environment, population and infrastructure. Sometimes they are created under difficult on-the-ground conditions or with incomplete information. Once they are in place, they are used to create additional situation-specific maps by layering on top evolving information about the extent and impacts of the emergency and the humanitarian response.

As MapAction has made maps in hundreds of emergencies, it has become apparent that, in creating these foundational core maps, there are many repeatable, generalised tasks that could be handled much more quickly by a machine, achieving in seconds what used to take hours. This would give humanitarian decision-makers the orientation information they need immediately, and free up our specialist volunteers for actively assessing and engaging with the situation at hand and performing the mapping tasks that only humans can do. 

Moreover, by shifting the focus from reactive to proactive data sourcing and map production, we can ensure we provide the best maps possible – not just the best maps, given the time and data available and the prevailing circumstances in the midst of a humanitarian emergency. 

Many countries, particularly low and middle-income countries, are likely to have data gaps, and they are often also the countries that may have the least resilience to emergencies such as droughts or earthquakes. Identifying and addressing these data gaps in advance is a big part of the Moonshot project, and something that will have benefits for the humanitarian sector as a whole. 

Like the proverbial needle in the haystack, important data can exist within a subset of a much larger dataset and accessing it can be tricky. Finding a gap is even more difficult, as you’re looking for an unknown entity that isn’t there. The technology we’re developing for the Moonshot will help us to identify the hard-to-see data gaps and quality issues that currently exist. By discovering these, we can pinpoint what information will be needed to ensure a complete map and then work with partners around the world to proactively put in place missing data or improve what currently exists. 

The initial goal of the Moonshot is to publish 180 core maps (nine for each of the 20 vulnerable countries identified at the beginning of the project). The same processes will then be applied to other countries and, eventually, to other types of automated maps beyond these core ones. This means we will ultimately be in a position to expand our understanding and quality assessment processes for more data types. New opportunities and routes of travel are likely to emerge as the project develops.

The ambition is big, but the possibilities that will result from achieving this goal will fundamentally change the way we approach map creation in the humanitarian sector in the future.

In a series of blogs over the next few months, we will share the story of this work as it unfolds, as well as diving down deeper into specific elements of it.

Helping WHO with mapping in Libya and Chad

MapAction volunteers have been supporting the World Health Organization (WHO) in Libya and Chad to process and map data about health and sanitation services, in order to support the response to COVID-19.

The volunteers have been working remotely, alongside each country’s health cluster (networks of WHO partners that work together to relieve suffering and save lives in humanitarian emergencies). They have been helping to identify and map what healthcare, water and sanitation services and aid are being provided, by whom, when and where. This is known as 4W mapping and is important to help identify gaps and avoid duplication.

We are now looking at providing similar assistance to WHO in other parts of North and Central Africa.

MapAction provides GIS support for MSF’s COVID response

MapAction’s partner Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) provides rapid-response medical teams to assist in conflict zones, natural disasters and epidemics. On any given day, its staff treats tens of thousands of patients for a variety of illnesses in its medical programmes around the world.

MSF is very concerned how the COVID-19 pandemic will affect people in countries with already fragile health systems. In many areas where its teams work, there are few medical organisations in a position to respond to an overload of patients.

In order to provide the best medical aid as fast as possible, MSF is working with its technical partner CartONG to create a single repository for all the information its operations personnel need to rapidly respond to the COVID crisis, including information about travel restrictions, flights, cargo transport, availability of supplies, etc. A MapAction team member has been seconded to this technical task force in the role of GIS coordinator. As well as bringing technical expertise in data and content strategy, he’s helping to define and prioritise the information needs of MSF teams and create content for the new platform.

Helping UN Asia Pacific COVID-19 response

A MapAction team member currently based in New Zealand is providing GIS, mapping and information management support to the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Asia and the Pacific (ROAP).

Over the next two months, he will be helping ROAP to support countries that have limited public health infrastructure and resources to cope with the rapid onset of COVID-19. He will be assisted in this work by MapAction’s team of volunteers.

ROAP covers 41 countries in Asia and the Pacific and currently supports these countries in their efforts to ramp up preparedness and response through the UN Resident Coordinators and their offices, as well as local governments.

UN On-Site Operations Coordination Centre course in Estonia

Two MapAction members are currently in Tallinn, Estonia, participating in and helping to facilitate a course for UN On-Site Operations Coordination Centre (OSOCC) Assessment and Analysis Cell teams. Participants are looking in detail at ways in which data and analysis can inform fast-moving and chaotic emergency situations.

MapAction’s CEO Liz Hughes is also in Tallinn this week, taking part in a meeting of the International Humanitarian Partnership.

Thanks to the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance for supporting this important disaster preparedness work.

INSARAG earthquake simulation in Azerbaijan

Earier this month, three MapAction volunteers provided mapping and data support to an International Search and Rescue Advisory Group (INSARAG) earthquake simulation exercise in Azerbaijan, known as the Africa-Europe-Middle East (AEME) Regional Earthquake Response Exercise (ERE).

Thanks to the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance for supporting this important disaster preparedness work.

UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination training

At the end of October, two MapAction volunteers participated in a UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) refresher training course in Neuhausen, Germany. As well as presenting to participants on humanitarian mapping, they supported the simulation exercise with mapping.

These regular training courses enable all involved to enhance and update their skills and knowledge and share insights from disaster responses.

One MapAction participant described the course as a “fantastic week”, while the other described the UNDAC trainees as a “Really dedicated team with interesting first hand experiences from Idai and Dorian.”

We’re grateful to the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance for supporting this important disaster preparedness work.

Responding to floods in Lao PDR

At the end of August and beginning of September, Tropical Storm PODUL and Tropical Depression KAJIKI caused heavy rain in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. This resulted in flooding in six provinces in the southern part of the country. 1,658 villages across 47 Districts have been affected.

A MapAction volunteer is currently working in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Emergency Operations Centre in Jakarta to support our partner the AHA CENTRE as they assist the response. He is supporting the Emergency Response Assessment Team by mapping the evolving situation on the ground, conducting geospatial analysis to compare with 2018 flash flooding in the region, and helping to identify gaps in coverage to help get aid where it’s most needed. This also involves establishing information management and GIS systems and templates for Lao that will be useful beyond the current emergency.

We’re very grateful to the German Federal Foreign Office for supporting this work.

MapAction on the Mapscaping podcast

Podcast

One of MapAction’s longest-serving volunteers, Kathrin Renner, recently spoke to Daniel O’Donohue, presenter of the Mapscaping podcast series, about how MapAction provides geospatial support for humanitarian emergencies.

They chatted about how MapAction supports first responders and disaster management teams to make the best possible decisions and what it’s like to be a MapAction volunteer.

You can hear their conversation here (it’s a 22 minute listen).

More GIS training in Central Asia

Last week a MapAction team was back in Kazakhstan continuing our collaboration with Central Asia’s Center for Emergency Situations & Disaster Risk Reduction (CESDRR).

We were training emergency responders from Shymkent, Kyzylorda, Turkestan & Jambyl in GIS, mapping and data management.

The event appeared on local TV news: https://youtube.com/watch?v=OJ5qVpjiH64 (in Kazakh).

This week, the training continues with a new group of emergency responders in Kyrgyzstan.

We’re grateful to the US Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) for supporting this work.

Supporting United Nations training exercise in Indonesia

This week MapAction is in Sentul, Indonesia, to support an induction training course for the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC).

As well as supporting an earthquake simulation exercise with mapping, three MapAction members are delivering training on GPS, information management and the use of maps for humanitarian response.

MapAction regularly provides training and support to UNDAC’s induction courses that take place around the world for new team members

Our participation in this training was made possible thanks to the support of the Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance. OFDA provides us with grant funding to help us improve the use of maps, geographical information systems (GIS) and spatial analysis across the humanitarian sector to improve the impact of humanitarian aid.

GIS training for disaster preparedness in Kazakhstan

A programme of training for disaster management teams across Kazakhstan has been continuing this week. Employees of the Department for Emergency Situations of Almaty, the East Kazakhstan and Pavlodar regions have been learning about geographic information systems (GIS), data management and mapping on a course jointly provided by MapAction and the region’s Center for Emergency Situations and Disaster Risk Reduction (CESDRR).

The training is part of an ongoing programme of work which sees CESDRR and MapAction collaborating to enhance the use of mapping and information management to improve and expand disaster preparedness, relief and recovery activities across Central Asia. We’re very grateful to US Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) for funding this work.

Three MapAction volunteers are currently in Ust-Kamenogorsk in East Kazakhstan. Next week they will move to Atyrau in the West of the country to repeat the course with another group of local emergency management personnel. In August, two further courses will take place in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Read about our other recent activities in Central Asia.

More training for Caribbean disaster management teams

Two MapAction training courses are in progress in Trinidad & Tobago this week.

Three MapAction team members are privileged to be working with members of civil protection response teams from Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana and Surinam. We are collaborating to share geospatial skills and experiences to support readiness for response to communities.

In the region, hurricanes and storms are a key concern, but several countries also respond to a multitude of different concerns affecting their citizens including earthquakes and other seismic risks.

We are very grateful for the support of The Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management of Trinidad & Tobago for their support. This is part of an ongoing joint programme we are carrying out with the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA). We have already run humanitarian mapping courses with CDEMA in Antigua & Barbuda, Barbados and Jamaica. This important work is funded by US Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA).

Training MapAction’s latest recruits

Also in Trinidad & Tobago this week, the newest members of MapAction’s Caribbean section are being put through their paces on our Conversion Course which, through a combination of theory and practical exercises, prepares our GIS expert volunteers for deployments to humanitarian emergencies.

The week-long course covers numerous topics including sources and collection of humanitarian data, mapping in emergency conditions, priority needs and the timeline of a response.

Humanitarian mapping training in the Caribbean

Together with our partner the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), members of MapAction’s Caribbean and European teams are providing humanitarian mapping training to local disaster management teams from the Eastern and Central regions of the Caribbean this week and next .

Pictures by CDEMA

Disaster management personnel from nine Caribbean nations, as well as CDEMA staff, are attending one of two courses, one in Antigua & Barbuda and the other in Barbados. These courses follow on from similar workshops that took place last year: a regional one at CDEMA’s headquarters in Barbados and one for the North-Western Caribbean in Jamaica. 

Participants are improving their GIS (geographical information system) skills and we are working with them to help understand their national data and information management needs and capabilities, where the gaps are and how MapAction can help to ensure they are filled. This will assist them to effectively prepare for and respond to disasters.

This is part of our ongoing joint programme of work with CDEMA and is funded by US Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA).

Inside the Response to Cyclone Idai

MapAction volunteer Andreas Buchholz has just returned from Beira, Mozambique. He has put together the short video below, which gives a good sense of the scale and urgency of the international response to this major disaster.

While the floodwaters have begun to recede, the situation is still very serious in large parts of Mozambique and surrounding countries. Damage to homes and livelihoods is extensive and lack of access to clean water is causing outbreaks of diseases such as cholera.

MapAction has been working closely with the government of Mozambique, NGOs, the UN and Red Cross teams at the heart of the response and our help has been widely appreciated. The aerial assessment maps shown in the video have so far been printed over two thousand times and used to support search and rescue and the distribution of foodstuffs. The maps were created by the MapAction team in Mozambique with close collaboration with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) and Save the Children.

At the time of writing, MapAction personnel are continuing to work at the On-Site Operations Coordination Centre in Beira, Mozambique.

We are grateful to everyone that has donated to our Cyclone Idai appeal, to the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and to the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs for funding this life-saving work.

Mapping mountains

By Jorge Andres, MapAction volunteer

A few years ago, on a MapAction team training course, participants were asked to present a map that provided particular insight, analysis, or novelty – going beyond simple descriptive mapping.

I chose this map I created of the 2014-5 volcanic eruption on Fogo Island. The steep relief of the island was highly relevant for humanitarian response. Emergency coordinators were monitoring the lava flow as it could reach a critical point where some settlements and roads could be potentially affected afterwards. However, trying to show it with contour lines made the map too messy for a shelter map like this. Satellite imagery and some image processing was used. But, with hindsight, I’m not so sure it was the right option.

I thought quite a lot about this map and the visualisation of the relief. But honestly, this was the best I could do on a static map for showing relief to a broad audience without contour lines.

However, creating this map and then later collaborating with the University of Edinburgh on a volcanic hazard mapping project made me think of a 3D output as a better option for maps where relief is extremely important for understanding the emergency situation.

This fed into my approach to creating the below map of the Crisis del Volcán de Fuego in Guatemala last year.

The volcanic hazard mapping project we are collaborating on with Edinburgh University is growing and we now have funding to expand to six more countries. We are currently working on Chile’s Nevados de Chillán.

Our journey towards equality

By Liz Hughes, MapAction Chief Executive

International Women’s Day is as good a day as any to reflect on gender diversity in the humanitarian and geospatial technology sectors and on what MapAction is doing to ensure equality of opportunity for everyone.

Globally, the proportion of women in the humanitarian sector workforce is high compared to other business sectors, but they are significantly under-represented at leadership level. The gender gap is more pronounced in the tech sector, where LinkedIn data indicates women make up just 27% of the total global workforce, and fewer than one in five female employees reach positions of leadership. That is very worrying when you consider that technology is, in a very real way, shaping the world in which we all live.

Some research suggests that women are better represented in the GIS (geographical information systems) sector than in other technology fields, and, according to our friends at Open Street Map, this is particularly true within the fields of humanitarian and disaster response mapping.

All of this indicates that MapAction, operating as it does at the centre of the Venn diagram of humanitarian emergencies and geospatial information, should be able to achieve gender parity. As an organisation committed to equal opportunities, that is certainly our aim, and one towards which we are steadily progressing, but have yet to attain.

We are fortunate enough to have as distinguished a female geographer as Dr Barbara Bond, Past President of the British Cartographic Society and Fellow and Past Council Member of the Royal Geographical Society, as a Trustee. As well as this, our senior leadership team is evenly balanced by gender. However, currently the overall proportion of women in the organisation is around 30%. Within our volunteer team, where much of our GIS and tech expertise resides, the figure is 26% and currently only a fifth of our ten Trustees are women. We can and will do better.

Why diversity matters

This is important for several reasons. It is certainly desirable that women and other under-represented groups have the opportunity to experience the tremendous personal and professional benefits of being a MapAction volunteer, so they can bring all that learning and personal growth back to help their own organisations and careers. In addition, part of the volunteer experience is belonging to a close community of GIS professionals with whom you work, train, socialise and share some very unique and powerful experiences. As one of our volunteers Kirsty Ferris put it, the “great support, understanding and shared geekiness” is invaluable. According to Kirsty, “There are not many places where you can talk GPS and geodesy with such shared enthusiasm.” To have that kind of peer support network can be vital when 62% of women say they do not see themselves staying in GIS for more than ten years. We need to ensure we have a diverse mix of people, so that all members of our team feel they belong.

But over and above the importance of diversity to our team is its importance for the work we do and the people who’s lives we are seeking to save and improve. The maps we create are a product or our collective know-how and team experience. As Andrew Foerch explains in his article ‘The Importance of Diversity in Cartography’, “Maps are more likely to address problems visible to the people who create them. For example, male and female responses might differ significantly if asked to map safe walking routes through a city.”

Thinking differently can make a difference

GIS and technology expert volunteers make up the lion’s share of MapAction’s membership – we have over 80, plus 10 Trustees, compared to a staff team of 17, most of whom are part-time. We recruit our volunteers once a year, enabling us to train each new intake group together, in order to equip them with all the skills they need to operate effectively within a disaster zone.

Our volunteer recruitment drive is an important annual activity and each new year group brings fresh energy and experience as well as new personalities to our team. The number of men applying to volunteer and making it through our rigorous selection process has nearly always exceeded the number of women. This has always been a concern, but the problem became urgent in 2017 when for the second time in three years, all the successful applicants were male, and only three women were recruited during the three-year period out of a total of 25.

To address the issue, we set up a working group of volunteers and staff members to review our recruitment and also working practices and develop a plan of action. A number of actions came out of that process:

  • We reviewed our GIS volunteer profile to ensure it was attractive to and inclusive of under-represented groups.
  • We published profiles of a diverse group of volunteers and offered to connect prospective applicants with them to find out more about what it’s like to be a MapAction volunteer.
  • We made sure a statement about our commitment to diversity and equal opportunities was included in all our recruitment materials.
  • We broadened the advertising strategy of our recruitment drive, to incorporate organisations such as Women in Technology and Girls Who Code.
  • In order to ensure there are no barriers to entry for any particular group due to unconscious bias on the part of those shortlisting candidates, we are looking at removing all information pertaining to gender, age, ethnicity, disability, etc. from applications.

It is still early days, and there is still much more to do, but it was gratifying to see that our 2018 volunteer intake achieved gender parity at least. We will continuously evaluate and improve our approach. There is tremendous commitment within our staff and volunteer teams to achieve our diversity objectives as part of making MapAction as good as it can be. With that momentum behind us I’m confident that we will get there.

A busy fortnight of training

While many people in the UK prepare for Christmas, a number of our members have been hard at work supporting disaster simulation exercises and delivering mapping training to our partners in different parts of the world.

UNDAC induction course in Ecuador

In the first week of December, three MapAction volunteers were in Riobamba supporting an UNDAC (United Nations Disaster Assessment Coordination) disaster simulation exercise with maps and data visualisations.

The team worked hard to produce a large number of maps in a short space of time under realistic field conditions.

Earthquake simulation in Armenia

At the same time, two MapAction volunteers travelled to Yerevan, Armenia, to support the International Search and Rescue Advisory Group’s (INSARAG) regional earthquake response exercise with maps. This simulation exercise was particularly poignant, coinciding as it did with the 30th anniversary of the Spitak earthquake, which killed over 25,000 Armenians and injured over 130,000 more.

During the exercise, the MapAction team worked with an UNDAC team as well as collaborating with various Search & Rescue and Emergency Medical Teams from around the world.

Induction course in Indonesia

Meanwhile, in Bogor, Indonesia, two MapAction volunteers took part in another earthquake simulation exercise as part of the 10th Induction Course of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations Emergency Response and Assessment Team (ASEAN-ERAT). They mapped the exercise and provided a GIS refresher course.

We’ve worked closely with the ASEAN-ERAT team this year, having supported a number of training activities as well as four emergency responses (two in country and two remotely). It’s great to be strengthening our relationship with each new exercise, ensuring a very effective collaboration when circumstances demand it.

Humanitarian mapping course in Jamaica

Last week, a three-person MapAction team was in Jamaica delivering a humanitarian mapping course to emergency response coordinators from another close partner, CDEMA (the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency). This is part of a programme of longer term disaster preparedness we are working on with CDEMA supported by EU ECHO (the European Civil Protection & Humanitarian Aid Operations).

National mapping and data management training in Kyrgyzstan

A further two MapAction volunteers were in Bishkek last week to deliver a package of training on mapping, data collection and data management for national disaster management agencies.

This is part of our ongoing collaboration with CESDRR (the Central Asian Center for Emergency Situations and Disaster Risk Reduction) which sees us helping to develop best practice for emergency data management across the region.

We’re very grateful to the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) for funding our participation in the Ecuador, Armenia, Indonesia and Kyrgyzstan activities and to EU ECHO for the Jamaica course.

MapAction Volunteer(s) of the Year

On 1 December, MapAction held its Annual General Meeting (AGM) at which we looked back over 2018 and thanked our volunteers and members who have given so much to us over the course of the year in order to further our humanitarian work.

Ant Scott giving a situation report during the response to the Indonesia earthquake in October

Every year we highlight the contribution of one volunteer who has exceeded even our very high expectations in terms of their dedication and impact over the previous twelve months. Winning the Volunteer of the Year prize (also known as the David Spackman Award after our first Chief Executive who presents it each year) is a significant achievement. The bar is very high; all our volunteers are carefully selected for their skills, intelligence, attitude and dedication and being part of our deployable team requires a large, ongoing commitment of time and effort. As well as going on missions and participating in team training, our volunteers also do a lot of less publicly visible work in the UK. They help to ensure that MapAction has the technical capability (tools, knowledge and skills) to maintain and enhance its humanitarian activities. They also create maps remotely and provide remote support to our own teams and our partners around the world to help them process and analyse data and create maps locally.

Mark Gillick (left) receiving the MapAction Volunteer of the Year Award from David Spackman

Two winners

This year, unusually, the David Spackman Award was given to two individuals – Mark Gillick and Ant Scott – both of whom have packed in a huge amount of extremely valuable and important pro bono work during the past twelve months.

Mark deployed a remarkable seven times in 2018 carrying out essential training and preparedness as well as disaster response work. He went from floods in Nigeria directly to the earthquake in Indonesia without returning home in between.

Ant deployed to the Indonesian earthquake, helped represent MapAction at the Humanitarian Openstreetmap Team’s global summit in Tanzania and this month will be conducting a preparedness mission to Kyrgyzstan. He also lead the management and evolution of MapAction’s disaster preparedness offering and spearheaded the transition of our internal wiki to a new platform – a task which took many months of continual focus.

Presenting the awards, David highlighted three qualities that both winners had exhibited in abundance during 2018; intelligence, honourable intent and imagination in the form of creativity and inventiveness. “There is a power relationship between motivation, thought and action, and you both have shown the potency of that synthesis in a noble cause. Could anyone ask for more? Together you are a manifestation of a shining tradition. Thank you both, for your practical hard work and for the self-effacing magic of your inspiration.”

Congratulations to Ant and Mark, and thank you to all our volunteers for the tremendous work you do.

Below is our CEO Liz Hughes’ review of 2018 which she shared at the AGM.

Training and mapping at ARDEX

MapAction volunteer Ian Coady was in Banten, Indonesia, last week, with our partner the AHA Centre, which is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management. Together they were taking part in the seventh ASEAN Regional Disaster Emergency Response Simulation Exercise (ARDEX).

As well as creating maps to support the AHA Centre’s coordination teams during the exercise, Ian provided training on the use of geographical information systems (GIS) and information management for humanitarian purposes.

Thanks to USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) for supporting this important work.

 

Seven days of GIS

November 14 is GIS Day – an international event for users of geographical information systems (GIS) technology to demonstrate real-world applications that are making a difference in society.

To mark the day and celebrate the impact that GIS has in humanitarian work, we’re sharing ‘Seven days of GIS’.

Each day for the next seven days we will reveal a favourite map, a fascinating fact or a story about how GIS is used to help prepare for and respond to humanitarian emergencies.

Day 1) 8 November – floods in Malawi

In January 2015, MapAction volunteer Andreas Buchholz was one member of a MapAction team that traveled to Malawi to help the response to catastrophic flooding.

This map turned out to be vitally important to the UN and other teams responding to the situation on the ground.

Andreas chose to highlight this map for GIS Day because “it influenced decision makers on a local, national and global level to decide where to distribute and prioritise aid.”

Click on the map to see the story.

Day 2) 9 November – livestock map

David Spackman was MapAction’s first employee in 2002 and led its first major deployment to Sri Lanka following the tsunami that devastated the country in January 2004.

David chose this map from 2007 because “it makes a powerful point, often lost in the focus on human tragedies: if you lose your livestock you lose your livelihood.”

The map was created as part of MapAction’s response to Tropical Storm Noel which caused severe flooding and displaced more than 64,000 people in the Dominican Republic in October 2007. More than 80% of the country was affected. In total we created around 50 maps that helped local responders get aid to where it was needed as quickly as possible and begin the recovery process.

Day 3) 10 November – Mark’s busy year

MapAction volunteer Mark Gillick has had a busy year so far, putting his GIS skills to life-saving use around the world. Since August alone, he has deployed to Indonesia, Nigeria and Afghanistan and delivered humanitarian mapping training in Laos and Kazakhstan.

Find out more about where he’s been and the difference it’s made by clicking on the photo.

Day 4) 11 November – language mapping

The ability to communicate with populations affected by disasters and emergencies effectively is key to understanding their needs and keeping them informed of life-saving information.

A language map is a good example of a map that might be needed in the aftermath of a disaster. It is likely to be used by anyone interacting with the local community, particularly international responders who may be unfamiliar with the affected area. Emergency telecommunications clusters may use it to help inform the best positioning of new infrastructure.

Mappers can pull in language data from resources such as Ethnologue and national censuses and combine it with administrative boundaries and settlements and communications infrastructure data.

This map was created by MapAction during the response to the earthquake in Nepal in April 2015. It shows the main language groups in Nepal and was used for planning public communications with disaster-affected communities.

Click on the map to find out more about language mapping.

Day 5) 12 November – coordination maps

MapAction’s CEO Liz Hughes strongly believes that maps are key to making effective operational decisions. “But they need to communicate simply, quickly and clearly and the data needs to be right, or it can have serious implications.”

Liz chose to highlight this map from the aftermath of Cyclone Pam in Vanuatu in March 2015 because it shows how useful geospatial analysis can be in quickly understanding needs and coordinating the response in a chaotic post-disaster situation. Knowing what others are already doing to help is essential to targeting aid effectively.

Liz explains, “This map lets you quickly see gaps and also where more coordination is needed. It’s good to know that we can use our amazing team’s skills to provide useful analysis of this sort.” MapAction created well over 100 maps to help coordinate the response to Cyclone Pam, which was one of the worst natural disasters the island of Vanuatu had ever experienced.

Day 6) historic map

MapAction trustee Barbara Bond is an author and geographer whose senior leadership roles have included president of the British Cartographic Society, senior civilian Director and Deputy Chief Executive of the UK Hydrographic Office and Chair of the International Hydrographic Organisation’s Antarctic Commission. Among other accolades, she has received the British Cartographic Society’s silver medal and the Prince Albert I medal and been inducted into the US National Geospatial-Intelligence Hall of Fame.

Barbara’s PhD thesis, ‘Great Escapes: the story of MI9’s Second World War escape and evasion maps’, was published in October 2015 by Harper Collins.

One of Barbara’s all time favourite maps is of the Danzig Docks and was produced by MI9 during the Second World War for escaping prisoners of war. The map shows the place that Swedish boats docked. Barbara explains, “It carries the most powerful message about the best way to get home (board a Swedish ship and get to a neutral country.) That map saved many lives since hundreds (even thousands) of prisoners of war successfully escaped via that route.”

Day 7: GIS Day – our volunteers

MapAction’s work depends on a group of highly skilled and dedicated volunteers who are ready to be deployed at very short notice anywhere in the world, with a select few providing specific technical capacity (system administration and software development).

In their day jobs, our volunteers work in a range of fields from Antarctic surveying to zoological research. When they join our team they are already proficient and experienced in GIS or a related subject. We train them to apply those skills in a humanitarian context.

Being a MapAction volunteer is as demanding as it is rewarding. A humanitarian response requires a huge team effort to work; MapAction team members can find themselves helping at a remote and challenging location or working through the night to provide support to our deployed team. Between missions volunteers participate in monthly MapAction training courses to update and expand their skills, as well as teaching and passing on their knowledge to humanitarians around the world. The time commitment is high, but the sense of community and satisfaction means people stay with us for many years. As longstanding volunteer Emerson Tan comments in this video, “You can’t beat the feeling of seeing some people who are alive because of your work.”

 

Supporting the response to Super Typhoon Mangkhut

Catastrophic weather events have affected millions of people around the world in recent weeks. So far this month we have seen six named tropical storms in the Atlantic and Pacific, including three hurricanes and two super typhoons – and storm season is still far from over.

At the same time as the southern US was battered by Hurricane Florence just under a fortnight ago, parts of the Philippines were devastated by Super Typhoon Mangkhut, known locally as Ompong, which also caused widespread damage in Hong Kong and southeast China.

Mangkhut has affected over 2.1 million people in the Philippines, which is still recovering from the devastation of Typhoon Haiyan in 2013 in which over 6,000 people died. The latest death toll has reached 127, with almost the same number still missing, compared to four dead in China. More than 10,000 houses in the Philippines were completely destroyed by Mangkhut and over 100,000 others damaged. More than 50,000 people are in immediate need of assistance and, with damage to agriculture estimated at over £378 million, livelihoods and food security are of concern in the medium-term.

A MapAction member has been in Jakarta, working with emergency response teams at the head quarters of the AHA Centre (the Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) as it responds to the emergency. Our latest maps show some of the impacts Mangkhut has had in the Philippines as well as the assistance currently being provided. We are continuing to provide mapping and information management support to support the recovery process.

Caribbean storms: our response

Storms Isaac, Florence, Joyce and Helene are currently passing across the Caribbean region and Southern USA and we are monitoring and mapping their progress together with forecasts of likely wind speeds, storm surges, flood risks and other hazards. Isaac is due to pass over Dominica, Guadeloupe, Antigua and Barbuda today, bringing very high winds and heavy rain. Currently it looks as if Dominica is at greatest risk of flooding.

MapAction member Jonny Douch is in Barbados where he is providing support to the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) which is headquartered there. Jonny has been in the region for the past three weeks, delivering mapping training to members of the teams that make up CDEMA’s Regional Response Mechanism and supporting the UN Disaster Assessment Coordination (UNDAC) with preparedness activities in St Maarten. He has stayed on in Barbados to help with the storm response. We also have a small team of trained Disaster GIS Volunteers who live in the region and other team members are on standby to help as needed.

MapAction has significant recent experience and strong working relationships in the Caribbean, having provided GIS teams and other assistance in response to several hurricanes and the Haiti earthquake, as well as training and preparedness activities. Ronald Jackson, Executive Director of CDEMA, said this week, “We had the opportunity to work closely with members of the MapAction team during the response to Hurricanes Matthew in 2016 and again during Irma and Maria in September 2017, and from this collaboration, we understood the benefits that their mapping and information management expertise could bring to our own operations.”

We hope that damage caused by this week’s storms is not as severe as that caused by Hurricanes Irma and Maria a year ago, but we are keen to support responders in the region in any way we can.

In addition to the Caribbean storms, we are monitoring Super Typhoon Mangkhut which has the potential to affect 43 million people in the Philippines.

Training information managers in Lao PDR with the AHA Centre

Two MapAction members were in Vientane, Lao PDR, last week, working with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management (AHA Centre). They were helping to deliver an Emergency Rapid Assessment Team (ERAT) Pilot Course on Information Management.

This collaboration follows on from our recent signing of a Memorandum of Intent with the AHA Centre to formalise our joint efforts to help build mapping and information management capacity among humanitarian actors in the ASEAN region, as well as helping them prepare for disasters by putting in place essential geospatial information and resources.

Last week’s course provided our first opportunity to meet and work with information management teams in the region and MapAction volunteers Mark and Tony used the time to coach them on creating mapping products, as well as gain an understanding of their support requirements and working methods.

This work was made possible thanks to the generous support of the U.S. Agency for International Development as part of a programme to improve the use of geospatial analysis and services across the entire humanitarian response sector. 

We are looking forward to many more collaborations with the AHA Centre in future.

MapAction’s largest training exercise of the year

On 8-10 June 2018, MapAction held its annual disaster simulation training exercise for volunteers. This year’s event recreated the chaotic atmosphere of a complex humanitarian emergency with health, food, water and sanitation insecurity in the fictional, war-torn country of Albia.

The aim of the exercise is to help MapAction’s highly skilled mapping volunteers practice different aspects of their vital work helping get the right aid to the right people in a humanitarian emergency. Over 60 MapAction members took part, along with people from a number of other organisations, including the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), Milton Keynes NHS Hospital Trust, Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service and Save the Children.

The simulation gives the entire team a chance to rehearse every aspect of a typical mission. A continual stream of planned requests, interruptions and and events means that, as in reality, making maps is only one aspect of an effective mission. The Gilded exercise is the largest and longest of 12 annual training courses that MapAction runs for its members every year, of which deployable volunteers are expected to attend at least seven.

Using imagery to best effect in disaster relief

By Alan Mills, MapAction volunteer

Can satellite imagery and UAV data become useful data sources for humanitarian decision making in disaster relief coordination?

Satellite Imagery and data collected by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly promoted as valuable new information sources to aid humanitarian emergency decision making, but how much have things really changed? MapAction is at the forefront of information management delivery on the ground in humanitarian relief, and the choice of which data we use depends on what is best for how to get aid to affected people. Our primary aim is to inform decision making by mapping for people in a crisis, ensuring the best data is timely in delivery to help those affected. Do satellite imagery or data from unmanned aerial vehicles or UAVs make a difference in the field yet? We consider the evidence from our perspective.

People focus is primary in MapAction’s approach – we source the optimal data available to help people, focused around what they need. We don’t use or process data just because we have it in the hope that something good will come. There’s just too much data available to do that. As well as topographic map data, baseline statistics, situation reports and field data, imagery from satellite and unmanned aerial vehicles or UAV (often called drones) is regularly available and has been used in a wide range of emergencies, from cyclones and earthquakes, to migrant crises and munitions explosions. But we have to make decisions on which data to use.

In a recent internal review calculating how much imagery has been used by MapAction in our emergency missions, some fascinating conclusions were drawn. First, we make more use of derived products than we do of original imagery. The most used dataset comes from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) data flown way back in 2000. Where other elevation data are not available, the SRTM’s digital elevation model data forms a pleasing and useful backdrop to so many maps. It helps responders get a feel for the topography of the disaster affected area and in some cases assists in logistics planning, market analysis and winterisation predictions. SRTM is also easily accessible and can be downloaded to laptops before a deployment starts. Its old, but simple and effective.

Also frequently used are flood extent derivations (primarily from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Image Spectroradiometer – MODIS) and rainfall accumulation models from various sources showing the intensity and longevity of rain in affected areas. MapAction frequently accesses data from other agencies (for example UNOSAT) who have detected damage from imagery, such as after a cyclone or earthquake. Some more moderate use of land cover data or wildfire detection has also been exploited.

Our use of basic visible spectrum imagery has usually been restricted to small areas of interest, as a detailed backdrop against other data (such as in refugee camps) or to highlight conditions before and after a disaster. To date we have not made use of UAV imagery in any of our published maps.

What does this tell us about the use of imagery in the kinds of emergencies MapAction responds to? First it is worth noting the environments in which we often work. We are usually based in the countries where the relief operations are focused, and where ‘normal’ Information Management working conditions do not operate, due to power and IT Comms challenges. We cannot necessarily download large volumes of data due to thin or interrupted internet connections. We have very little time to stitch lots of imagery together, process that raw imagery, or analyse the bands of data into something meaningful. And we are bombarded by multiple requests to process data for a range of relief managers in a rapidly evolving situation, so we work under acute time and technological constraints.

Raw imagery that is bulky, and needs processing and analysing is not best suited to these conditions even if it is handed over on a very large capacity USB stick! Smaller vector based datasets derived from the imagery, or raster data ready-to-travel pre-disaster are much more serviceable.

A further problem with visible spectrum satellite imagery is that it is not appropriate to post disaster scenarios in especially tropical or temperate climates. Cloud or smoke frequently cover the area of interest. Imagery may only be acquired well after its primary purpose was needed and the relief effort has already moved on to a new phase. In certain scenarios remote interpretation can also misclassify the data and without extensive ground verification can at best confuse, at worst mislead the decision making processes on the ground.

UAV claims to solve some of these limitations. The spectrum of UAV technologies emerging in disaster management purport to give timely information and services, including carrying essential medical supplies, surveillance in areas difficult or dangerous to reach by human assessors, capturing data below clouds which obscure the ground from satellites, and mapping damage.

Digging below the hyperbole and excitement which often surrounds a new technology, the reality has been that while the videography has an immediate visual impact and is being widely shown both in the formal and social media, the actual usefulness for information management in the humanitarian relief effort remains to be proved. Current limitations on the technology, whether the lack of flying time by lightweight UAVs, the difficulty in logistics of getting larger vehicles to the affected areas, and for getting permission to fly UAVs in the same zones as helicopters and planes on other relief operations is also hampering effectiveness. UAV operators are learning rapidly that in responses where normality has broken down simple resources such as transport and fuel, let alone material to put together flight plans, can be difficult to obtain and greatly restrict the ability to mobilise.

Case studies for UAVs in the humanitarian sector do exist, but they are more often in disaster preparedness, mitigation and resilience. There are precious few documented examples of UAVs providing useful information to be reliably included in disaster assessment, relief delivery or coordination.

As well as the logistical problems which need to be overcome, an understanding of what humanitarians do, or need, on the ground is too often lacking by enthusiastic UAV advocates. Admittedly this is an omission in many areas of technology being offered to relief operations. As Nick van Praag said in a recent blogs “Absent a clear direction, labs tend to focus on innovation by gadget”.

Humanitarians are not blameless in being slow to explore new solutions, technology or processes, but there is obviously a need for a more open and two-way dialogue to target both the space and UAV sectors’ undoubted talents, resources and goodwill towards humanitarian relief. Humanitarians must be open to testing entrepreneurship and innovation but technicians must listen to the hard-learnt experience of humanitarians in dealing with the complexity, even chaos, desperation and rapidly evolving ground situations in disaster affected locations.

Two encouraging trends suggest a growing maturity in the UAV sector that might soon deliver game-changing information to humanitarians, and make a difference to the suffering of those affected by disasters. One is self-organisation, leading to regulation and cooperation. A single UAV operator testing their kit in the field is not going to help a suffering population. However an array of UAV operators who have resolved key issues in advance will get much attention and praise. Before flying, they will have agreed on issues such as; how to carve up the affected area, which sections to map first, standards of operation, output resolution, how to stitch that data together and extract useful information about damage, logistical bottlenecks, flooded areas, tornado paths, critical infrastructure status, etc., and how to provide that data to humanitarians when they need it.

The emergence of UAViators also gives encouragement. Not only are they sharing best practice and actively seeking ways to coordinate their resources in the field, they are also grappling with the multiple legislative issues in many countries to get permission to fly, avoid hampering any other humanitarian actions and developing a code of conduct for UAV operators on the ground. Potentially they are a one stop shop for humanitarians wanting to find advice on how best to engage with the UAV sector.

Further causes for optimism are targeted improvements to the technology that relieve the logistical bottlenecks in the environment in which UAVs have to work during and after disasters. Better geo-location services routinely found on board UAV platforms, faster and more accurate automated geo-correction processes, longer flight and shorter recharge times, recharging in the field, better broadband (for example from new global satellite arrays), better resolutions, and higher specifications for the lightweight end of the UAV spectrum will all contribute to more effective operations.

Localisation of UAV operations in areas prone to disasters either by national operators or international organisations prepositioning their kit in the right places is also occurring. This localisation, alongside working out legalities and permissions pre-disaster, should hasten deployment times and reduce costs to producing useful information.

A challenge could be set by humanitarian information management officers to give awards – or at least a friendly pat on the back – to those UAV operators who can deliver a seamless, interpreted and compact set of data (e.g. damage assessment) over an affected area – not just where the UAV can fly – when the humanitarians need it (e.g. initial assessments within 72 hours of the disaster occurring) at an effective scale (we may need to see buildings but don’t need to count every dislodged brick).

Even where the above parameters and technical challenges can be met, donors and users should still weigh up the cost-effectiveness of UAV operators in the field gathering huge amounts of data which might be more easily, more cheaply and less disruptively gathered by other sources like satellite or ground surveys. Just because you can gather data at very high resolution and in glorious technicolor with a brand new device, does not mean you should.

Do we make too much fuss of UAVs just because they are new technology? For mappers, is it really just another platform for obtaining remotely sensed data, to take its place along with satellites, space shuttles, aeroplanes, helicopters, balloons, kites and pigeons? Perhaps once humanitarians and social media shakers and movers accept this, they can ignore both the platform and how the data is captured and get down to looking at the information itself and how we can make better use of it.

We have focused above on the UAV sector, but the space sector also needs to be much more aware of the same parameters for good humanitarian information outlined above. In this sector, too, there are plenty of new innovations, which may have the potential to be game-changers. Humanitarians, not just the information management specialists who love all things technological, but field operators and project managers, should be made very aware how fast this sector is transforming and expanding, and help guide it in what are their true information needs. We’re back to needing a more informed dialogue.

Some areas where the space sector will potentially assist are in the exponential growth of platforms, primarily through microsatellites. New radar sensors will literally make us see better with their penetrating gaze through the clouds. While general visible sensors will always have a place, the accessibility, resolution, sensitivity and specificity of physical monitoring sensors; fire detectors, vegetation mappers, water detectors, temperature gauges, will provide very targeted products that humanitarians should tap into.

The challenges for use of space sector services are similar to those in the UAV sector. Are the solutions they provide appropriate to the problem they aim to solve, whether it be measuring the extent of the affected area or helping value the damage to assets? And how cost effective is it to transfer those solutions to the people who need them on the ground so they can make the right decisions, at the right time?

In many ways the list of innovations listed above is nothing new – meteorologists for example will tell you targeted sensors are old news. Radar has been around since 1940s. But it is both the proliferation, the usability and the fast widening access to these resources by non-specialists which is starting to gain purchase in the humanitarian field.

Is there a risk of drowning in a sea of data? Humanitarian data continues to proliferate and responders and information management officers can be overwhelmed by data, even early on in an emergency response. Finding those data can be a challenge, as much as being over-provisioned by well meaning data providers as soon as you declare you are heading for the disaster. Clearing houses, portals and nodes are multiplying almost as fast as data sources. Many offer focused locations to get hold of data, but they vary in quality, structure, searchability, relevance and long term management. As humanitarian mappers, we at MapAction know how frustrating it can be to spend significant time sifting through these sites to get that one set of truly useful data that our customer has requested urgently.

MapAction will continue watching the horizons of technology to see what innovations may make our operations and outputs more effective. We are happy to engage with technologists to build understanding of the needs of humanitarian relief to produce targeted, appropriate and timely solutions. We are happy to replace old solutions with new, such as using more accurate elevation data than SRTM. However they must meet both humanitarian technical requirements – suitable resolution and accuracy, for example – and practical & logistical requirements – working with limited bandwidth, digestible in quick time, interoperable with commonly used systems. We don’t use data sources or services because they are new, but because they are better than anything else.

Ultimately, it is time to change the way we use remotely sensed data in humanitarian response. We do need to shift from technology driven, supply side innovations to an iterative process of system evolution. Where this is successful, humanitarians will clearly express their information needs for getting aid to the right place when it is needed following a disaster, amid what, by their nature, are difficult conditions . And technologists must understand the restricted parameter of these difficult conditions and provide appropriate, streamlined, effective tools.

The situation after a disaster is by its nature chaotic, distressed and difficult to operate within – in short, confusing. Any tool or data source which exists to help within that system should be targeted at alleviating the confusion and ensuring that the affected communities and individuals are at the heart of any solution.
Remotely sensed data do not and will not solve humanitarian information management problems by themselves. Their added value comes from combining these data effectively with other digital map, survey and ground-based information. Simple, focused solutions from technicians will work best – but only where they are interoperable with other data sources, multiple systems and open for use by all responders.

Sudden Onset & Humanitarian Response Mapping Course

In a disaster situation, making rapid sense of the avalanche of information is crucial to an effective response.

MapAction’s practical, three-day Response Mapping course teaches you to use simple, low-cost, open source software and tried and tested field applications to create essential maps, proven to aid key decision-makers in a major crisis.

When: 1 – 3 May, 2018
Or: 9 – 11 October, 2018

Where: MapAction’s offices in Saunderton, Buckinghamshire, UK

Who should take this course?

Sudden onset responders and development practitioners who want to improve their knowledge of mapping, data collection and data visualisation in the context of humanitarian response, as well as people with an interest in data mapping who want to apply their knowledge in a humanitarian context.

What will I learn?

The course will teach you how to carry out basic spatial data collection, spatial analysis and mapping and how to find the necessary free/open-source tools and software needed to set up a GIS project.
Learn how to make maps that help with:
• Field-based navigation and needs assessment
• Identifying areas in priority need of aid and gaps in delivery
• Planning and monitoring programmes
• Support to logistics
• Identifying hazards and security risks
• Reporting, communication and advocacy

All course materials and software will be provided. Computers and GPS units can be loaned if needed, but you are encouraged to bring your own laptop on which open-source software can be installed. During the course you can research data and set up a project around your area of interest, so making it easier to apply what you learn directly to your work.

The course covers:

• Mapping and information management for responders and humanitarian work
• Creating base maps using open source mapping and QGIS software and online data sources
• Creating thematic maps showing humanitarian situations
• Using GPS/smartphones to undertake field data collection

The principal course instructors will be GIS practitioners with MapAction field experience in humanitarian emergencies. MapAction has deployed to over 70 sudden onset/humanitarian disasters and supported as many again remotely. We are a stand-by partner to the UN Disaster Assessment & Coordination (UNDAC) team and we provide mapping training to UN OCHA, UNDAC, INSARAG and many other organisations with responsibility for humanitarian disaster management.

Practicalities, fees and registration

The course will be held at the MapAction office in Saunderton, Buckinghamshire, which is easily reached by train from London and Birmingham. Lunch and refreshments will be provided, as well as one evening meal for all delegates. Costs are as follows:

Course only All inclusive***
Band A: Student / Unemployed / Small Charity* £360 £740
Band B: Self–funding Individuals / Medium Charity** £600 £980
Band C: Large Charity / Commercial & State Organisations £950 £1330

* Defined as having fewer than 25 employees
** Defined as having fewer than 45 employees
*** Course plus local hotel with bed, breakfast and evening meal (Monday evening to Thursday breakfast). Daily taxi transfer to and from hotel. 

Places on this course are limited. To book a place, please here and select ‘tickets’ (subject to Eventbrite booking fee), or email training[at]mapaction.org to book direct.

GIS award for MapAction’s work

USA, 20 July – MapAction was presented with the Humanitarian GIS Award by ESRI in San Diego in July.

The award was received by Andrew Douglas-Bate, MapAction’s Chairman, from Jack Dangermond, President of ESRI Inc. The presentation took place in front of some 12,000 people at ESRI’s International User Conference, on 11 July 2009 in San Diego, California.

Jack Dangermond praised the work of MapAction volunteers who use GIS for good in challenging and sometimes dangerous environments.

ESRI Inc is the world’s largest GIS software and services company. It supports MapAction by providing free licences and support for its powerful software, for MapAction volunteers to use in the field during natural disasters and other humanitarian crises.

 

New GIS field guide

field_guide_cover_110x110UK, 10 June – MapAction has published the first edition of its Field Guide to Humanitarian Mapping. The guide, which is downloadable free, will help aid organisations to use geospatial tools and methods in their work in emergencies. There are tutorials for Google Earth and open-source GIS software. Click here to access the guide.