Participate in mapping the world to better prevent humanitarian crises
Mapathon organized on September 22, 2021 from MSF offices in Brussels to map the areas of Masisi in DRC, Machar Colony in Pakistan and Nsjanje in Malawi.
© Bruno De Cock / MSF
Text by: Aurore Lartigue Follow
9 mins
Map the most vulnerable areas of the planet to facilitate humanitarian response to disasters.
This is the mission that the Missing Maps project has set itself for years.
All thanks to the participatory OpenStreetMap map and an army of volunteer contributors.
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“
Last spring, humanitarian organizations started sounding the alarm,
” reports Jana Bauerová, from the Czech office of Doctors Without Borders (MSF). One of the worst droughts in the past ten years, combined with the Covid-19 pandemic and various lockdowns, had plunged southern Madagascar into a
serious food crisis
. “
Colleagues carried out an exploration mission in March,
” continues the young woman. In the most affected districts, nearly 28% of children under 5 suffered from acute malnutrition, some of them from severe acute malnutrition. In other words, without immediate care, their chance of survival is low.
►To listen again: In Madagascar, "because of the drought, more than a million people are on the verge of famine"
Problem: the area is landlocked, many roads are not passable, and above all the available maps are obsolete.
“
There was a strong need for updating on populations,”
explains Jana Bauerová, communication and community participation officer for the
Missing Maps
project
within MSF.
We therefore set up
a campaign to map the districts of Amboasary and Ambovombe
, in the region of Anôsy, the most affected municipalities, where our colleagues in the field were planning mobile clinic projects, access to drinking water, also degraded by drought, food distribution actions and even kitchen utensils, some families, at the edge of the family, having sold everything.
"
Better visualize the actions to be taken
“
We were able to map 236,000 buildings and
7,239
residential areas as well as 350 km of tracks,”
says Jana Bauerová.
This made it possible to help colleagues on site to better visualize the situation by taking into account the latest data to plan the actions to be implemented.
But beyond these figures, the new data collected also enabled the NGO to confirm the relevance of the option of mobile clinics for these difficult to access areas, and of course to organize their distribution as best as possible.
MSF staff weigh a child at a mobile clinic in Ankamena on March 23, 2021, in southern Madagascar.
© MSF
“
Put the most vulnerable communities back on the map
”. This is the slogan of the Missing Maps project. Founded in 2014 by the American and British Red Crosses, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) and Doctors Without Borders UK, the project assumes that “
most places where disasters occur are missing from free and accessible maps, and first aid lacks information to make the right decisions
”. The idea is therefore to preventively map these areas in order to improve the response of NGOs in the event of a crisis.
How? 'Or' What ?
Thanks to participatory digital mapping.
“
The principle is to mobilize contributors around a specific project
,” explains Martin Noblecourt, responsible for the Missing Maps project within
CartONG
.
Based in Chambéry, France, this NGO aims to put geographic data at the service of projects of general interest, in particular through technical support to organizations that have mapping needs.
"
One billion people live in areas not or insufficiently mapped
"
GPS, Google Maps… Maps have become part of our daily lives. Today, you no longer need to tear your hair to fold it, they fit in your pocket and are available at any time. Better still, they are constantly updated. Yet, whether they live in slums or remote areas, "
an estimated one billion people live in unmapped or insufficiently mapped areas, which has a big impact on the resources they can access, in the event of a loss. particularly urgent, if we do not even know that people live there
", underlines Gihan Hassanein, communication manager for the
Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team
(HOT), the NGO backed by OpenStreetMap, this project which aims to create in online a free map of the whole world.
While the tin roofs of the Kawéni slum in Mayotte are clearly visible on satellite images (right), these habitats do not appear on the Google Maps (right).
© Google Maps / RFI montage
An essential point, underlines Martin Noblecourt: the maps are produced on
OpenStreetMap
, “
the Wikipedia of maps
”, “
a participatory, collaborative and free-licensed world map, which can be used by everyone
”.
Other NGOs will thus be able to freely re-use this data.
It all started in 2010, explains the spokesperson for HOT, during the earthquake in Haiti. “
The damage was enormous in Port-au-Prince and there were no reliable and up-to-date maps of the city. First aid workers didn't even know where to look for people.
A handful of people who were already using OpenStreetMap then got together to map the area remotely using satellite imagery. Since then, the small group has grown into an NGO, which has grown steadily, and communities of local contributors have sprung up around the world.
But how do you quickly map a specific region? The first step takes place online, explains CartONG's Missing Maps project manager: contributors trace the main elements on satellite images. A tool allows you to divide the area into small squares where they identify the quadrilaterals or polygons of buildings, the different roads, the watercourses. The second step takes place in the field. "
This remote part must then be completed on site, either by members of NGOs or by local volunteer contributors, who walk around with a smartphone in order to collect information on specific points such as health centers, schools, etc. sanitary facilities, etc.
They can also add more qualitative information on the state of certain infrastructures, for example.
»A system of multiple validations ensures the reliability of the data.
"Mapathons"
The democratization of satellite images, which are no longer reserved for military use, and the multiplication of available data have made cartography accessible to everyone. To participate, no need to be a computer scientist or expert in cartography, all you need is a computer, a mouse and a wifi connection, explain the organizations. And the key, the satisfaction of having contributed, on its own scale and behind its screen, to a humanitarian project.
For even greater efficiency, “mapathons”, where anonymous people come to map a specific area for a specific time, are regularly organized. In 2020, at the request of the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), CartONG for example organized several events of this type to map
refugee camps in South
Sudan, Sudan, Burma and Ethiopia, “
areas which move fast and are generally not on the official maps
, ”comments Martin Noblecourt. “
What we see mainly on satellite images is the road network, the tents and some infrastructure that is not necessarily identified. Afterwards, UNHCR staff complete.
According to the CartONG website, some 700 contributors spent nearly 700 hours mapping 180,000 buildings and 3,800 km of road. “
A way to calculate, for example, how many tents are within 50 or 100 meters of a water point and how many people depend on them. And therefore help in decision-making: knowing where to relocate water points.
"
Evaluate needs, represent them visually on a map, adapt actions and measure their impact… Uses are very varied. The Covid-19 pandemic, for example, has generated mapping needs, in particular to organize vaccination campaigns. But it can also mean better preparing populations for natural disasters.
“We have just completed
a project in Tajikistan
which consisted of supporting a local NGO, The Little Earth, to identify remote villages and collect data there, particularly on hydrographic networks and the risks that this generates in terms of flooding, assembly points, sanitary facilities, etc. And they afterwards, organized risk awareness activities with the inhabitants.
"
Strengthen local contributing communities
Collaborative projects that make it possible to create local emulation.
“
I was just cleaning the data,
” says Jackson Mumbere Kumbi over the phone.
Basically, a sorting job.
He is one of hundreds of members of the
OpenStreetMap RDC
(OSM RDC)
community of contributors
.
When he began to
map Beni
, in North Kivu, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in 2018, he explains, “
the map was almost blank
". With other contributors, they gradually added basic data - buildings, roads, public places (churches, markets, etc.) then more precise data such as the location of health centers for example or the delimitation of agricultural plots. . Over time, he trained in the tools. Then it was he who formed a small team of young people from Beni, still with OSM RDC, who continues to work on the map and update it.
There is a "
pride
" for the inhabitants to be mapped, "
to be able to say: here, it is my house
", he affirms.
“
And that allows them to better control their environment.
“
The idea is that if someone needs information, they can find it easily
,” he explains.
Thanks to this precise mapping, during the Ebola epidemic, we were able to better locate certain contacts at risk.
Therefore better orient health personnel.
"
The work carried out in the province of Beni, in eastern DRC
Display a larger map
“
Support OpenStreetMap communities around the world.
Today, this is what the OSM humanitarian team (HOT), which claims 268,000 contributors, is working on, explains its spokesperson. “
Make sure they have the equipment they need, that they have the skills they need, make sure that the data is of good quality,
” says Gihane Hassanein. OSM communities can also apply for scholarships for specific projects.
One of the last projects for Jackson Mumbere Kumbi in Beni remains to add the missing street names.
In this city plagued by repeated massacres for several years, the issue is also security.
Afterwards, points out the contributor, it will be necessary to take care of making "
visible
" the rest of the DRC.
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