2019 Reflections: Maps
As we move into 2020, it’s the perfect time to look back at 2019 and reflect on what we’ve achieved, learned and accomplished as a GIS team (also known as the Maps team) in supporting the organisation with spatial data analysis and Information Management. So, here are our highlights of 2019 — we’ve condensed them to a top 10, so if you want to know more comment below!
UK Services — First and foremost, we continue to support our UK services with their spatial data analysis and mapping needs. We supported colleagues and volunteers from many areas including Emergency Response, Independent Living, Event First Aid, Restoring Family Links and International Family Tracing, Psychosocial Support as well as the Property and Fundraising teams! It’s always great to see and be part of the varied needs of the organisation.
London Community Resilience — Throughout the year, we’ve supported our UK colleagues working in Community Resilience to analyse and map vulnerabilities several London boroughs which led to the creation of community-led emergency response plans for these boroughs as part of the NEST funded project “Community and Voluntary Sector Resilience”. For example, we supported the team with mapping exercises with community members to share capacities and opportunities, vital when developing an emergency response plans. For more details take a look at StoryMap article from the team or this article from NESTA.
Connecting Communities — Community Connectors and teams of volunteers across the UK provide person-centred support to help those who are experiencing loneliness to connect to their communities. Every referral begins with the location of the service user, then an understanding of their needs, and finally matching them with appropriate services, based on availability and location. We’re supporting the “where”, providing tools to the community connectors, so they know where and what potential services are available relative to the user. We’ll continue our support into 2020. This support is still developing and continues into 2020.
International Support — The GIS team also supports the British Red Cross International Directorate. In 2019 we supported British Red Cross programmes in Bangladesh (community mapping and resilience), the Caribbean (logistics planning), Libya (mobile data collection), Namibia (cash), Nepal (urban resilience through community mapping), Nigeria (flood impact and needs assessments) and Sierra Leone (Health and WASH). The support to the Nigeria team (and Nigeria IFRC Country team and Nigeria Red Cross) was novel for us, as we were able to support at a early stage in the floods — we were able to provide data analysis of needs assessments, and data literacy support that help the Nigeria RC submit a successful Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (DREF) application to the IFRC to then more effectively respond to the floods.
International Deployments and Disaster Response — We deployed to disaster response operations 6 times throughout 2019. We supported the IFRC with Information Management delegates for the Ebola Response in DRC; the Population Movement in the Americas; Cyclone Idai in Mozambique and for the first time for the first time, as Cash IM, for Hurricane Dorian in The Bahamas. If you’d like to know more about those last two deployments, you can read more here for Mozambique and The Bahamas. We also started the development of British Red Cross’ first Information Management Roster, which is aiming to create a pool of deployable IM people, who could support emergency response operations with IM. We’re excited to see where this takes us!
Making the News — We were extremely proud to see the hard work of one of our team members highlighted in the press! Thuong wrote about her time supporting the Ebola response in DRC and the importance of community feedback, which you can read in The Telegraph here.
Bringing together the Network — We support disaster response remotely through the IFRC’s Surge Information Management Support network (SIMS). Apart from providing remote support through SIMS to Cyclone Idai, Mozambique this year, we continued to help develop the network by hosting the SIMS workshop in London in December. It was attended by network members from 12 different National Societies from all over the world, and was an opportunity to collaborate, improve and build IM capacity to remotely support and respond to disasters. It was a productive week and was a pleasure to host 2019’s workshop!
Missing Maps — It’s been a year of highs for Missing Maps. Firstly, we were recognised by the Royal Geographic Society, when Paul from the team was awarded the Cuthbert Peek Award “For advancing geographical knowledge through mapping in remote areas, with the application of contemporary methods”. Missing Maps also turned 5 last year! It’s amazing how far we’ve come, now with 17 members! You can read more about the celebrations on the Missing Maps website, here and stay tuned to that site throughout the year as each of our members will write about their Missing Maps experiences in a “Year of Blogs” event. For 2020, Missing Maps will focus on the theme of Climate Change, and will work with our colleagues from the Red Cross Climate Centre to follow on from what we started in 2019 with the Missing Maps community, and corporate partners, to map communities at risk of flooding in Indonesia and other areas which are affected by future impacts of climate change.
Toolkits — We completed the building of a Safe & Dignified Burial Information Management toolkit, which drew on our learning and experiences from our support to the Ebola response in DRC. The kit is a set of digital tools that enables an IM delegate to effectively and rapidly support an operation which involves this health pillar, using standard methods, products, and analyses.
Humanitarian Exchange Language (HXL) Dash — We’ve further developed HXLDash, a dashboard and online mapping tool designed for humanitarians and humanitarian contexts that enables users to create dashboards in less than 2 minutes by leveraging the power of the Humanitarian Exchange Language.
All the above (and more!) would not have been possible without the whole GIS team and volunteers, the collaborations between teams, or the continued enthusiasm and agile ways of working. And now, onto 2020!
