2020 Reflections: GIS and Information Management

Wow, 2020 — what can I say! At the beginning of the year we had little idea of what would unfold, or how it would shape the work we completed over the year.

This looks at what we’ve achieved, learned, and accomplished over the year. We’ve selected 9 work items from 2020, covering UK, International and Movement wide work.

A great proportion of our work in 2020 supported the British Red Cross response to COVID, where the team was redeployed to different areas of the organisation, pulling on our GIS and Information Management expertise, plus experiences from international disaster response deployments.

• Hardship Fund: For the COVID response, we redeployed team members to the newly set up Hardship Fund to provide financial support to people who are struggling as a result of the coronavirus crisis. From past experiences (to quickly set up processes in disaster response, or practical cash in emergencies), we helped to set up and run the service in a Programme Management and Information Management and Technical roles. The RedRose cash system was implemented as part of this fund — we supported the set up and rolling out the tool, assisted external partners to use the cash system and set up reporting workflows. We started out using Excel dashboarding to quickly adjust reporting on the fly, which then transferred to Tableau. The programme continues today, using the foundations we put in place, delivering £2.4 million (as of early 2021) to people in urgent need since the start of the pandemic.

• Voluntary and Community Sector Emergencies Partnership (VCSEP): We also redeployed to the Emergencies Partnership. This partnership was set up a couple of years ago in response to the Grenfell Fire and London terror attacks to improve the collaboration and coordination between community grass roots organisations and larger organisations. From March it was the VCSEP’s time to shine! As part of a multi-disciplinary team, we were redeployed to set up processes and services to identify and respond to unmet need. An entire blog has been written about what we accomplished — setting up a request support service (and webmap displaying requests alongside layers such as deprivation and food banks), plus laying the foundations for the collection and dissemination of local insights.
• Crisis Response Contact Centre: We supported our Crisis Response Team rolling out a webmap tool to support the deployment of vehicles and volunteers from our Crisis Response Contact Centre. Working with ArcGIS Online (a web mapping tool) we built out a map which can be used to locate the nearest the vehicles and teams to a given incident and the duty manager to call within an area. This improves on their previous workflows which used a variety of tools to deploy teams to an incident, making their work more efficient. See a recent blog here.

Not only did we support UK Operations last year, but also supported our International teams globally, from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, Libya, Eswatini and British Red Cross overseas branches to name a few.

• Nigeria Disaster Management Programme: Briefly mentioned in our 2019 reflections blog, we’ve supported the Nigeria Red Cross Society (NRCS) though British Red Cross and IFRC in 2018 and 2019 in responding to floods. In 2020, it was decided for the British Red Cross to set up a programme with the NRCS in Disaster Management, beginning in 2021. As the GIS and Information Management Team, we contributed to programme planning aiming to build up the capacity of the NRCS to enable increased ability to respond to and manage emergencies. We’re framing our approach with the IFRC Data Readiness toolkit, moving from building up data literacy skills to data driven decision making. We’ll also use the Missing Maps process to help build this capacity.

• Bangladesh Cox’s Bazar WASH support: The British Red Cross with the Swedish Red Cross funds a WASH programme in Cox’s Bazar since 2018. In late 2020, we supported the team with maps identifying; (1) all infrastructure (including more than 400 locations with up to 800 bathroom and latrine facilities); (2) water supply, including water stations and tank stations, boreholes, and tap stands; (3) Hygiene promotion activities by week, with the aim to overlay COVID-19 cases to better target activities and where activities have taken place. All this information was collected using Kobo mobile data collection methods. Additionally, we also ran a remote capacity building session with the in-country team and provided templates for them to continue mapping in the future.
• Eswatini: We supported the Eswatini Red Cross twice in their programme to improve Infant and Young Child Nutrition Knowledge and Behaviours. Firstly, we supported them with Mobile Data Collection best practice, to gather survey data using Kobo Toolbox. Secondly, we visualised the findings in Excel dashboards, and through the calculation of metrics to inform health programme planning.

In 2020 we also supported the IFRC and Red Cross Red Crescent Movement, bolstering British Red Cross’ ability to support international disaster responses and contributing expertise to new IFRC programmes. Through partnerships we also won a few awards with Missing Maps and Mapswipe!

• Information Management Register: Building on the second half of 2019, we began to build the skills and knowledge of new members within the organisation to support international disaster response remotely, as part of the Surge Information Management Support (SIMS) network, or in a deployed capacity. In Spring we began upskilling Mobile Data Collection as a first module. Unfortunately, due to COVID and redeployments, further upskilling was paused. However, in 2020 we deployed a new register member to support the IFRC Global COVID response, plus enabled shadowing and redeployment opportunities within the VCSEP and Hardship Fund, which proved a success. This ongoing work is a key focus for us in 2021.
• IFRC Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) Programme, Turkey: In February, we were invited to attend a Red Team and Datathon exercise with the Turkish Red Crescent as part of the ESSN Programme, which provides cash assistance to over 1.8 million refugees. Alongside the Turkish Red Crescent, IFRC and other global Red Cross Red Crescent National Societies, we supported the understanding and documentation of risks in the programme. This included data workflows and processes and defining future scenarios to understand impact on the programme. These were operationalised to improve the programme.

• Missing Maps and MapSwipe: In Spring 2020 Missing Maps and MapSwipe won awards! Missing Maps won the Cruz Roja Award at the Red Cross Humanitarian Technology Awards and MapSwipe won a Global Mobile Award (GLOMO) from the GSMA for “Best Mobile Innovation supporting Emergency or Humanitarian Situations”. See more from a recent blog. We’re super proud of these achievements and they are testament to the power of open data and partnerships.

And now, onwards to 2021!