Missing Maps for Climate Action
Community mapping to enhance Disaster Preparedness and Response @ Climate:Red 2020
Why this blog?
As part of the Climate:Red Conference 2020 in September 2020 I was asked by Elijah Kingori to co-facilitate a session on “Community mapping to enhance Disaster Preparedness and Response”. I've been fortunate to be an active participant over the last six years of Missing Maps community journey from its creation to how it contributes in the Red Cross Movement.
This was a rare opportunity to have so many passionate practitioners and speakers from around the world on this topic in one place. The session showed how Missing Maps is being used to respond to Climate-related emergencies. It also highlighted how powerful a conversation Missing Maps is at changing data culture and data literacy of all levels; from the communities being assisted, to the geo-communities and humanitarians working with them.
The aim of this blog is to document these different strands to show the humanitarian mapping ecosystem in action and make it possible for readers to follow up and engage with the people and their work — allowing everyone to be part of building the future of Missing Maps for Climate Action.
This blog does its best to link speakers and examples so that they are documented. We encourage you to watch the session recording. First-hand accounts are always more powerful than text.
What is Missing Maps?
Often day-to-day work being done by humanitarians doesn’t make it into the news, and more often than not, this work happens in places that are under-mapped: Missing Maps was created to fill this gap in geographic understanding.
Missing Maps is a humanitarian mapping collaboration between a number of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and universities that work locally and internationally, including the International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and five Red Cross National Societies (NS), of which the British Red Cross is one.
The project uses the power of a remote network of volunteers who trace features from satellite imagery into OpenStreetMap (OSM). Community volunteers then add local detail, such as neighbourhoods, street names, and evacuation centres. Humanitarian organisations use the mapped information to plan risk reduction and disaster response activities that save lives.
The benefit of Missing Maps is that all the members of the collaboration are working to increase the quality and quantity of open data available on OSM. We use and amplify open tools and processes, meaning that they can be used for humanitarian work by anyone, anywhere.
In practice, what this means is that when a disaster happens local communities, as well as NGOs and government actors, can all be using an up-to-date map that has additional contextual community knowledge on top. There is no longer a scramble for geographic data to use to plan responses.
In this way, the data contributes to informed and coordinated community empowerment, decision making and actions.
Most mapping for Missing Maps happens at Mapathons. A Mapathon is a physical or virtual event where mappers gather together to discuss, learn and map together. These open, shared, global, regular spaces are the rhythm of the missing Maps community. These gatherings connect people around causes and skills sets outside of institutional boundaries.
Missing Maps and Climate Action
In the session the speakers discussed four strong examples from across the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement, highlighting how National Societies have leveraged the Missing Maps community to meet their data preparedness and response needs for climate action.
Elly Mulaha the Senior Information Management and Knowledge officer in the IFRC Africa Region moderated this session because of his passion and expertise in the region.
The case studies are courtesy of:
- Kenya Red Cross: Missing maps in disaster response preparedness and COVID-19 response
- Canadian Red Cross: Mapping Indigenous Communities with the Canadian Red Cross Missing Maps Pilot
- Ugandan Red Cross: Data Preparedness and Readiness In Disaster and Pandemic Preparedness And Early Response at Uganda Red Cross Society
- Malawi Red Cross: Missing Maps in Disaster and Humanitarian Response
# 1 Missing maps in disaster preparedness and COVID-19 response Steve Kenei @ Kenya Red Cross
Since independence in 1963, the population of Kenya has increased from around 8 million people to 51 million people. Generally, population growth and settlement has occurred around water bodies and pathways.
The associated impacts of climate and weather phenomena on these settlements, predominantly from flooding, will be familiar: infrastructure loss, damage or destruction of dwellings, and high risk to human life and livelihood.
Kenya Red Cross (KRC) has been proactive in using Missing Maps to assist in mitigating the effects of such events on the lives and livelihoods of at-risk communities. KRC used field mapping methods involving local community knowledge to pin-point flood risk zones to create the most comprehensive flood risk map of the country since independence.
In Narok County, KRC teams gathered coordinates on mobile phones from local community members of locations reported to be subject to frequent flooding. These coordinates were used to create flood risk maps, which were then used to propose sites for rainfall stations. This enabled early warning/early action systems to be developed to give time for communities to take appropriate action during periods of heavy rain.
The flood risk areas were then used to target mapping areas for Missing Maps Mapathons. Once this remote mapping concluded, the communities added to OSM were analysed further with topographic data to identify which households were at risk of flooding.
During actual flood events, these maps are overlaid onto satellite imagery from Airbus Foundation showing flood extents and circulated to KRC county teams to enable rapid, targeted responses.
The knowledge of Missing Maps and community mapping has led to KRC becoming a regional focal point for these tools and techniques, and they now contribute to informal settlement mapping using their own drone team.
For Covid-19, drone mapping has been used to identify areas showing evidence of people congregating (around bus stops, churches etc). This data, combined with data from OSM, has enabled a Risk Index to be developed for local communities, showing the estimated level of vulnerability to Covid-19. This mapping has enabled Covid Sensitisation Teams to better target their activities, like setting up booths to warn people of the dangers and providing free hand sanitiser.
Find Steve’s full presentation here.
If you would like to get involved in mapping communities at risk right now in Kenya, then OSM Kenya currently has task #9677 on the HOT Tasking Manager. They are asking for the mapping of communities at risk of the overflowing Turkwel Dam.
# 2 Mapping Indigenous Communities pilot
Melanie Chabot @ Canadian Red Cross
The Indigenous peoples of what is now Canada comprise about 5% of Canada’s population, but within this 5% are unique communities with distinct cultures, identities, histories and geographies (and 70 different languages!).
Generally, these communities are under-mapped compared to the rest of Canada, and often those that have been “officially” mapped are done so by non-community members who lack the cultural and contextual awareness of those with first-hand knowledge.
The Canadian Red Cross (CRC) involvement in Missing Maps sits under its Disaster Risk Reduction programme, the goal of which is to build community resilience to the most common risks present: fires, floods and other hazards like earthquakes and landslides.
CRC works with remote communities, some of which can be as small as 50 people, to make them more resilient. The local geographic knowledge that the communities have is very detailed but was not previously easy to share with others, which is especially important when making risk reduction plans for groups of communities.
Communicating vulnerabilities and risks is very difficult without a comprehensive map.
The CRC Missing Maps pilot programme was designed to allow communities to communicate their resources to multi-agency emergency planning.
The programme worked with 4 Indigenous communities. It taught them how to map their communities in OSM, leaving behind a map that community members can maintain themselves.
CRC found a number of major successes from their programme:
Small communities can map really efficiently! The richness of contextual geographic knowledge is already present in the community members, all that is required is a familiarity with a tool to share it.
Once the training in OSM was complete, communities were able to add themselves to OSM quickly and easily.
Naming conventions and addresses on reserves are often different to those in the rest of Canada. First responders not familiar with these communities can find it difficult to navigate to households in need of assistance. During the mapping process, the communities were able to add their own local details and points of interest to OSM, such as these addresses, increasing the specificity and effectiveness of emergency plans.
Adding traditional names to maps also helps to uncover and properly reflect the fullness of Canada’s history and peoples. When Canada was explored and settled by Europeans, maps made by those without an awareness of an Indigenous community commonly named features and places after European people.
Recently, there has been a movement for Indigenous communities to reclaim the names of natural features, streets and communities with traditional and culturally relevant names. Now Indigenous languages and traditional names for entities are reflected in OSM within the participating communities.
CRC is working to roll out this project to other communities across Canada, and you can read more about this work in this Missing Maps blog.
Find Melanie's full presentation here.
# 3 Data Preparedness and Readiness in Pandemic Preparedness
Joel Kitutu and David Luswata @ Uganda Red Cross
Uganda Red Cross Society (URCS) has been working to progress its relationship with stakeholders at all levels, from the community level to national organisations. URCS is collaborating with the OSM community in Uganda to leverage the power of the local digital community to build maps for flood risk mapping, which can then be used for national disaster planning.
URCS are also capacity building in drone mapping and technology in partnership with Map Uganda and Uganda Flying Labs. URCS’ first drone mapping project was in 2016 and mapped the humanitarian extent of informal settlements along the border with South Sudan. Not only was this a first for URCS, it was also the first Red Cross use of a drone for mapping anywhere in Africa.
Since that time URCS’ capacity in this area has increased with the acquisition of a dedicated drone system to augment needs assessments, continuing to leverage this technology for response work. For example, within hours of a landslide occurring in Bubuda District in early 2020, the URCS was able to capture overview imagery of the incident to define the extent of assistance required to the local communities.
Community participation ensures acceptance and is key in successful implementation of data collection activities
Throughout this Disaster Risk Reduction work, URCS’ aim was always to build the capacity of local volunteers with digital tools, as they are most able to be on the ground quickly and share data back to better target response. Partnerships with remote mapping communities and the use of secondary data helps ensure efficiency whilst enabling effective preparedness planning and early response.
Find Joel and David’s full presentation here.
# 4 Missing Maps in Flooding Disaster and Humanitarian Response
Jurg Wilbrink on behalf of Wonderful Kunje @ Malawi Red Cross
Malawi experienced its largest floods on record in 2015, leaving 250,000 people displaced, many of whom had not previously “existed” on any maps. The scale of this emergency identified a clear need to develop the data readiness of Malawi Red Cross (MRC), to guide responses to future disasters.
The newly initiated Data Team of MRC undertook a mapping campaign using Missing Maps tools and, assisted by the global community of remote mappers, massively increased the detail of OSM in the country. In Zomba alone, Missing Maps work between 2016 and 2017 increased the number of buildings mapped in the district from 38,000 to 96,000 and the km of roads increased from 8,000km to 20,000km.
The Data Team have used this new, rich detail in OSM to make a wide range of mapping products to assist Disaster Risk Reduction projects in management and preparedness, Forecast Based Financing, Disease Surveillance & Control, Project Monitoring, Evaluation and reporting. Types of maps produced include national travel time maps to major hospitals, which can be used as a proxy for vulnerability, and food and drought maps incorporated into a Community Risk Assessment dashboard.
The team are also looking to augment their mapping activities with Mapillary data to add detail to OSM on the condition and construction of buildings and infrastructure, for example in supporting cholera hotspot and waterpoint mapping.
Find Wonderful’s full presentation here.
What next?
In the second half of the session, experts from around the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement (RCRC) discussed key questions from the talks. They gave us their take on the long term impact of Missing Maps in climate crisis work, and on the effect the project has on developing and strengthening community action and dialogue
# 1 Climate Action, Disaster Preparedness and Response
Catalina Jaime Sanchez @ Red Cross Climate Centre
Catalina emphasised that there is a great deal of expertise in the Movement to draw upon to effect positive change in the climate crisis and that the crisis will require a diverse range of strategies, and experiences to overcome. Using OSM data in these strategies has proved to be uniquely powerful, and allows a deep understanding of risk.
To be able to undertake response activity now, but also to make effective decisions for long term adaptation and planning activities, like Forecast-based Financing and participatory action, that risk data is vital. OSM and Missing Maps should be embedded into the DRR strategy of every Red Cross/Red Crescent National Society, and every programme by every National Society should include funding for training volunteers in OSM. This will improve the decision making of National Societies, through the combination of OSM data with weather and climate forecast data.
“We should aim to enable every one of our volunteers to be agents of change in their own communities through data literacy and data collection”
# 2 Data Readiness and enhancing data preparedness
Katharina Lorenz @ German Red Cross
Katharina stressed the importance of data to any humanitarian response, yet that there is often a disconnect between data and decision making. The open Data Readiness Toolkit and the Data Playbook have a wealth of resources that National Societies can draw upon to become more data literate and to capitalise on using data (not only OSM data) to bridge this gap.
The German Red Cross collaborates on Missing Maps with Heidelberg University’s Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology, and Katharina has written about the uses of OSM data for anticipating and addressing epidemics in this Missing Maps blog.
“Although there are many routes to becoming data ready, incorporating Missing Maps into National Society programmes is a highly effective one.”
# 3 Health inequality
Jennifer Duong @ American Red Cross
Jennifer underscored that climate-related problems are important to health workers and governments as existing issues in health systems are often exacerbated in times of extreme climate variation. The populations that are most vulnerable in normal times (women, children, isolated communities) are then put at even greater risk.
Vulnerable communities are often missed from these fundamental aspects of public health simply because they are not recorded on any maps: For example, if Ministries of Health do not know how many or where people are they cannot plan for immunisation campaigns.
“In public health programmes, for example in routine immunisation campaigns, there is a lot of opportunity for Missing Maps to improve outcomes for newborns and mothers”
Jennifer went on to discuss the ongoing Community Pandemic Preparedness Programme (CP3) and how it has been mapping port entrances and informal border crossing points in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This data is, where possible, hosted on the Humanitarian Data Exchange, which is a powerful tool for sharing open humanitarian data for preparedness and response activity.
Although that preparedness work was not intended to be for Covid-19, when the virus began appearing in the DRC, health volunteers from CP3 and the Ministry of Health were already set up and equipped to use data that had already been collected, validated and available on OSM for responses. Currently, the data is being used to inform where handwashing stations, provided for by IOM, should be installed around Kinshasa, a major social and economic hub for the country. You can view some of the progress of the mapping work here.
The American Red Cross is also encouraging remote mapping domestically from home for their ongoing measles campaign work in Kenya and DRC, which is encouraging and engaging with a new type of digital volunteer.
# 4 Community and Volunteer Engagement
Jurg Wilbrink @ Red Cross Climate Centre
Jurg emphasised that Missing Maps Mapathons attract GIS and data people with great enthusiasm for humanitarian action. They are often a different subset of people than would take up a traditional volunteer role.
“Partnering with local OSM teams, Youth Mapper chapters or local universities with GIS graduates/students helps grow the strength of National Society activities through mutual help with training and the sharing of knowledge between different volunteer groups.”
A key element of the IFRC Strategy 2030 is digital transformation. At Missing Maps Mapathons you find people who are up for volunteering but are often more data literate than can sometimes be the case with other volunteers. Engaging this kind of digitally literate community can help make links with other digital and technology organisations.
# 5 Missing Map in the Movement
Henk Hoff @ Netherlands Red Cross
Missing Maps enables local communities to map themselves and express their own sense of place. Looking at data on a map it instantly makes it more accessible to a wider audience.
“Missing Maps can also link National Societies together: Mapathons are a simple and effective way for National Societies to help each other out in times of need, without sending in-kind donations or financial assistance.”
Increasing the political will of senior leadership to invest in Missing Maps can be difficult, but the key is getting more success stories out that help show off the effectiveness of the work of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement. This then means leadership can be proud to share the work of the National Society and show that Missing Maps is not just about data but about building a stronger National Society.
“Missing Maps can help make your organisation be more prepared for the digital future.”
Missing Maps enables National Societies to not only become leaders in the Movement but to other partners.
Takeaways
Through collaboratively mapping under-mapped places with Missing Maps, communities become stakeholders in their own sense of place, in their development and in their resilience. They are more able to reduce their own vulnerability to hazards should an emergency occur again in the future.
As Catalina said in her keynote at the HOT summit 2019,
“mapping is part of climate action. The more volunteers we have on this, the better we can do”
however, I will leave the final words to Henk who captured the reason that Missing Maps is so effective:
“Missing Maps is not only a Red Cross project. It builds stronger communities, it gets the voices of people heard. That is what the Red Cross is for: to build stronger local communities, to give them a platform to tell their story & advocate for their wellbeing and to build on their resilience. Missing Maps is the best product that we as the Red Cross can stand behind.”
Call to map
- Map what you care about on the Tasking Manager and MapSwipe
- Map with others at a Missing Maps event
- Make better quality maps by learning how to validate others mapping
While you map
- Read: Missing Maps blogs — highlighting the humanitarian mapping journey as it evolves
- Watch: Can we call it a world map, if it’s missing one billion people? — Climate:Red 2020 session
- Listen: Red Cross Climate Centre podcasts
Thank you all of those background facilitators and organisers and participants that made the Climate:Red talk 2020 possible.
Thank you to David Callaghan for editing assistance.
