The impact of Missing Maps at British Red Cross
The British Red Cross is a founder and maintainer of the Missing Maps project. Later this year, the project will be 10 years old, and over that time it’s weaved its way into a number of British Red Cross programmes — all while connecting local and global volunteers. This post summarises the impact of Missing Maps has had on British Red Cross programmes and emergencies.
Each year, disasters around the world kill nearly 100,000 people and affect or displace 200 million. Many of the places where these disasters occur are literally missing from open and accessible maps — they show up as blank spaces, without useful information that could help to plan assistance.
Missing Maps is a collaborative project, formed in 2014, to map areas where humanitarian organisations are responding to the needs of people who live at risk of disasters and crises. Missing Maps prepares for and mitigates against the effects of crises using geo-data.
When we know where people live, where they interact or travel, this supports our work to effectively provide humanitarian preparedness programmes and response.
Missing Maps has localisation at its heart, working directly with communities to identify priorities to map and build ownership of the map so they can advocate for themselves.
Over the years, Missing Maps created the MapSwipe App — an open-source mobile app to make mapping more coordinated and efficient. Find out more here: www.mapswipe.org!
How Missing Maps supported British Red Cross Programmes
Missing Maps has directly supported eight BRC projects in Asia and Africa across multiple sectors (emergencies, Disaster Risk Reduction, Health, WASH, etc.). Some highlights are discussed below:
Nigeria — Disaster Management Programme [2020-present]
Missing Maps was used to enhance the data readiness of the Nigerian Red Cross, in data literacy, data preparedness, and data driven decision making, so that they can use quality and timely information in humanitarian operations and programmes. Missing Maps was part of this through:
- Mapathon and MapSwipe events — used to build data literacy through adding new data to OpenStreetMap (what data is and how it can be used).
- Enhanced Vulnerability and Capacity Assessments (EVCAs) including digital community mapping — collecting community capacities and vulnerabilities using mobile data collection tools. Data preparedness of the Red Cross and Branches are built through best-practice survey design to collect reliable and useful data, training of volunteers, conducing field activities, and visualisation of collected data to map products.
- Standard survey and map templates created with stakeholders so they know and can take action based on data and evidence.
Nepal — Strengthening Urban Resilience and Engagement (SURE) [2017–2019]
The SURE programme in Nepal focused on improving urban disaster resilience in seven urban municipalities with high population growth. The programme involved vulnerable groups, the Nepal Red Cross Society and local government.
Taking place annually Hazard Mapping engaged Nepal Red Cross Society, municipal governments, and communities to identify and map locations of community capacities (e.g. schools, health centres), hazards, and vulnerable groups. The data was collected on mobile phones or large printed maps using OpenStreetMap as a basemap.
The maps were then used to inform resilience planning for the community, NRCS branches and municipal government.
Read more: Using Open Geo Data to Strengthen Urban Resilience in Nepal
Nepal — Nature based Solutions [2023-present]
This programme began in 2021 as a Livelihood Programme, expanding to include Nature based Solutions (NbS) in 2023. The goal is to increase the resilience of vulnerable and marginalised individuals/ households impacted by Covid-19 through livelihood early recovery and improve their coping capacities to absorb future shocks and stresses. In 2023, the Nepal team with the Red Cross Climate Centre piloted a climate-smart (NbS) approach that adapted and contextualized existing tools for Nepal, this includes the Enhanced Vulnerability and Capacity Assessment (EVCA), where community mapping is conducted.
As the communities as part of this project were the same as SURE, they were already remotely mapped. Using the SketchMap tool, communities recorded vulnerabilities and capacities, later overlaid with climate risk to inform planning with communities and municipalities.
Guinea — Maternal and Reproductive Health Programme [2017–2019]
This programme aimed to improve access to reproductive health services for women and girls and shift practices regarding reproductive health, including advocating for a reduction in harmful practices such as female genital mutilation
At the start of the programme there was a lack of spatial data needed for the baseline survey, such as locations of villages, place names, or building locations. Remote volunteers used Missing Maps to contribute 40,734 buildings and 1,283 residential areas (mapping an area 1.3x the size of Greater London!).
Having an accurate map allowed the programme team to:
- Plan movements by understanding local geography — by identifying hard to reach areas and making better-informed estimates of travel time and access.
- Correct the baseline sample if required — because they had a better understanding of population spread and concentration, which can affect sampling methodologies.
- Support volunteers — they could give volunteers information on the area they would cover and provide a sense of achievement by plotting where they surveyed that day.
- Apply rigor in measuring change — knowing where the baseline survey was collected allowed them to make sure that we survey the same villages and households as part of the endline survey.
Read more: Information Management, GIS and Missing Maps for a Guinea Maternal Health Project
Uganda — Support to Emergency Response Unit Deployment to Bidibidi Refugee Camp [2017]
The British Red Cross deployed an Emergency Response Unit (ERU) team to Imvepi Camp to set up sanitation facilities (including latrines, hand washing points) and conduct hygiene promotion activities. Maps were used to support the effective planning of these sanitation activities.
Missing Maps volunteers remotely traced features from satellite imagery, allowing maps of the camp to be created before the ERU team arrived on site. Once latrines were installed, maps were updated to show their locations. These maps were used to analyse how far people lived from latrines and compare this to minimum standards.
Read more: Geolocation of camps using image metadata
Indonesia — Support to Impact-based Forecasting Programme [2019–2020]
Impact-based forecasting (IbF) is predicting the impacts of the hazard as well as the event itself. If we know the impact, we can act early, in a more precise way to minimise a shock where it occurs. This project created an impact-forecast platform in Indonesia called InaSAFE-FbA.
This platform, uses forecast information combined with OSM data to create a flood impact report, that supports disaster management agencies to understand impacts on a community and their exposure and vulnerability to hazards.
Some high risk areas in Indonesia had not been fully mapped, meaning they couldn’t use the flood impact reports to plan ahead. To ensure the tool worked for these areas, they were mapped using a combination of MapSwipe and the HOT Tasking Manager to identify building and roads. The tool could then estimate which buildings and roads might be impacted by a flood.
Read more: InaSAFE Final Report
How the volunteer community supported Missing Maps for British Red Cross
All tasks created by the British Red Cross are published on the HOT Tasking Manager. Volunteers anywhere in the world can then contribute to our tasks, enhancing their understanding of what we do.
British Red Cross also works alongside corporate partners where collaboration has engaged several thousand corporate volunteers.
This engagement builds the British Red Cross’ relationship with community volunteers and corporate sponsors and gives an opportunity to understand our work while providing methods for volunteers to make a tangible and meaningful impact to programmes supporting people most at risk of disasters.
Collaboration and the Missing Maps Membership
Missing Maps is a collaboration between 20 humanitarian organisations and academic partners.
Through continued shared learning the Missing Maps workflow has become an industry standard for producing geospatial data across the Red Cross and humanitarian sector.
This collaboration has enabled the development of new tools, methodologies and processes, such as MapSwipe and SketchMap Tool. Similarly, Missing Maps has enabled and advanced the digitalisation of Red Cross tools such as the EVCA, opening accessibility of data and enabling National Societies use of digital tools (British Red Cross Digitalisation of the EVCA Mapping Tools in Nigeria Case Study).
Awards and Recognition
Over the years Missing Maps has won a number of awards!
Missing Maps:
- Cruz Roja Award at the Red Cross Humanitarian Technology Awards (IV Edition) [2019/20].
MapSwipe:
- Best Mobile Innovation Supporting Emergency or Humanitarian Situations in the Tech4Good category at GSMA’s Global Mobile (GLOMO) awards [2020].
Engagement:
At the British Red Cross, Missing Maps won an award linked to Corporate Partnership engagement:
- Third Sector Awards: Aviva and British Red Cross [2017].
Conclusions
Missing Maps has demonstrated impact in several ways: creating the very first maps of communities; supporting the communities themselves to use maps to reduce their risks; supporting Red Cross National Societies to build their data readiness capacity, so that they are ready for future emergency responses; or enhancing the work of other sectors, such as in Health or WASH.
Missing Maps is a collaboration between different humanitarian and academic organisations, and we all apply the Missing Maps methodology and tools in various ways (see the Missing Maps website to find out more). Yet what binds us is the power of location and volunteers to empower communities, to be known, recognised, and counted.
