What the GIS & IM Team enjoyed working on in 2023
As 2024 starts, we’ve been reflecting on the things that we enjoyed working on in 2023. Below are some highlights shared by members of the GIS & Information Management team at British Red Cross (BRC).
ArcGIS maps in Excel and SharePoint
In 2023, ESRI made significant improvements to how data and resources in ArcGIS Online can be used in Microsoft products such as Excel and Sharepoint. We spent time looking into these new integrations to explore what is and isn’t possible, what the licensing restrictions are, and how we could use the tools to enable geospatial analysis for other people in the organisation.
As GIS specialists, we tend to default to using more fully-featured software such as ArcGIS Online or QGIS, but being able to show colleagues how to use tools in the software they are most comfortable with has meant they can do spatial analysis on their data without needing to learn new software. We’ve had positive feedback so far and will continue to expand this work in 2024.
Data & Insight role in Crisis and Emergency Response
The Crisis & Emergency Response team recruited a Data & Insight Lead in 2023, to support evidence-based decision-making and promote information management in BRC’s domestic work. The new specialist is already having an impact, creating analyses to better understand BRC’s responses to emergencies such as floods and storms. We’re looking forward to collaborating more in 2024.
Spatial analysis for Refugee Services team
We worked with colleagues in BRC’s Refugee Services team to help them understand the needs of people housed in Home Office hotels. We contributed spatial analysis on what services are available to people living in different locations, and where there are gaps in access to essential services.
Supporting IM development in the Nigerian Red Cross
As part of a multi-year programme, we continued to support the Nigerian Red Cross Society’s adoption of information management (IM) techniques to manage disaster-related risks. We were pleased to hear that local branches are using mobile data collection, Missing Maps and MapSwipe to generate data that is being used to inform response plans for events such as floods.
In 2023, the Nigerian RC took the lead on training activities for new IM specialists. This marks a difference from the first phase of the programme, where training was delivered by British RC staff and shows the success of the localisation aspect of the programme.
International webmap
We developed a detailed global webmap for staff in BRC’s International team to give a single place to access data relevant to BRC’s strategic priorities on topics such as disaster management, food security and climate change. This has helped the team access data easily without having to hunt around the web for it. The tool includes the ability to generate screenshots of the current view so images can be used in reports.
Communities of Practice
Our GIS & IM Hour drop-in hit a milestone of 150 sessions since 2021. We’ve shared more about what we’ve learnt from this in a more detailed post — but to summarise, we’ve been pleased with the consistency of engagement and being able to provide useful trouble-shooting advice to colleagues with spatial data or analysis needs.
In 2023, a PowerBI Community of Practice was launched by BRC colleagues to support people using the software for data processing and visualisation. We were pleased to see the peer learning and support that has come out of this effort, which has been well attended by people working in BRC’s domestic and international teams, and in particular members of the Information Management Register.
Adding SketchMap to our toolkit
We learnt about the new SketchMap tool (developed by HeiGIT with support from the German Red Cross) and were able to integrate it into our set of data collection tools to support vulnerability and capacity analysis (VCA). Colleagues in Nepal were trained to use SketchMap to collect community data as part of their VCA process.
MapSwipe
Our team continued to support the development of MapSwipe with hosting, funding and contributing to the project’s governance. In 2023, MapSwipe added new types of task, such as the ability to compare and validate OpenStreetMap data. We’ve already helped our partner National Societies make use of this new function, for example in validating OpenStreetMap data as part of vulnerability and capability assessments in Nigeria.
Surge deployments
Throughout 2023, we continued to grow BRC’s Information Management Register — a pool of trained IM specialists able to deploy internationally, domestically and remotely at short notice to support emergency responses via the IFRC and other Red Cross/Red Crescent national societies. IM Register members deployed 13 times in 2023, including twice from our own team. These included IM support for responses to the Africa Hunger Crisis, the cholera outbreak in southern Africa, the Sudan crisis, Libya floods, and the Türkiye/Syria and Morocco earthquakes. Two IM Register community of practice meetings were held in February and October to bring everyone together, hear debriefs on recent deployments and give updates on new trainings and resources.
Surge preparedness
Our team also contributed to the Red Cross/Red Crescent-wide initiatives to continually improve our surge responses through preparedness and coordination — via the Global Surge Working Group conferences in Turin, workshops to improve the inner workings of the SIMS network, and participating in trainings and reviews of the IM needs of cash responses and scenario planning.
Data integration
We’ve made progress in using the using the ArcGIS Online Python API to automate the updating of datasets in our geospatial data hub. This has allowed us to create up-to-date feeds of UK severe weather warnings, global disasters, food insecurity data and much more. It has also helped us to bring together internal datasets to help different teams in BRC access each other’s geographic data in a single place.
GIS Training Platform
Early in 2023, we ran a humanitarian GIS training with BRC’s Global Surge team for members of the IM Register. Since then, we’ve been working with colleagues in German Red Cross, Netherlands Red Cross and HeiGIT to combine trainings we’ve each developed and bring them together in an open, online platform. The platform will allow anyone to use the training materials we’ve developed to run GIS trainings for people in the humanitarian sector, covering the types of data they are likely to work with and focused on the kinds of maps and analysis they might be asked for. The first test of this platform will be in early 2024 — stay tuned for more updates.
If you work at British Red Cross and are interested in any of the things mentioned in this article, please drop into our weekly GIS & IM Hour call and we can have an informal chat — the details are on our RedRoom page. Alternatively, if you’re in the Red Cross movement feel free to reach out to your National Society’s GIS or Information Management colleagues and look out for the Surge Information Management Support (SIMS) community of practice which includes a number of IM specialists and reaches across borders and time zones.
