humanitarian.info

So there is some interesting stuff happening in Sudan (in terms of information management, that is) and right here’s where I’m telling you about it:

• Sudan Interagency Mapping (http://www.unsudanig.org/sim/) is a group of actors using GIS, including UN and government agencies. The aim is simple – better spatial information, focusing on improving existing data – for example, making sure that town plans are available for the critical humanitarian hubs. This type of partnership has been tried in other places as well, and I think it’s a model for developing a strong GIS community.

• World Vision ships a lot of relief materials, and has about five different tracking / reporting systems, covering particularly food distribution under contract from WFP. In order to deal most effectively with this, they created a Data Center which brings all the commodity tracking together, with data entry staff taking some of the reporting load off programme staff. It also means that they can work with the data much more effectively and look at issues of compatibility between different databases.

• CARE are using GIS in their security reporting – without using any GIS software. Taking a basemap from the HIC Darfur (http://www.humanitarianinfo.org/darfur/) and using the notation feature in Adobe Acrobat Professional, they create a Weekly Update Map of security issues that any staff member can view. Most NGOs can’t afford the software or staff for GIS, but this idea gets around that problem – any staff member can be shown how to use Adobe for this in about 30 minutes.

None of these three initiatives are going to save Darfur, but if you add up a lot of little innovations, you start to see real changes.