If you were tasked to determine the logistics around delivering medical aid in a remote mountainous area with no reliable map that can be used as point of reference, what would you do?
This was the problem Médecins Sans Frontières faced a few months ago, when it wanted to conduct an emergency mortality and nutritional assessment in Mading, South Sudan. The assessment unit had never been there and had no access to a detailed map — until MSF teamed up with the American Red Cross, British Red Cross and the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, which is known for mapping crisis-hit areas such as in Haiti following the devastating earthquake in 2010. By November 2014, the team had been able to map the area remotely in London.
“By tracing the road networks, the road buildings and the residential areas from satellite imagery, we were able to give them what’s called AOIs or areas of interest,” MSF’s Peter Masters told Devex, explaining that the map was able to indicate where the residential areas are and how many houses are located between specific coordinates, which helped the assessment team “plan their assessments and see what people [who] live there need.”
About the author
Jenny Lei Ravelo@JennyLeiRavelo
Jenny Lei Ravelo is a Devex Senior Reporter based in Manila. She covers global health, with a particular focus on the World Health Organization, and other development and humanitarian aid trends in Asia Pacific. Prior to Devex, she wrote for ABS-CBN, one of the largest broadcasting networks in the Philippines, and was a copy editor for various international scientific journals. She received her journalism degree from the University of Santo Tomas.
