Maps 2.0

Last week, the ADRA-Caritas team in charge of the upcoming Nepal simulation, Exercise Khichadi, decided to postpone this training event, since the worst monsoon flooding in many years (perhaps ever) was clearly going to occupy relief teams and managers for some time to come. The simulation will take place in early November, preceded by the rescheduled Tech Day on October 31.

The rescheduling activity has compounded the difficulties that the many relief organizations in Asia, including ADRA and Caritas, are encountering.

In parallel, a few volunteers with strong expertise in GIS are working with our partners at ESRI on a small-scale GIS demo for the simulation. Volunteer Sue Gemmell (Portland, Oregon, USA) is coordinating this project, working closely with David Gadsden and Scott Moore of ESRI, in Olympia, Washington, USA. Please watch our Nepal GIS page, and those of you with an interest in humanitarian GIS may wish to RSS this blog, so you will be notified of new postings.

Since the NetSquared conference in May, we have expanded the community of interest and discovered a number of initiatives that are making real progress toward GIS support for situational awareness (SA) in field operations. We will highlight the “best of class” in this blog over the coming months.

Since our team has not tested any of the solutions, we cannot yet say which are ready for field use. But we do see a debate taking shape along numerous axes, including:

• Open Source (FOSS) vs. commercial software
• The problem of data entry
• Simple (pure location, e.g. where is the team located) vs. sophisticated (analytical tools, access to multiple data layers)
• Focus on GIS, or information management? Or both?
• Involvement of program users, not just the ICT experts
• Extent of real-world testing by real-world field teams

We will invite our volunteers and guest contributors to weigh in on these and other topics, with the intention to spur a vigorous dialogue and shed light on GIS solutions that work. This means solutions that work in a field environment, without costly and not-so-mobile infrastructure and designed for quick training, ease of use, and local adaptability.

The demo being prepared for Exercise Khichadi will be simple and modest. Our purpose is to stimulate discussion and collaboration where possible.

My first test is one that I heard from a team in Afghanistan after they returned in late 2001: “we could not find where the UN meeting was to be held, or what time.” Understandable, in a mid-sized city in an unfamiliar culture. Other possibilities and necessities (security, medical, logistical, etc.) were beyond the reach of this team, even without connectivity and dynamic maps, if they couldn’t find the people doing the coordinating. Much has been done since 2001 to remedy this, we are told, and that is what our team will be looking for.

As always, comments welcome!

Gregg