Data integration, collection and related processes (UNHCR GDS)

CartONG supports the UNHCR Global Data Service in refugee site mapping. In 2020, CartONG hosted a total of 38 remote mapping sessions (or mapathons) and data quality control sessions to map refugee sites in South Sudan, Sudan, Myanmar and Ethiopia. More than 700 volunteers spent around 700 hours online and mapped around 180,000 buildings and 3,800 km of road.

In addition, CartONG's team integrated data from the REACH consortium into the site mapping database which included datasets from 62 different sites covering 5 different countries.

We also introduced an attribute tag, amenity=refugee_site. Before the existence of this tag, there was no uniform reference style to refugee facilities, resulting in very inconsistent naming and tagging of refugee sites. It is now easier to find refugee sites in the OSM database. By using this tag for the delineation of the site perimeters, one can also distinguish refugee sites from permanent settlements. As it is not easy to draw the perimeters of a site unless you are familiar with it, CartONG also developed a Site Perimeter App which allows people to draw the perimeters and have them validated by someone from the field.

Due to the COVID-19 restrictions CartONG was unable to provide field-based site mapping support. However, CartONG provided full remote support for mapping of refugee sites in the Rakhine state of Myanmar.

To know more about the support we provided, please check out our 2020 Annual Report.