English 
Your organization collects data every time a team goes to the field, but is this data fully utilized, or is it lost within a PDF document? Would you like to visualize your NGO’s core information on a map in order to get a better sense of where the needs are and, therefore, to plan your activities accordingly? Do you want to implement a new activity but only have the name of the village and are unsure where that village is?
The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” could not apply better than to GIS applications: using a map, you can visualize at a glance where needs are and where resources are, and then to analyse how best to link the two. Having a geographic overview of a situation can dramatically improve evidence-based decision-making. From printed base maps (where infrastructure data provides a good overview of a region) to sector-specific dynamic maps (to quickly visualize the evolution of a situation through time), geographic information is vital for a good understanding of a situation. In order to be able to produce maps, you need to find the existing geographic data and ensure your sector data is in a usable format. You also need to conduct analysis relevant to each sector. A GIS strategy allows you to define standard procedures that optimize workflow and ensure that GIS products reach the people who require the information. CartONG assists humanitarian organizations in their GIS work with any or all of these steps.
Learn more about how CartONG can help you with your GIS and mapping projects below:
You can also visit the Information Management and Capacity building pages as they are related.
CartONG is participating, on behalf of the French Development Agency, to the scientific impact evaluation of the PRIQH2 project implemented by the Tunisian Rehabilitation and Urban Renovation Agency (ARRU). This evaluation is co-lead by the United Nations University and BJKA consulting. CartONG brings its expertise in GIS and spatial analysis of urban evolution to the table.
The "Strengthening CSOs' Information Management" project aims to professionalize French-speaking Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in the use and implementation of methods, tools and processes related to the different stages of the data analysis chain.
Co-financed by AFD for 3 years (early 2020 - late 2022) and implemented with the support of 10 partners, this project will make it possible for CartONG to continue its work in support of the sector by promoting the pooling and dissemination of new resources, both practical (tools, tutorials, training modules, etc.) and strategic (studies, etc.) to all humanitarian and development actors.
In alphabetical order, the 10 partners of the project are:
CartONG, in consortium with MapAction, has been selected by UNICEF for a long-term agreement, to provide GIS & IM support to their operations around the world from 2020 to 2022. We will be activated by country offices to provide support on the following topics:
We will try to use these activations to build shareable resources in collaboration with MapAction.
In 2019, CartONG was solicited by the Voûte Nubienne Association for an assessment of the data component of their Monitoring and Evaluation system. The aim of the project is for CartONG to summarise the needs, evaluate and present the different technical options that could be relevant, and - depending on the choice of the solution - to then support the implementation of the chosen system.
Following the success of the data collaborative project in the Democratic Republic of Congo organized in 2017-18 by CartONG and OpenStreetMap-DRC on health-related data, a similar initiative is being launched in 2019 on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) data.
This project is being launched with the support of the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), following the PILAEP 2 project (Promotion of Innovative Modalities for Access to Drinking Water), which aims to set up sustainable drinking water supply systems for populations in the suburban districts of Kinshasa and Bas Congo not served by the national water supply authority.
The PILAEP 2 project, in collaboration with several partners including the DIAL laboratory and the INS-RDC, has enabled significant data collection and analysis work (particularly for evaluation purposes in a results-based management approach). In order to ensure that access and updating of this data is sustainable, particularly for local actors, AFD wanted to support a sustainable collaboration approach in the DRC and Kinshasa in particular.
The objective of this approach will be to establish an inventory of actors, data and barriers in order to encourage sharing, and to work together to analyse these data. To this end, stakeholders will be encouraged to rely on existing resources within their various organizations, public authorities, but also open data platforms and in particular OpenStreetMap. A pilot field mission will also be organised to test, with interested partners, the methodologies developed together. The provisional timeframe:
CartONG is supporting AFD in their adoption of maps as decision-making tools for an "integrated territorial approach" in the Sahel three-frontier conflict zone (Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso). It includes reworking their data model and process for capturing information on the activities that they finance, as well as the production of maps; support on the data collection tools, and training of AFD teams on the templates produced.
This project aims at supporting Atlas Logistique in their logistics services and supply chain management for humanitarian organizations in Democratic Republic of the Congo. More specifically, we will be working together on defining and producing the necessary mapping products and associated data collection tools relative to logistical needs and vulnerabilities in terms of supply chain and of logistical accessibility in Kinshasa and North Kivu.
CartONG, in consortium with MapAction, has been selected by UNICEF via a Long Term Agreement for Services (LTA-S) to provide support to different UNICEF country operations and HQ over the period 2019-2022. For our first activation, CartONG and MapAction will provide support to the Mexican Ministry of Education in monitoring school attendance rates after the gradual lifting of the Covid-19 restrictions in Mexico from May 17th, 2020 onwards. To do so, we will build an interactive dashboard diplaying:
1) school attendance/absence rates at the federation, state and municipality levels
2) reported reasons behind school absences
3) state of WASH and hygiene facilities at school premises
We will connect our server to the data from the Ministry of Education source, develop the dashboard, document it and train UNICEF Mexico staff to support it long-term.
CartONG is helping the Université Côte d'Azur and its network to create a platform mapping the positive impacts of the Covid-19 confinement - in particular, looking at environmental and societal impacts - so as to foster positive changes in France after the end of the crisis. As part of this collaboration, CartONG has set up a webmapping platform (using Ushahidi), supported the data model creation as well as helped the facilitation of the launch of the project.
More information about this project here.
In 2019, CartONG was selected to support HI on a GIS assessment and initial support to launch a GIS strategy.
For this purpose, CartONG evaluated the needs in terms of GIS by interviewing the key players to identify their current usages, and practices, as well as their expectations and difficulties in terms of geodata and geoproducts and reviewed the GIS-related documentation and tools used by HQ and field operations. The result of this needs assessment, was a report that CartONG sent to Handicap International giving an overview of the current situation and needs, with a list of short and long term recommendations and potential scenarios. These recommendations and scenarios were then discussed with the HI team to help them think through their options for a GIS strategy to take off in the organisation, according to its financial, technical, HR constraints and the opportunities that a greater use of geodata and geoproducts would bring for certain key sectors of HI and different support functions.
The collaboration will continue in 2020 to organise awareness raising sessions around the question of GIS and also to continue thinking through the best way forward.
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