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, 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.
CartONG conducted a 3-day GIS training to the operational departement of SIF in January 2020, which was funded by Le Group'.
In addition to its annual global report, UNAIDS wanted to create story maps to communicate about particular case studies. The selected case studies highlight programmes and activities around the globe. In 2019, CartONG produced one main story map with 9 individual story maps on 150 slides.
Learn more here or by clicking on our 2019 Annual Report.
In 2019, CartONG was solicited to support the ICRC GIS team for two different projects. The first project was a story map highlighting what role GIS analysis can play when trying to assess the populations’ access to street lights in different neighbourhoods of Buenaventura. The story map can be found here. The second project was to build an atlas for Venezuela, including dedicated maps created for ICRC but also containing readily available information from the web in one document which can be used to brief new staff ready to be deployed.
CartONG a été sollicité par le Maroni Lab, un laboratoire d’expérimentation urbaine basé à Saint Laurent du Maroni en Guyane, pour l’accompagner à l’animation d’ateliers de cartographie participative avec les habitants de 2 quartiers informels de la ville. Ces ateliers ont permis aux habitants des quartiers de devenir acteur du processus de transformation urbaine de leur ville et de l’amélioration de leur cadre de vie. CartONG a mis à jour la carte des quartiers sur OpenStreetMap, formé les habitants à la collecte de données et l'équipe du Maroni Lab au SIG.
CartONG supported CARE's team in Jeremie, Haiti, as part of the "Vil nou pi si pou fanm yo" ("Our city is safer for women") project, an initiative funded by UN Women to identify and map unsafe or high-risk places for gender-based violence in 7 neighborhoods of the city of Jeremie, using a co-construction approach with youth and women communities living in these target districts.
Within the framework of this project, CartONG's role was to provide support in participatory mapping, first as part of a two-week field mission in Haiti, then as part of a post-mission remote follow-up to CARE's team in Jérémie. To this end, CartONG developed a methodology of participatory mapping workshops adapted to the specific needs of the project centered around the uMap tool.
The maps produced as part of this project are intended to be used as awareness-raising tools for Jeremie's security and justice stakeholders, as well as on a larger scale, for all the city's youth and women's communities.
With funding from the Digital Square program of PATH, CartONG has collaborated with the Global Healthsites mapping project to test the new features of the platform, which aims at sharing open data on heath facilities via OpenStreetMap. To do so, CartONG has implemented a field mission in Senegal together with the company Geomatica and the local OpenStreetMap community to survey exhaustively all the facilities in the Saint-Louis département. The field mission was followed by a workshop in Dakar to launch a "data collaborative" approach and encourage the sharing of health data between stakeholders (UN agencies, NGOs and government).
CartONG did an evaluation of the mapping and database needs of the permanent secretariat for NGOs (SPONG) of Central African Republic, on behalf of the Bioforce training institute. This project aimed at producing an assessment report which included a needs assessment, analysis of strengths and weaknesses of the current system in place at the SPONG, secondary data mining, technical scenario options, and a capacity building plan. Two maps were also produced to support the SPONG.
Français
