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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 gave a 2-day remote training to 9 program managers of Acting for Life to provide them with an introduction to the use of QGIS. The aim of this training was to show the basics of GIS so the participants could become autonomous in producing simple maps they need in their daily work.
To know more about this activity, please read our 2020 Annual Report.
CartONG conducted one or two-day interventions in 8 training sessions at the Bioforce Institute in Vénissieux in order to raise awareness among project coordinators and managers as well as logisticians about the possible uses of Mobile Data Collection and Geographic Information Systems in the national and international solidarity sectors.
To know more about this activity, please read our 2020 Annual Report.
CartONG conducted the Mappe ton Monde project in the summer of 2020 with a group of six teenagers the youth center Chantemerle in Chambéry to raise awareness about the stakes of international solidarity worldwide. Through a series of innovative workshops, the teenagers were invited to reflect on their representations of the world by using participatory mapping as a medium, while also discovering cartographic projections and free tools. They also contributed remotely to a humanitarian mapping project via a mini-mapathon, and produced a uMap highlighting the vision and the relations that inhabitants of the Chantemerle neighborhood have with solidarity and the rest of the world.
To know more about this activity, please read our 2020 Annual Report
En 2020, nos bénévoles ont travaillé avec le FORIM afin de créer une carte #DiasporaAgainstCovid sur GoGoCarto. Cette carte permet de valoriser les actions menées par les diasporas en France et à l'étranger pendant la pandémie.
Pour en savoir plus sur cette activité, veuillez lire notre Rapport Annuel 2020.
As part of a Bioforce project aiming at strengthen local capacities to work for the resilience of populations and crisis response in Central African Republic (CAR), CartONG is supporting Bioforce to provide structural strengthening of the Permanent Secretariat of NGOs (SPONG) in CAR.
This support-advice mission, carried out following an information management assessment that took place in 2019, and initially planned via a field mission (canceled due to the Covid 19 crisis), was carried out completely remotely. Its objective was to provide technical support for the operationalization of the Excel databases of the SPONG as well as to support the SPONG teams in the use of the mapping tool QGIS to establish 3W maps.
To know more about this activity, please read our 2020 Annual Report.
En 2019, l'équipe de bénévoles de CartONG a réalisé pour Planète Réfugiés 6 cartes sur le nombre de prisonniers condamnés à mort dans le monde pour soutenir un événement organisé sur ce thème à la Faculté de droit de Grenoble.
La collaboration entre Planète Réfugiés-Droits de l'Homme et une équipe de sept bénévoles de CartONG s'est poursuivie en 2020. Ils ont notamment travaillé à la réalisation d'une série de cartes régionales et thématiques pour mettre en lumière la situation des condamnés à mort dans le monde.
Pour en savoir plus sur cette activité, veuillez lire notre Rapport Annuel 2020.
Following the first strategy of 2013-2015, CartONG worked together with MSF Switzerland in defining the evolution of GIS in MSF-CH to support the movement for the period of 2016-2019. The strategy was extended into 2020 for a fifth year.
As part of the 2016-2019 strategy, CartONG acts as technical partner and, to this end, provides support in mapping & GIS through the MSF GIS Unit, as well as in mobile data collection (MDC) and capacity building (training workshop in "GIS Basic", in advanced GIS, etc.). Occasionally, CartONG staff gets deployed in the filed to support the whole MSF movement.
During the first year of the strategy, we supported 17 field missions covered by 8 GIS Specialists for a total of 135 weeks. Our training offer also increased, we organized 3 one-week trainings for GIS basic skills, GIS specialists and GIS focal points. We started to develop a new version of the MSF Map Centre including an embedded portal to monitor map requests, which has also strengthened our IT infrastructure. The other key development was the Briefing tool, integrated in the MSF Map Centre. Learn more by reading our 2016 Annual Report.
During the second year of the 2016/2019 partnership, more than 300 paper maps were created on ArcGIS to answer the needs of MSF missions. Important work was also conducted regarding the creation of the first few Country Kits for MSF. In 2017,we also gave remote support to MSF teams deployed in the occurrence of a crisis. In total,we have supported 24 field missions covered by 12 GIS specialists for a total of 171 weeks. We have also supported 8 local cartographers in the field to respond to diseases outbreaks, to facilitate the implementation of WASH programs, and to map refugee camps. We also continued our work on the Map Centre and the Briefing Tool, and we developed some key products such as the "EpiMaps" (epidemiological maps). Lastly, CartONG has taken an active and significant part in the writing of the proposal for the"GEOMSF project" which was validated during the first semester of 2017. The GEOMSF project will allow the scaling of services currently offered by the GIS Unit. Learn more by reading our 2017 Annual Report.
During the third year of the 2016/2019 partnership, the mapping team continued working on the country kits and further developing thematic maps related to the WASH and epidemiology sectors, while answering direct mapping requests, often related to emergencies. In 2018, a total of 280 maps were produced and we covered 3 major crisis for which we were activated in rush mode. We also worked on the structuring of the reference databases, and released the Map Centre v2. The new Map Centre contains more contextual pages and also more useful tools for GIS and non GIS people. In 2018, we also created a total of 7 new web applications on top of the 6 previous released ones that we have continued to maintain. In addition, we gave remote support to MSF teams deployed in emergency settings. In total, we supported 28 field missions covered by 16 GIS specialists for a total of 204 weeks. Our training offer also grew, and we re-organized the 4 one-week training sessions for GIS basic skills, MDC, GIS specialists and GIS focal points. Lastly, CartONG took an active part in the "GEOMSF project". CartONG is participating with 2 hats, one as the "client" of GEOMSF as part of the MSF GIS Unit, helping and supporting the needs definition, and one as "technical advisor" during the first phase of the project which focuses on analysis and the architecture definition in order to develop a common vision of the next platform, tools and processes for the GIS Unit. Learn more by reading our 2018 Annual Report.
During the fourth of the 2016/2019 partnership, there was a strong collaboration surrounding the GeoMSF program and a new overall GIS platform was developed. We also worked on the 2020-2023 strategy for the GIS Unit. We continued to provide mapping services, yet our main goal in 2019 was to look at ArcGIS Pro in order to undertake a migration from ArcMap to ArcGIS Pro during the year so as to align the technologies with the GeoMSF new infrastructure. Regarding the online maps, we slowed down our activities as the GeoMSF had the mandate to provide an easier and faster way to produce them, but still produced 9 web maps (3 from scratch and 6 by using ArcGIS Online applications). We thus concentrated our effort on improving the business part of our activities, as well as the user and technical documentation. We also significantly improved our quality control processes and continued maintaining the Map Centre v2 by implementing improvements and managing bug fixing throughout the year. Data management was our main focus during the 2019 year, in order to make it the cornerstone of the GIS Unit. Additionally, we worked closely with the Missing Maps team in order to better use and contribute to the OSM database. In 2019, we also gave remote support to MSF teams deployed in different contexts. In total, we accompanied 20 field missions covered by 11 GIS specialists from our headquarters. We also supported 11 long-term GIS specialists on building capacity and sharing their work within the organization. Last but not least, we also organized the GIS week. Learn more by reading our 2019 Annual Report.
During the fifth and final year of the 2016/20219 partnership, we produced 300 maps covering 41 countries. Our main goal in 2020 was to implement ArcGIS Pro at headquarters and in the field. However, it was not possible for everyone to start using it straight away and some staff at MSF have kept using ArcMap for now. As the main type of maps we produce are basemaps, in 2020 we also focused much of our work on health features compilation in collaboration with the data managers. Due to COVID-19 pandemic, our team was tasked with developing an online web map in support of MSF’s operations which gave us the opportunity to experiment rapid online web map building using the AGOL platform. The Covid-Dashboard aimed at showing at world level, the different restrictions for entering and leaving a country, by plane, road or sea. The health crisis has required a huge effort from our team and has led to a strong mobilization of CartONG’s volunteers who have supported the manual update of the platform for several months, before the process could be semi-automatized. As 2020 was the final year of the GeoMSF program, the main objective in terms of data management for this year was to keep a strong collaboration with the GeoMSF team for both support and absorption of the activities. We provided remote support to MSF’s teams deployed in various contexts. In total, we accompanied 7 field missions covered by 5 GIS specialists from our headquarters. We also supported 10 long-term GIS specialists on building capacity and sharing their work within the organization. Our training offer got reduced due to the COVID-19 situation and we only ended up facilitating one GIS training session. For the third consecutive year, we also organized the GIS Week - this time online. Learn more by reading our 2020 Annual Report.
Over the summer of 2020, the H2H Network contacted CartONG to discuss how we could support the network’s advocacy work by showcasing the activations it funds, as part of the launch of their new website. We suggested developing a web map that would display both the data about the activations and their location on a world map.
We managed to design a mock-up for the tool, adapt it to the feedback of the partner, integrate it on the website and release it in only 4 weeks. After some last fixing and the writing of the guidance documentation for the H2H Network’s team, the overall request was completed in less than 2 months, and is now routinely used by the H2H Network for all of their activations.
To know more about this activity, please read our 2020 Annual Report.
In the summer of 2020, CartONG was contacted by ECPM's team to build an interactive web map that would display the status and key statistics on death penalty in each country of the world and help support their advocacy work as the NGO was celebrating its 20th anniversary. This interactive web map brings together the key facts and figures related to death penalty in each country of the world. In addition to the status on death penalty, the map is displaying figures such as the number of executions in the recent years, methods of execution, and the number of prisoners in a death row.
To know more about this activity, please read our 2020 Annual Report.
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:
In 2019:
The data collaborative initiative on WASH data started in November 2019 with a kick-off workshop that gathered 28 participants from 14 organizations (international & local NGOs, UN representatives, donors and government agencies) in Kinshasa. This workshop allowed us to define the plan of action and objectives for 2020 with the organizations interested by this new project.
In 2020:
We had planned follow-up activities including a field pilot and a second workshop in 2020. However, the pandemic has not allowed us to continue the activities as planned, blocking the possibilities to organize events as well as to deploy in the field. We agreed with AFD to cancel the final activities and to close the project.
To know more about this activity, please read our 2020 Annual Report.
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