Map Centre and mapping support for MSF-CH

MSF Switzerland initiated last year a reflection on the value of GIS in their operations. 2014 is the beginning of a strong collaboration between MSF-CH and CartONG.

We support them in defining their needs and build together a strategy for GIS development over the next two years. You can find the result of this study here: Development of the Geographic Information System in MSF-CH.

One of the priority in 2014 is to create a Map Centre. It will consist of a library designed to accommodate all maps of interest to MSF in their country of operation plus links to base data for all those countries. To begin with, 18 atlases are being prepared by a CartONG staff.

The Map Centre is being developed with GeoNetwork, an Open-Source solution: “GeoNetwork is a catalog application to manage spatially referenced resources. It provides powerful metadata editing and search functions as well as an embedded interactive web map viewer”.

CartONG is also implementing a PostgreSQL/PostGIS database. This database will contain reference data and will be available for MSF’s Staff and some dedicated applications.

CartONG has also been actively supporting emergency mapping for crisis where MSF-CH was involved: Typhoon Haiyan in Philippines, Bor in South Sudan and CAR, for an exploratory pilot. These emergency activations sparked the interest for GIS within MSF-CH.

A screenshot of MSF-CH's Map Centre