We are pleased to announce the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is joining the Missing Maps Partnership. Missing Maps is an open, collaborative project in which you can help to map areas where humanitarian organisations are trying to meet the needs of vulnerable people – creating open data that can be used for planning, awareness, and analysis. Over 33,000 people have contributed 33 million edits to OpenStreetMap since Missing Maps was founded in 2014. These contributions have been used to support health interventions, emergency response and resilience programs. Volunteers, organizations, and humanitarians collaborate in a number of ways: remote mapping, field mapping and humanitarian activities.

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The Global Partnership for Suitable Development Data (GPSDD) announced one of the biggest initiatives to support collaborative data innovations. 400 applications were summited and after a very close decision, 10 projects will be piloted with the support of the World’s Bank Trust Fund for Statistical Capacity Building (TFSCB). All ten proposals have a strong background in data production, dissemination and use, most of them aiming to try their approaches in low and middle-income countries across Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

The diversity of selected projects covers all kind of innovations, water level monitoring and alert using telecommunication networks, utilising satellite waves to detect illegal fishing and counter human traffic, improving vital registration for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, predictive machine learning methodology to help aid workers foresee patients’ behaviour, etc. Read the complete list here.

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[ed. note: Data @ IFRC is a blog series to share highlights from the Red Cross Red Crescent Secretariat and National Societies. We will include learning opportunities and thought pieces on all things data from ethics to evidence.] Maps have always been storytelling devices. And, the art of mapmaking is a community-building exercise. Missing Maps and YouthMappers are two programs which provide unique ways to connect humanitarian work to mapmaking. YouthMappers, with university chapters around the world, connects humanitarian mapping needs to education programs. Their main target group is university-level geography (GIS) students. Missing Maps is both a global and local program that supports mapathons around the world. Inspired by both concepts, data scientists Heather Leson and Guido Pizzini co-hosted a Missing Map event for youth at Ecole Internationale Geneva. See below the complete narration;

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Les données OpenStreetMap sont gratuites et accessibles par tout le monde. Pensez-y comme “Wikipédia pour les cartes.” Vous pouvez éditer, je peux l’éditer et cela reflète fondamentalement le monde qui nous entoure. C’est génial parce que si votre endroit ou localité n’est pas sur la carte, vous pouvez la mettre. Et cela s’applique pour les endroits partout au Mali, et il s’applique aux endroits du monde entier. Ces endroits peuvent être partagé avec d’autre personnes sous forme des données ouvertes. C’est à la fois une base de données et une communauté de personnes qui sont construites autour de la fixation de la carte du monde et de la rendre accessible et ouverte à tous.

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