Proactive Geospatial Analysis Targets Aid in Sudan
- Author: Jim Baumann
- Full Title: Proactive Geospatial Analysis Targets Aid in Sudan
- Category: articles
- Document Tags: #geospatial
- URL: https://www.esri.com/about/newsroom/arcuser/sudan-aid/
Highlights
- FbA is an innovative approach to providing humanitarian aid by using risk and threat analysis to anticipate need and facilitate the preparation of emergency service elements before a disaster strikes. This approach is faster and less expensive than traditional relief and reduces losses and suffering. (View Highlight)
- Because up-to-date maps of Sudan are often unavailable, it is difficult to identify populations in the country that are at high risk from armed conflicts, disasters, and threatening factors such as poor nutrition and contagious disease. This data would allow the implementation of FbA as well as support long-term climate adaptation efforts and emergency response. (View Highlight)
- Missing Maps, led by a collective of organizations, provides free mapping services for humanitarian organizations throughout the world. It was founded in 2014 by the American Red Cross, British Red Cross, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, and Médecins Sans Frontières. (View Highlight)
- Risk factors, such as a history of conflict, exposure to natural hazards, and other vulnerabilities, are mapped on separate layers for analysis. The conflict layer includes data on reoccurring combat and hot spots that took place between 2000 and 2021 and highlights those areas that have suffered from the greatest impact from war. The natural hazard layer includes datasets on flood and drought. The layer for vulnerability includes datasets on food security, medical care, education, and the locations of internally displaced people and refugees. The satellite imagery used for the project was captured in late August of 2021 by the European Space Agency. (View Highlight)
- Using open-source mapping with Esri’s OpenStreetMap feature layers, the datasets for flood exposure, drought exposure, food insecurity, the location of internally displaced people, and conflict hot spots were analyzed using weighted overlay. For each layer, weights were assigned by experts so that multihazard hot spot maps could be created. (View Highlight)
- This allowed the identification of geographic areas with compounding hazards. A weighted overlay of the areas was conducted, which allowed the extraction of insights from quantitative, georeferenced indexes, with weights assigned according to expert opinion to create multihazard hot spot maps. (View Highlight)