(Hattotuwa and Stauffacher October 2010)

Crisismapping + UN

Cross-fertilisation of UN Common Operational Datasets and Crisismapping

At the retreat of the UN Crisis Information Management Advisory Group (CiMAG) on 5 October 2010 at IBM Palisades in New York, the ICT4Peace Foundation underscored the point made in the IASC draft document on the Common Operational Datasets (CODs) that “some of the CODs, such as data on the affected population and damage to infrastructure, will change during the different phases of the response and therefore will need to be frequently updated and maintained.” Even without an expansion of the existing CODs, the Foundation’s submission was that crisismapping could and should feed into the updating of UN datasets after a crisis occurs, complementing timely efforts by UN agencies and the cluster leads to update this information.

This concept note is a first attempt to capture the ways through which crisismapping, using crowdsourced information, can feed into and complement key datasets within the UN system, and flags deep seated attendant challenges in this regard.

Download it here.

The concept note refers to an expanded set of sources for the population of CODs as well as greater situation awareness after a crisis. This draft framework, meant more as a foundation for discussion and debate rather than a prescriptive operational guideline, can be downloaded here.

A report from the UN Crisis Information Management Advisory Group (CiMAG) meeting in Palisades is now on the site. Click here to access it.