GISCorps Assists World Health Organization in Mapping Ebola Response Activities

In December 2013, a two-year old child in a remote village in southeastern Guinea died from a then-unidentified disease. From that beginning arose the unprecedented West Africa Ebola outbreak which eventually infected 26,093 people in 15 countries, caused over 10,000 deaths, and gave rise to fears of a worldwide pandemic. For this crisis, the United Nations (UN) established the first-ever UN emergency health mission, the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER). From its headquarters in Accra, Ghana, UNMEER oversaw a huge network of response activities in Africa, and directed the work of tens of thousands of brave response workers.

 

In December 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) requested the assistance of GISCorps to support UNMEER in the mapping of their West Africa Ebola response activities. Five volunteers, knowledgeable in GIS (Geographic Information Science) and advanced web mapping capabilities, were requested to work from four to six weeks in the three hardest-hit African countries (Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone), as well as in the UNMEER headquarters in Accra, Ghana, and in the WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Read their stories here.

GISCorps Volunteer Team, from left: Emmanuel Lansana, Leslie Zollman, Jeff Pires, Charleen Gavette.

Mimika Land Rights Project - West Papua
West Papua is a remote Melanesian province of Indonesia that has an abundance of gas, mineral and timber resources. West Papua remains a region under close supervision by the military and a difficult area to operate in for human rights workers, environmental activists and journalists. 

The Grasberg mine, operated by Freeport-Rio Tinto, is located in Amungme territory in the Carstenz range. It is considered to hold the planet's largest combined reserve of copper and gold. The Grasberg mine has been dumping tailings into the Ajkwa River deposition area downstream in Komoro territory since operation in the 1980's and is the site of an environmental disaster. The Forensic Architecture and Earth Sensing Association has launched an investigation into documenting the Grasberg mine environmental disaster on behalf of the Papuan negotiator and in collaboration with TAPOL, the human rights campaign organization for Indonesia based in the UK. The spatial analysis conducted by a GISCorps Remote Sensing Specialist is a crucial preliminary element of the investigation, especially for an area that is extremely difficult to reach as a zone of conflict. Read more about this mission here.

22 Volunteers Responded to the Call for Typhoon Pam
Twenty-two GISCorps volunteers responded to the call for Typhoon Pam, which devastated the island nation of Vanuatu on March 13. The Digital Humanitarian Network was activated by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) and member organizations formed interdisciplinary teams to quickly monitor, process, and analyze incoming information from social media. GISCorps partnered with Humanity Road and PeaceGeeks to provide spatial context to social media input, resulting in data and maps to share with the humanitarian community. Read more here.