Service Opportunities for the GIS Community

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Service Opportunities for the GIS Community

• The What Why of GISCorps
• Operation Katrina
• Mapping Refugee Service Locations in Cairo, Egypt

Lori Quinn Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning
Department
Twyla McDermott City of Charlotte Business
Support Systems
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What is GISCorps?

• Completely volunteer organization
• Supporting humanitarian relief.
• Enhancing environmental analysis.
• Encouraging/fostering economic development.
• Supporting community planning and development.
• Strengthening local capacity by adopting and
  using information technology.
• Supporting health and education related
  activities
• Mission Statement
• Operating under the auspices of URISA, GISCorps
  coordinates short term, volunteer based GIS
  services to underprivileged communities

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The Why of GISCorps

• Vision Goals
• make available highly specialized GIS expertise
  to improve the well being of developing and
  transitional communities without exploitation or
  regard for profit.
• coordinate the open exchange of volunteer GIS
  expertise cooperatively among and along with
  other agencies.
• GISCorps foster development of professional
  organizations in host communities to help sustain
  and grow local spatial expertise.

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The How of GISCorps

• GISCorps is responsible for
• Establishing relationships with agencies
  associations such as UN, GSDI, Peace Corps, ICMA,
  etc.
• Screening projects in host countries to make
  certain they match the GISCorps objectives
• Coordinate on a project-by-project basis between
  sponsoring agencies and volunteers
• Matching volunteers expertise with project needs

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The Who of GISCorps

• As of February 2007
• over 1,100 enlisted volunteers.
• reside in 47 countries over five continents and
  are natives of 57 countries.
• US volunteers reside in 50 states
• North Carolina has 31 volunteers
• A wide variety of expertise
• Database, Education, Environmental, Needs
  Assessment, and Disaster Management
• GISCorps has implemented
• 18 missions around the globe, and has
• contributed over 5,000 working hours

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Missions of the GISCorps

• Partnership with Global MapAid
• Dr Frank Chang spent one month in Indonesia on a
  mostly a fact finding mission to survey and
  observe geospatial needs for relief agencies
  short and long term

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Missions of the GISCorps

• Partnership with SeedsIndia and MapAction
• US based 7 person team remote
• The goal was to recreate the physical layout and
  development pattern of erased villages in Andaman
  Islands of India as they existed before they
  tragedy attaching census data to every region
• Tasks included spatial and non-spatial data
  compilation from various satellite imageries and
  paper copies

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Missions of GISCorps

• GIS Support for the Tsunami Relief Operations
  Jakarta Sumatra, Indonesia
• Assisted in field data collection information
  dissemination
• Created earthquake
• assessment maps

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...At the heart of volunteerism are the ideals of
service and solidarity and the belief that
together we can make the world a better place.
...But far away from the spotlight, there are
millions of generous individuals who, around the
clock and around the world, roll up their sleeves
and volunteer to help in any way they can.
...Volunteers do not ask, "why volunteer?", but
rather "when?", "where?" and "how?". These
dedicated and courageous individuals are
important partners in the quest for a better,
fairer and safer world. Kofi A. Annan
International Volunteer Day, 05.12.2003
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How Do I Sign Up?

• http//www.giscorps.org/
• Application
• Information for volunteers (tips and hints)
• Reports on past missions
• Links to other volunteer organizations
• Information about Free Open Source software
• Anyone can contribute
• Back Office opportunities
• Deployment handbook, website, newsletter

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Mapping Refugee Service Locations in Cairo, Egypt
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Mapping Refugee Service Locations in Cairo, Egypt

• United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
  (UNHCR)
• Est. December 14, 1950 by the UN General Assembly
  
• mandated to lead and coordinate international
  action to protect refugees and resolve refugee
  problems worldwide
• has helped an estimated 50 million people restart
  their lives through asylum, returnees, safe
  refuge
• Were not able to obtain the digital files from
  Cairo government without a high price
• Pilot project to collect data and also to assess
  the process and time involved

http//www.unhcr.org
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Mapping Refugee Service Locations in Cairo, Egypt

• Developed a single GIS layer of common services
  for refugees

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Mapping Refugee Service Locations in Cairo, Egypt

• Visually referenced buildings based on scanned
  maps

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Mapping Refugee Service Locations in Cairo, Egypt

• Used Google Earth to obtain latitude longitude
• Recorded coordinates and resource type in Excel
• Converted to decimal degrees

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Mapping Refugee Service Locations in Cairo, Egypt

• Some areas were more challenging than others
• Roads not clearly defined
• Buildings not identifiable
• Outdated maps
• Required lots of review

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Mapping Refugee Service Locations in Cairo, Egypt

• Generated a georeferenced point file based on XY
• Created metadata

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Mapping Refugee Service Locations in Cairo, Egypt

• Total Time approximately 30 hours
• Coordinate collection
• Data entry and conversion in Excel
• Creation of shapefile
• Metadata
• Collected 519 points in 6 areas of Cairo