Category Archives: Uncategorized

Al-Jazeera’s Crisis Map of the Snowstorm Emergency in the Balkans

In the Fall of Al-jazeera partnered with the SBTF to produce a crisis map in response to the earthquake in Van, Turkey. Earlier this month, our colleagues at Al-jazeera got in touch with the SBTF again, this time seeking support for their crisis map of the snowstorm emergency in the Balkans. They were in the middle [...]
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Updates from OCHA Colombia Floods Deployment

[Blog post by Virginia Brussa, SBTF Regional Coordinator for South & Central America] According to SIGPAD, the second rainy season affected 1,193,956 people of which more than 33,000 were affected in January alone. UN OCHA Colombia requested support from the SBTF in December to map the massive flooding triggered by the second season of [...]
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WHO Libya Deployment: Lessons Learned and SBTF Feedback

On December 12th, Robert Colombo Llimona, a GIS Analyst
for the Vulnerability and Risk Analysis & Mapping (VRAM) 
inside the WHO Mediterranean Center for Health Risk Reduction (WMC) based in Tunisia contacted the SBTF, OSM and GISCorps to request support on a project related to the public health system in Libya. The purpose of the [...]
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Data Protection Standards 2.0

As noted in Patrick Meier’s blog post on “Crowdsourcing, Crisis Mapping and Data Protection Standards”, humanitarian organizations have yet to develop and publicize data protection protocols for social media, crowdsourcing and volunteer geographical information. This is why, in November the standbytaskforce.com actively participated in an important workshop to discuss these challenges. The [...]
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Testing UNOSAT’s Cybermappr tool

[This is a guest blog post by Lars Bromley, Analyst at UNOSAT] Dear SBTF, I wanted to convey my deep appreciation for the time that you recently spent testing and offering suggestions for the Cybermappr tool under development by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research / Operational Satellite Applications Program (UNITAR/UNOSAT) and the [...]
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Meet a Mapster: Understanding Volunteer Motivations

[This is a guest blog post by Isaac Griberg, Social Media Officer at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and MA Social Media student at Birmingham City University] Dear Mapsters, First of all, kudos for all the work you guys are doing at the intersection of GIS and relief work. I believe the humanitarian community [...]
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Regional Teams and Regional Data

Regional Teams are definitely not a new concept at the SBTF and every member is assigned to a Regional Team, depending on his/her location. Given the SBTF’s phenomenal growth and frequency of deployments, the need for increasingly effective and uncomplicated coordination/ cooperation is obvious. The regional teams are one of the instruments of the SBTF [...]
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Samoa Simulation SBTF After-Action Report

The Samoan Government and Samoa HEAL, with the support of UN-SPIDER, ran a simulation of early warning and emergency response to a cyclone in Samoa on December 2 - 3. On December 2, the simulation focused on a traditional table top exercise. On December 3, the simulation involved VTCs, exploring how their contributions could [...]
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The Spirit of the SBTF: A Global Network of Self-Starters

I’ve recently been reflecting on what makes the global SBTF network possible. Not surprisingly, it all has to do with active volunteers. They are the ones who make this global initiative what it is. Indeed, we are all volunteers and have other professional, academic, personal etc., commitments. But we find and make the time to [...]
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Standby Human Resources

SBTF volunteers have consistently demonstrated they are a reliable, hard working and creative bunch. On little notice, they are willing to put in hours of their free time, all the while holding a job / writing a PhD / entertaining three toddlers. Their encouragement and interaction with similar volunteers comes through a computer screen - [...]
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