MapAction

Our Mission

Applying geospatial expertise to humanitarian situations can transform decision making, ultimately protecting lives and livelihoods for many of the people affected.

Many experts in the geospatial sector can see the potential and want to donate their time and skills to help. MapAction enables them to do so effectively. We use our networks, experience and understanding of humanitarian response to channel their expertise directly to the key decision makers.

We work hard to ensure that the continual and rapid developments in geospatial and related fields can be applied effectively, providing a direct bridge between the two sectors.

Because global needs outstrip available humanitarian resources the insights produced through expert geospatial and data analysis, helping to target resources are needed now more than ever.

MapAction is a non-profit, collaborating with partners around the world to help them to anticipate, prepare for and respond to humanitarian emergencies. We strive to ensure governments, regional and local disaster management agencies and humanitarian responders have access to the skills, information and analysis that they need to make key decisions, at the right times.

We are a team of around 100 people, 75% of them expert volunteers, plus a small roster of standby consultants. Combining the passion of volunteerism with the rigour and reliability of professional standards, the 'MapAction spirit' is something we work hard to maintain. The willingness of our team to go the extra mile is often commented on.

With more than 20 years of experience and learning gleaned from attending well over 100 different humanitarian emergency situations and supporting countless more remotely, we have developed a unique and continually requested range of capacities.

We freely share all of the knowledge we have acquired by teaching and training humanitarian coordinators to use maps and other geospatial products to help them make better decisions. We try to ensure that any technical products and solutions we develop are open source.

We also help put in place the systems, resources and data required to build resilience to disasters and protect vulnerable communities.

Always seeking improvement, we're continually developing new technologies and approaches to ensure the data, maps and tools that are essential in humanitarian crises are made available as quickly as possible, or even prepared ahead of time. In recent years we have extended our support to the field of humanitarian data science, where a geospatial element is usually important.

When major humanitarian emergencies occur, we can still provide surge support to our partners at just 24 hours notice, including personnel on the ground if needed, enabling them to make sense of chaotic and rapidly evolving situations.

Our combination of wide-ranging expertise in geospatial information and data analysis, allied with extensive knowledge and experience from the heart of humanitarian emergencies uniquely positions MapAction to continue improving the impact and effectiveness of humanitarian aid now and into the future.