In March 2015, MSF epidemiologist Laura H. Thompson conducted Rapid Nutritional Assessments (RNAs) in Unity State, South Sudan, with the help of our very own ‘Missing Maps’. Together with her team, she used the maps to guide their investigation of suspected malnutrition among children in villages in the Mayendit County of Unity State.

In today’s post, I’ve interviewed Laura about her experience with the use of ‘Missing Maps’ in South Sudan.

What was Mayendit like?

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It sometimes still comes as a surprise to me that large swathes of the planet are completely unmapped. With the advent of easily accessible technology (i.e. Google and Bing maps) and satellites, I’d have thought that the entire planet would’ve been mapped years ago. I mean, look at Google Maps. It gives you the option to view almost the entirety of the UK in either satellite or traffic view. It’s this high level of accessibility to maps and the illusion that our surroundings have been fully mapped, I think, that prevent most of us in developed, urban environments from becoming fully aware of the lack of maps in underprivileged areas.

Before I became fully involved in the Missing Maps project, I always thought that satellite images equalled maps. If there’s a satellite image of an area, went my thought process, how difficult could it be to trace those buildings, roads, and the natural landscape? From my experience with Missing Maps, I’ve come to learn that the answer is ‘very difficult’. The world is a very big place, and it takes a lot of effort, concentration, and experience to remotely map an area accurately. Anyone who’s done a small grid of an urban area through the OSM Tasking Manager can probably testify to the complexity of remote mapping. Buildings in other countries are often completely different to what you are used to in your own country. Sometimes what you think is a large apartment block is actually an hospital. And the problems don’t stop there. Satellite images don’t tell you road names or where the boundaries of a district end. You need local knowledge to fill in these gaps, and that’s where the Field Papers stage of the mapping cycle kicks in. A satellite image can visually show you an area, but it’s how you interpret what’s on the ground that matters most because it’s what gives the map its meaning.

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About 3 Mondays ago, I went to my first-ever Field Papers Mapathon and to my surprise, discovered a smaller group of people to what I am normally used to at mapathons. These were the JOSM experts, the seasoned veterans of remote mapping who no longer relied on the ID-editor that I’ve come to love. They are pros at identifying different buildings and natural landmarks (a result of extensive validation work) and experts at inputting Field Papers data. For this particular mapathon, they were tasked with inputting the names of streets, religious buildings, and other important points of reference in Zimbabwe and Bangladesh into the OSM database.

On one side of the room was the Epworth crew, who were inputting data they had just recently received from Zimbabwe. Tom Hills, a PhD researcher at Imperial College London, was guiding that group, explaining to everyone how to properly input Field Papers data into JOSM. Epworth has been one of Missing Maps’ top priorities because of the risk of water-borne diseases in the neighbourhood.

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I’ve been involved with the Missing Maps project for some time now, often attending mapathons once in a while and eating as much free food as I can there. I’ve mapped huts, houses, swamps, roads, and dried up ponds which I always mistake for huts. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from these mapathons, it’s that shadows make buildings. It’s the best piece of advice I’ve ever been given as a Missing Mapper and one that I continue to preach to new mappers.

I wouldn’t say that I’m an experienced mapper, but I’d say that I’m a Missing Maps believer. As cheesy as that may sound, it’s true. The Missing Maps project has a lot of potential to make the lives of epidemiologists, project coordinators, logisticians, health officials, and many others much easier. It provides first responders with actual maps of low-resource areas that are both detailed and up-to-date. Whether it’s a natural disaster or a disease epidemic, maps make all the difference in helping aid workers locate the most vulnerable areas and respond accordingly.

Although the project is only about 10 months old, we’ve definitely come far. This blog series that I’m writing is an attempt to document all the successes that we’ve achieved with our maps and the challenges that we’ve yet to overcome. It’s to give our mapping communities an opportunity to learn about the impact of their contributions. And to give field professionals who’ve used our maps a mouthpiece to talk about their experiences.

I hope you will enjoy this series, dear reader. I shall let you know when the next blog is published, but for now, continue mapping for the greater good.