Following the catastrophic earthquakes in Venezuela on June 24, 2026, humanitarian organizations face a compromised operational landscape. With over 3,600 confirmed fatalities and tens of thousands missing, the immediate priority…
The Colombian Red Cross’s Disaster Risk Management (DRM) team works to mitigate the impact of emergencies and enhance community resilience throughout the country. Coordinating actions at both national and regional…
HeiGIT has been working with deep learning models and street-level imagery for some time, with the goal to contribute to “filling in the world map” by gaining high-resolution information about…
In 2023, a shared vision emerged to make geospatial skills more accessible, consistent, and sustainable across the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Initiated by the British, German, and Netherlands…
Numbers alone do not show whether a child can reach school or a patient access medical care in time. This is where maps add context, helping to make sense of…
The Sketch Map Tool was strategically used within Colombia’s National Disaster Management System to steer community mapping in the southern city of Cali. The National Unit for Disaster Risk Management…
A new global dataset released by the HeiGIT (Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology) makes it possible to distinguish between paved and unpaved roads worldwide with unprecedented consistency. Derived from high-resolution…
Crowdsourced street-level imagery can be used to detect and map humanitarian-relevant features in near real time. We have developed a machine-learning-based analytical pipeline that integrates with the open-source imagery catalogue…
Anticipatory Action (AA) is becoming an increasingly vital approach in humanitarian and disaster risk management. By leveraging forecasts and risk data, AA enables timely interventions before extreme events occur. Geoinformation…
The Sketch Map Tool was used in Cartagena, Chile, to collect geographic information for effective disaster risk reduction. It is an easy-to-use tool for participatory sketch mapping through offline collection,…
Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) is a valuable resource for an effective disaster management. This article presents five free tools to enhance humanitarian work using VGI. What is VGI and why…
This blog post introduces a step-by-step tutorial for working with a global road surface dataset. Using open-source tools, the tutorial demonstrates how to identify infrastructure gaps by combining road surface…
In June 2025, researchers from the Urban Big Data Centre (UBDC) and HeiGIT (Heidelberg Institute for Geoinformation Technology) carried out a joint field trip to Colombia to strengthen participatory mapping…