Nepal earthquake - Humanitarian infrastructure (as of 11 May 2015)
These products show established and planned humanitarian coordination and logistics locations, and sometimes their designated areas of responsibility. Coordination centres and hubs depicted may include those established by national authorities, UN agencies, humanitarian clusters or other coordination bodies such as NGOs.
Strategic or operational?
Normally operational, as it provides information about the coordination centres responsible for all areas.
Basemap, baseline or situational?
Situational.
When might it be produced?
As early as possible after confirmation by OCHA or the organisation coordinating the emergency response. If there have been long-term programmes in the country, there may already be some of this infrastructure in place.
Intended audience
Everyone at operational level, as they should first contact the focal point at the main coordination hub in order to understand the situation of the humanitarian coordination.
Influence on humanitarian decisions
Humanitarian infrastructure maps may be used to inform decisions about the evolution of coherent coordination architecture for the emergency: for example by encouraging the co-location of coordination centres between sectors/clusters. Maps may also have the beneficial effect of stimulating the involvement of humanitarian actors in the coordination process, by communicating the locations of coordination centres and other hubs.
- The map is usually updated several times during the emergency, so a simple MXD, ready to be re-loaded with more information, should be prioritised.
- Create and maintain a point shapefile for all reported humanitarian infrastructure, to avoid inflexible one-off annotations of maps.
- Check with coordination actors for authoritative and consistent terminology for coordination centres and use this to label maps accurately, as this can often otherwise be a source of confusion.
Data
- The information is typically provided by OCHA or another coordinating body. Close liaison is required to ensure that planned and actual changes are reflected in map updates.
- Include locations of coordination hubs (OSOCCs, BoO etc.), distribution points, warehouses, etc.