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.
Normally operational, as it provides information about the coordination centres responsible for all areas.
Situational.
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.
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.
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.
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.
These products show basic structures and organisational facilities within a country or affected area. Transport networks are key to represent, but also other facilities such as education, hospitals, fire stations, police, power structures, banks, etc. Many infrastructure products will become basemap or baseline products that can be used for assessments on which situational data will be overlayed.
Normally operational as it provides information about the coordination centres responsible for every area.
Basemap, baseline and situational.
If preparedness work has been done then the basemap and baseline products may already exist, although there may be some initial updating to be done. During the early stages of the emergency damage assessments will be carried out, and the status of infrastructure will be reported and may be updated frequently.
During any rescue phase, search and rescue workers. Emergency medical teams will be working with the national government to understand the capacity of hospitals, etc, so that they can be supported from the emergency phase onwards. Responders will be interested in their specialist vulnerability, e.g. those looking at education will be interested in the status and conditions of schools; logisticians in the capacity of roads, airports and seaports; and emergency telecommunications specialists in power supplies, or radio and mobile phone masts.
Damaged infrastructure has an effect on the population hit by the emergency, and will inhibit any response. Having an understanding of the status and capacity of buildings is important for any responder to provide the best support that they can give.
For pilots, understanding the topography is important as it may determine where they can fly, the route that they take and how they can take-off or land. They are particularly interested in the maximum height of major obstacles in the area, and peaks and valleys that can have an effect on weather conditions.
Products showing specific infrastructure themes will be important to those looking at specific vulnerabilities, and so it is important that there are individual products. Things should not however be looked at in isolation, and having some generalised products showing key infrastructure such as the main hospitals, government buildings and schools can be useful for everyone.
Buildings including hospitals, schools, government buildings, areas of industry, power, etc.
Transport networks - roads, rail, airports, seaports.
Baseline population.
Infrastructure maps can be split into the country infrastructure (e.g. transport, electrical, telecommunications, hospitals, etc) and humanitarian infrastructure (e.g. humanitarian hubs, warehouses, coordination centres). In many responses the infrastructure of a country is likely to be damaged or under further stressed and will need supporting for the long term recovery.
Critical infrastructure
Humanitarian infrastructure
