Can geospatial data help communities prepare for natural disasters? Here are the lessons from Türkiye and Syria.
Why It Matters
Location-based, openly available data – which is crowdsourced across a community, or from around the world – can help those working in aid contexts ascertain where the need for resources is most urgent following a disaster. However, constant and preemptive data collection activities – both before and after a disaster – could help aid workers and government agencies proactively plan for such disasters.
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Dr Bilgehan Çevik, an orthopedic surgeon based in Ankara, Türkiye, wanted to volunteer in Antakya, one of the regions most devastated by the earthquake in February. With local communications infrastructure destroyed, Çevik and a team of other volunteer doctors found it challenging to navigate the roads of the region using internet-based map services. Instead, they ended up re
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