Stage 1: Define Information Needs#
When we look at the various actors operating in forced displacement situations, it is clear that every actor has different information needs. Although there is a set of common foundational layers, individual projects require unique data, or data at unique scales. Therefore, a data manager who wants to cater to all information needs must maintain a potentially very large collection of data. Therefore, a useful first step is to define the extent, scale and scope of the information required, and tailor data collection and analysis to those requirements.
Geographic extent: the extent of the analysis can be a simple definition, such as a regional, national, or sub-national administrative boundary, or a more complex definition, defined by non-standard boundaries, such as the extent of conflict or disaster. Regardless, identifying the physical extent of the analysis is important for data extraction and validation efforts.
Geographic scale: scale refers to the level of detail to be included in the map or analysis and is an important step in planning data collection. For our use cases, we will refer to three scales:
Local: is the information intended to help manage a situation at the level of an individual settlement or refugee/IDP site? In this case, highly detailed data like individual building footprints and intricate details about the infrastructure should be collected.
Regional is the information needed at a sub-national, for example, to understand the interaction of a refugee site with the surrounding settlements?
National: is the information needed to compare different regions of a country, for example to target interventions towards the areas most in need?
Thematic scope: the scope of the analysis determines the required input and output data, and is best defined by understanding the purpose of the end product. If the theme is disaster response, the required data inputs will be very different than for energy planning projects. Determining the theme is difficult but will greatly limit the data collection and evaluation steps.
MapAction compiled an example portfolio of maps for different users and applications in the humanitarian sector; we analyzed this portfolio by looking which data layers are needed for which map product and use case. The result is shown in Annex 1 - Information and data needs by Cluster. It shows application domains and possible map products as columns and the information/data layers as lines. The results of stage 1 should be a concrete list of information requirements, based on your assessment of theme, scale, and extent.