Missing Maps - American Red Cross/Haitian Red Cross

Canaan, Haiti

The American Red Cross is supporting the Haitian Red Cross to expand their community based disaster response and health efforts into new communities in the northern metropolitan Port au Prince area. The communities outlined are at significant exposure to seasonal and acute flooding risks and they lack access to basic health services, disaster preparedness plans and disaster response plans.

Haitian Red Cross plans to expand their local volunteer network into these communities in 2015; they will train community members in first aid, emergency response and evacuation, as well as link them to healthcare services. Updated maps will support Haitian Red Cross to identify safe emergency shelter sites as well as to prepare emergency evacuations routes that reflect population centers and road network capacity. Furthermore, updated maps will help Haitian Red Cross to identify particularly vulnerable families and plan ways to improve access to them.

The Missing Maps project aims to map the most vulnerable places in the world (affected by humanitarian crises: disease epidemics, conflict, natural disasters, poverty, environmental crises). Building on HOT’s disaster preparedness projects, the Missing Maps tasks facilitate pre-emptive mapping of priority countries to better facilitate disaster response, medical activities and resource allocation when crises occur.

How to contribute Please join us by finding tasks relating to this project by searching Missing Maps on the HOT Tasking Manager. You can also host your own Missing Maps mapathon for friends and colleagues. Here’s a step-by-step guide and training materials to walk you through the process.