Map Design Tools for Crisis Mapping
ISBN 978-85-88783-11-9
Authors
1Kostelnick, J.
1ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY Email: jkostelnick@ilstu.edu
Abstract
Maps have become indispensable today for effective crisis response to protect lives, property, and resources before, during, and in the aftermath of natural disasters and human conflicts around the world. Crisis mapping has grown rapidly in recent years in response to vast new sources of data available for mapping in times of disaster (e.g., crowdsourced data sources, automated sensor data, improved humanitarian GIS datasets) along with the rise of web and mobile-enabled technologies that enable rapid creation and dissemination of maps. The rapid rise of crisis mapping, however, has also ushered in new cartographic challenges that confront humanitarian relief organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and government agencies alike as they develop crisis maps to support disaster response. These challenges include issues related to cultural considerations for map symbology, design of intuitive icons, concurrent representation of both simple and complex information on crisis maps, issues related to map symbology standardisation within and among organisations, and visualisation of geographic patterns in “big data.” These challenges are particularly amplified given the “democratization” of crisis mapping that has resulted from the many maps that are developed by personnel with little or no cartographic training or background. The purpose of this presentation is to describe the development of an expert map design toolset designed specifically for humanitarian relief organisations to evaluate and improve the design of crisis maps. The crisis map design toolset was developed to address challenges identified from a global survey of humanitarian relief organisations. These key crisis mapping challenges will be outlined as well as tools in the crisis map design toolset that may utilised to approach each challenge. Demonstrations and examples will be provided for how the crisis map design toolset may be used by humanitarian organisations during actual times of disaster.