Abstract

World Vision Sierra Leone / GIS Corps facility mapping, 2012-13
Track: Aid and Development
Authors: James Tobias

World Vision is a Christian relief, development and advocacy organization dedicated to working with children, families and communities to overcome poverty and injustice. The URISA GISCorps coordinates short term, volunteer based GIS services to underprivileged communities. These two organizations came together for a very special project in Sierra Leone to map the World Vision schools and health facilities across the country. The project leveraged the ArcGIS Online for Organizations platform and utilized hand-held Global Positioning Systems (GPS), survey forms, and digital photography to gather coordinates, data, and photographs of all facilities. A team of World Vision staff, consultants, and a GISCorps volunteer worked together on a 3-week mission to visit nearly 200 locations, gather data, and build cloud-based web GIS maps and applications that can be shared through the ESRI Cloud. This work is a foundatio that will allow World Vision staff to better visualize their facilities and provide services.