Workshop Report: Swiss Crisis Mapping

Accurate and timely maps are a vital resource in contemporary disaster and crisis management. Maps are essential for identifying vulnerabilities, monitoring the effects of disasters and organizing countermeasures. Traditionally, the mapping of crises was the exclusive domain of experts, including cartographers and crisis management professionals. But with the growing availability of participatory information and communications technology, this monopoly is disappearing. Recent disasters have witnessed a new generation of online maps, created by civil society actors and relying on volunteers to collect, organize, verify, visualize, and share geo-referenced information. To address the emerging phenomenon of crisis mapping with a particular focus on the Swiss context, the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at the ETH Zürich, the Swiss Federal Office for Civil Protection (BABS,) and the Institute of Geomatics Engineering at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) jointly organized an expert workshop. The event was conducted at the Center for Security Studies in Zürich on 5 September 2013. As the discussion showed, realizing the potential of crowdsourced crisis mapping for professional disaster and crisis management remains a challenge on many levels, including technical as well as social and political issues. In order to overcome these challenges, it will be particularly important to improve the coordination of the different social actors to develop joint strategies to integrate crisis mapping into prevention and response processes in crisis and disaster management.