15 Minute Maps

What if humanitarians had an offline-first mapping tool as reliable as a Garmin GPS? In this episode, Max Malynowsky — software engineer at the OCHA Centre for Humanitarian Data — dreams out loud about a future where field teams can sync trusted, up-to-date geodata anywhere, even with near-zero bandwidth.From the chaos of contested admin boundaries to the quiet genius of ODK and XLS forms, Max and Hugo unpack why the hardest part isn't building the app — it's building the data infrastructure behind it. If you've ever tried to print 20,000 settlements or wished for a universal translator for geodata, this one's for you.Links: Max's LinkedInHDXOCHA Centre for Humanitarian Data

What if all the data needed to respond to a humanitarian crisis already existed — but was scattered, siloed, and hard to use?In this episode of 15-Minute Maps, I’m joined by Saïd Abou Kharroub, a GIS specialist turned information management expert, former CEO of Civ API, and current board member of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT).Saïd’s dream map isn’t a single map at all, but a one-stop, layered view of the world’s crises — aggregating data on conflict, displacement, funding, infrastructure, population, and satellite imagery into a single, accessible platform for decision-making.We discuss:What information management really means in humanitarian contexts — beyond tools and technologyWhy decision-making often struggles to connect field realities with available dataHow aggregating existing datasets can unlock faster, smarter responses to crisesThe role of APIs, open source data, and platforms like HOT and Civ APIWhy better data doesn’t replace human judgment — but strengthens itThis episode is a deep dive into how data becomes information, and how information becomes action — especially when lives are at stake.

Urban crises are some of the hardest environments to map — and yet that’s where millions of the world’s most vulnerable people live.In this episode of 15-Minute Maps, Hugo Powell is joined by Yann Rebois, Earth Observation Strategist at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and former Head of Geodata & Analytics at the ICRC. Drawing on decades of field experience and satellite analysis, Yann shares his vision for a map that can finally make urban vulnerability visible.Yann’s dream map focuses on one of humanitarian response’s biggest blind spots: understanding who lives where in dense, damaged, and rapidly changing cities — and what “habitability” really means after conflict or disaster.Together, they discuss:Why population estimates break down in urban crisesThe limits of building footprints and satellite imagery in citiesHow proxies like water tanks and solar panels can reveal where people have returnedWhy “destroyed” doesn’t always mean “uninhabited”How GIS and Earth observation directly shape medical, water, and vaccination responsesThe challenge of detecting flooding and damage in dense urban environmentsThis episode offers a rare inside look at how satellite data, field knowledge, and humanitarian logistics come together — and why better urban maps are essential for effective aid.

What if our most trusted maps are quietly lying to us?This week on 15 Minute Maps, GIS technical advisor Cornelia Schultz (Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre) joins Hugo to reveal a hidden truth about the world’s most vulnerable places: the places we think are empty may simply be unmapped.Working at the intersection of climate change, conflict, and humanitarian response, Cornelia explains why entire communities — especially remote, nomadic, or conflict-affected populations — are missing from global mapping platforms. And when disaster hits, that invisibility can mean the difference between receiving aid and being overlooked entirely.In this episode, Cornelia unveils her “Dragon’s Map,” inspired by the ancient cartographer’s warning Hic sunt dracones (“Here be dragons”). The idea: a map that finally shows us where the blind spots are — not where nothing exists, but where our data ends.We discuss: – Why many regions show up as “blank” not because they’re empty, but because no one mapped them. – How climate disasters reveal entire communities that digital maps fail to show. – The risks of humanitarian planning in a world where only data-rich places get attention. – How the digital divide — and the economics of mapping — leave the world’s most vulnerable people invisible. – Why highlighting what we don’t know can transform emergency response.A must-listen for anyone working in GIS, climate, humanitarian response, or global development — and for anyone who’s ever assumed that “no data” means “no people.”LinksRed Cross Red Crescent Map LibraryCornelia's LinkedIn

In this episode of 15 Minute Maps, I speak with David de Ridder, Senior Research Fellow at the University Hospital of Geneva (HUG), who specializes in spatial epidemiology and digital public health.David shares his dream map: a next-generation routing system that doesn’t optimize for speed, but for health. Think: a navigation app that automatically guides you through routes with less air pollution, lower noise, fewer allergens, and greater safety — subtly improving your daily environment without adding friction to your life.Together, we explore: • How spatial data helped track and respond to COVID-19 in Geneva • Why tiny differences between neighbourhoods matter for public health • The concept of exposomics — the full range of environmental factors shaping our bodies • The promise and challenges of “passive” digital health tools • How smarter maps could reduce stress, prevent disease, and promote healthier citiesIf you're curious about the future of mapping, digital health, or how your environment shapes your well-being, this episode is packed with insights.

Ever Wondered How You’d Navigate the Ocean With No Compass, No GPS, and No Land in Sight? Well this episode once again proves the importance of maintaining indigenous knowledge.That question led Bonner Professor John Huth, Harvard physicist and renowned member of the team that discovered the Higgs boson, into an entirely different field of research — mapping the ocean waves that Indigenous Marshallese navigators use to navigate their many atolls.In this episode we discuss: How Marshallese navigators sail between islands by feeling subtle changes in the direction of swells.The challenge of turning experiential, embodied knowledge into something that can be mapped without reducing its cultural meaning.Why he teaches a course on navigation that blends science, history, and Indigenous techniques — and why it resonates today.How sensor data, drift measurements, and hand-drawn charts can help visualize a navigation system most of us have never encountered.If we can map the wave structures that navigators feel, we can help preserve a knowledge system that’s at risk of disappearing — and better understand how humans read their environment.This episode is for anyone interested in mapping, ocean science, traditional knowledge systems, or how we make sense of place.

We often talk about rebuilding after a disaster, but we leave so little thought for rthe materials needed. Have you ever thought about where all the rubble goes after a war or a flood?That’s the question that led Guilherme Iablonovski, a geospatial data scientist at the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, to dedicate his career to mapping matter itself — from concrete and steel to the global flow of sand, food, and everything in between.In this week’s episode of 15-Minute Maps, Guilherme joins me to talk about:Why the world needs a “map of matter” — a way to trace what materials are where, and where they move. How cities have a metabolism, just like living beings — taking in, storing, and expelling materials in measurable flows. What happens to all that material when a city is bombarded or flooded — and how understanding this could make rebuilding faster, cheaper, and greener. How consumption habits in places like Paris can have invisible footprints across the world. And why mapping matter could be key to tracking progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — especially SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities) and SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production).

She Lost Her Home to Wildfires… and Turned It Into a Powerful Mapping Idea That Could Not Only Save Lives but Local History as Well!Professor Brianna Pagan Corremonte - remote sensing expert, technical leader, environmentalist, and ultra marathon runner. How can you marry all these elements together into one map? Well Brianna describes her life post wildfires in southern California and the many stories she came across while supporting her neighbours during this troubling time. She wants blend aural story telling with mapping, tying place with history. Not only does she want to put forth historic data to improve response, she wants the stories of those impacted by crises to live on. As a person who lives to be out in the wild, she firmly believes that hobbying with a purpose (in this case running 100mile races) is key to ensuring we better understand the world around us. 

In this very moving episode, Esperanza Ortega-Tapia describes her dream of being able to map the loss of farming land within BIPOC communities in the United States. A topic incredibly close to her heart, Esperanza not only takes us on a journey of loss of land but also, a loss of cultural heritage. Having grown up in New Mexico, picking chilies with her grandfather on their family land, she has experienced first hand how climate change and systematic oppression has driven many to abandon farming. Sadly this is a story all too common across the world, and one that Esperanza hopes she can tackle with her research int food systems. 

In this episode, Guido Pizzini - Director, Business Development, Impact and Partnerships at Immap Inc. - takes us through his dream of mapping community response to climate change. This idea is driven by his reading of Landscapes of Retreat: '...a reading of how the climate emergency lands in real places across time by paying close attention to adaptation charged with intimate, local memory'Landscapes of Retreat, ROSETTA S. ELKINPreparedness is at the core of humanitarian response, built up over 100 years of crises, learning and developing capacity and techniques to ensure each time an event occurs, the response is better. But impact varies greatly depending on where an event occurs. How do we capture local knowledge? How do we transpose knowledge between regions? Is that even possible or is it really just a dream? Guido believes a concerted and unified effort within the humanitarian realm could achieve a map that does just this.Linksimmap.orgLinked InLandscapes of retreat

Sven Schmitz-Leuffen, GIS and Technical Solutions Lead at the International Committee of the Red Cross has a problem, how to know where and to whom should the ICRC be delivering support to? Well here is where the Gap Map comes in, a comprehensive collection of needs assessments that allow the ICRC to identify the literal 'gaps' in support. We discuss the practicalities of such a map, the pros and cons of the UN cluster system (and the potential existence of a Data Cluster), and the joys of working within the legal parametres laid out in the ICRC's mandate. 

From time to time, one feels the need to break with tradition, and while this podcast has normally only dealt with planetary GIS and mapping, in this episode we go beyond our atmosphere and look up and out. Prof. Sung Huang, associate professor at the Department of Astronomy at Tsinghua University in Beijing, lets us into his universe and tells us bout his dream map - a four dimensional rendering of the universes almost infinite galactic bodies. Though the subject matter is out fo this world, Prof. Huang's perspective highlights the importance of understand the galaxy on the future of humanity and our development as a species. So come learn the importance of having dark skies, the impact satellite mega constellations have on our mental health, and why what is going on out there is so important to what is going on down here. Links:Dark Skies International Interactive dark sky mapSong's experiment: The Multiplexed Survey Telescope

In this episode I am joined by Maaz Sheikh, young GIS entrepeneur and start up king. Ageospatial, the platform he created, uses AI agents and large language models (LLMs) to assist the less GIS savvy in creating their maps. While a contentious issue, he says his platformed is designed to improve accessibility to geospatial data. He tells us about his passion for calisthenics and sports and why so little geospatial data is available for outdoor activity areas. His map would take down the boundaries of data accessibility held within private servers and location data that is simply not geocoded yet. Links: https://ageospatial.com

Rhiannan Price, program lead at Nasa Lifelines, blends art and science to create her dream map. An advocate of community mapping, Rhiannan believes that modern mapping does not go far enough to evoke the community implications of places so often reduced to points in GIS. We delve into the implications of a map for decision making, whose primary design is not for decision making. What might that map look like? Rhiannan also takes us into her world, and how Nasa Lifelines collaborates with local artists around the world to convey the importance and impact of satellite data.Links:Nasa Lifelines

Varsha Sivaram, senior economic geographer at FRAYM, takes us into her world where she blends academic research with practical data solutions. In a world where data is king, how do you harness that data correctly and ethically? How do you ensure that work is doubled up and organisations share information responsibly? These are some of the questions we discuss in this weeks episode. One thing is for certain, Varsha believes that geospatial data is not being used to its full potential. Links:linkedin.com/in/varshasivaramhttps://fraym.io

GIS IS DEAD! This weeks guest is Andrew Schroeder, Co-founder of WeRobotics, Co-director of CrisisReady, and Vice President of research and analysis at Direct Relief. It may come as a surprise to some given Andrew's background but he posits that the concept of GIS as a tool for humanitarian response is outdated. With the rise of automated mapping and AI supported GIS, Andrew firmly believes that GIS can move into a future where interacting with a GIS will become the realm of policy experts and decision makers. This may also come as a shock to many GIS officers who have built their careers on mapping and geospatial data processing, but he also believes that there is room for experts in geospatial data. Lets hear what he has to say in this riveting and cross-disciplinary episode of the 15 Minute Maps Podcast. 

Today I am joined by Richard Brittan, founder of the innovative GIS company ALCIS. Richard identifies the lack of mapping of poverty in most parts of the world. He focusses on Afghanistan and the problems that surveyors and GIS experts have in mapping poverty across the board. In this instance, most poverty data is derived from a census from 2004, making almost all extrapolated information not fit for purpose. Join us as we delve deep into Richard's vision for this poverty map and how he has drawn on his experience in the field to develope this type of map. Links: ALCIS

Mahalo to the global GIS Ohana from this weeks guest Joel Myhre, humanitarian technology innovator. With a CV as long as the Magna Carta, Joel has worked in every facet of humanitarian technology and has travelled the globe supporting a myriad of projects. From the ebola outbreak in the DRC with World Health Organisation, to disaster preparedness with the Pacific Disaster Centre in Hawaii. With such a background, Joel unsurprisingly has a philosophical, almost poetic take on how his dream map would look. Inclusive, open to ancient techniques, and connecting the world are just a few of the core tenets of Joel's perfect map. So come along with us on this Polynesian voyage into Joel Myhre's mind and learn what makes his map special. 

This week I am joined by Nathaniel 'Natty' Raymond - Executive Director of Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University. Co-founder of Sentinel Satelites (with one George Clooney, yes that  George Clooney), Nathaniel has worked a huge variety of roles including war crimes investigator and media consultant, but now refers to himself as an accidental geographer.He takes us through his idea of 'The BLIMP'. The BLIMP is a standardised method of gathering, storing, and sharing data between organisations into one common operational picture (COP). He takes us through the current pitfalls of such a plan and why it has been so difficult to achieve, from working in silos, data ownership, and sensitivity of data. Links:Humanitarian Research Lab

Today I am joined by Olivier Cottray, Director of Humanitarian Solutions at ESRI, and with nearly 5000 followers on LinkedIn, he is the closest the humanitarian Geospatial community has to a celebrity. Starting his career working for the Antarctic survey, Ollivier has had a storied carreer in multiple NGOs.Olivier tells us about his dream GIS, a system that allows users to define their needs and prorities. Drawing from his experience with GICHD, he bases his idea on the PRISMA project that used sliding scales to help reach a consensus of de-mining prioritisation. By allowing local voices to decide where should be de-mined first, practical decisions could be made to prioritise action. Olivier wants to expand this needs driven map to the globality of humanitarian response and integrate it directly in the rebuild after, what he so eloquently calls, the humanitarian reset. Join me next Monday where I will be speaking to Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, where he takes us on a tour of the BLIMP. Links:Esri Humanitarian Solutions IMSMAPRISMA

For the first ever episode of 15 Minute Maps I am Joined by Jessie Pechmann, storied humanitarian and Geospatial expert. She is currently the Humanitarian GIS and Data protection lead with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOTOSM), and has previously worked at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), IMPACT initiatives, and for the state of Utah. But many of you may know her as the convener of the Information Management Working Group (IMWG) focussing on GIS.We discuss how humanitarian response can be restricted due to physical and human boundaries that superimpose traditional political boundaries. Jessie suggests a different kind of world map, one that takes spheres of influence, culture, linguistic differences, and physical obstacles into account when drawing up lines on a map.Links:https://www.hotosm.org