MapSwipe

Humanitarian organisations can't help people if they can't find them. MapSwipe is a mobile app that lets you search satellite imagery to help put the world's most vulnerable people on the map.

MapSwipe, developed in support of the Missing Maps Project, allows users to remotely contribute to humanitarian missions. Users choose a task in a crisis prone part of the world, such as spotting villages at risk of a cholera outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They then swipe through satellite images of the region, tapping the screen to mark the location of settlements, roads, rivers, and other features.

This information is fed back to mappers, who build detailed maps that can be used in the field. At present, these mappers must spend days scrolling through thousands of images of uninhabited forest or rural desert in search of small, often remote communities. With MapSwipe, members of the public can donate their time to humanitarian organizations including Médecins Sans Frontières and the Red Cross, crowdsourcing the arduous process of locating the people who need their help. With this generous contribution from users like you, professionals on the ground can get straight to work delivering life-saving aid.