Development of a block level geovisualization tool of Zaatari refugee camp community asset data

Abstract

Geovisualization, with its capacity to provide tools for visual spatial analysis, has wide-ranging domain applications to support sense and decision making in humanitarian crisis management. The need for such tools is manifest in the Middle East in light of the Syrian civil war and ensuing mass migration of millions of refugees to neighboring countries. The Zaatari refugee camp, home to 80,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan, provides for basic needs and is actively seeking to enhance refugee social infrastructure and governance. This paper introduces the development of a Shiny geovisualization tool called “The Zaatari Project” incorporating block-level analysis of key social attributes of the Zaatari camp population by combining block-level asset survey data and OpenStreetMap data. The tool and its key feature, an interactive bivariate choropleth map, afford a technical resource for community information management to support decision making. Scenario-based evaluation of the tool was conducted in collaboration with the refuGIS team which are a group of Syrian refugees in Zaatari camp developing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) capacities for the camp under the coordination of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Evaluation findings indicate promising outcomes relating to the tool's utility to inform needs assessment and resource allocation to support the team's planning and improvement of the camp's infrastructure.