“There is a huge amount of information on international aid available to the public online. But if you really want to understand what donors are doing, seeing the locations of aid activities on a map is very powerful,” says Nancy Choi, Director of Products and Operations at Development Gateway. “Particularly in disaster situations, we are increasingly seeing the use of interactive maps to coordinate relief efforts and ensure that resources are distributed to the areas of greatest need. But the same approach can work for long-term development efforts as well, especially in countries where there are dozens of donors implementing thousands of projects. Working with Esri, we intend to make aid information more visual, so that it’s easier for decision makers and the general public to access and understand.”
Esri and Development Gateway have already worked together to create the Development Loop application for AidData, a joint initiative of Development Gateway, Brigham Young University, and the College of William and Mary. Development Loop is a collaborative tool for planning, tracking, and assessing aid projects worldwide. Future versions will employ crowdsourcing tools, allowing development professionals and community beneficiaries of aid to create or update project data from anywhere in the world via free web and mobile applications. In doing so, AidData hopes to generate a “feedback loop” between aid donors and beneficiaries.
Development Gateway and Esri may also work together on new mapping interfaces for Development Gateway’s Aid Management Platform, a virtual workspace for governments and their development partners with implementations in 20 countries.
About Development Gateway
Development Gateway increases the impact of international development activities through innovative, sustainable information management solutions and services. A nonprofit organization with activities around the world, Development Gateway works to empower people to accelerate change and transform their societies.
http://www.developmentgateway.
About Esri
Since 1969, Esri has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in geographic information system (GIS) technology, Esri applications provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis via complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms.
http://www.esri.com
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This press release is reprinted by Alanna Shaikh out of an obscure sense of guilt. It does not represent the opinions of Alanna Shaikh or any of her employers.
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