ArcGIS Crisis Mapping for Humanitarian Response Planning Training Course

Course overview

Humanitarian teams need reliable location intelligence before, during and after a crisis: where affected people are, which routes remain passable, what services are functioning, and where response gaps are growing. Yet operational data often arrives as inconsistent spreadsheets, field reports, satellite-derived layers and partner datasets with unclear currency or provenance. This course equips participants to turn those inputs into defensible maps, situation products and decision dashboards that support needs assessment, prioritisation, coordination and response planning.

Participants use ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online to prepare humanitarian datasets, build operational geodatabases, geocode and validate locations, analyse accessibility and proximity, identify population and service gaps, and symbolise findings for non-technical decision-makers. They learn to publish controlled web maps, configure ArcGIS Dashboards for operational monitoring, and design ArcGIS Survey123 forms for structured field data collection. The course also addresses coordinate reference systems, data quality, protection-sensitive mapping, metadata, partner data sharing and cartographic choices for rapid-response products.

Teaching is based on a realistic sudden-onset displacement scenario. Instructor demonstrations are followed by guided ArcGIS workflows, individual map-production tasks and team planning exercises using affected-area boundaries, settlement locations, health facilities, road networks, population estimates and field-assessment records. By the end of the week, each participant produces a response-planning package: a documented ArcGIS project, a published web map, a prioritisation analysis, a field survey form, an operational dashboard and a briefing-ready map layout.

The course is suited to development and humanitarian professionals who need to create or commission spatial analysis for field operations, cluster coordination, assessment, logistics or programme targeting. It is equally useful for GIS staff seeking a humanitarian workflow that connects technical analysis with practical response decisions.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Build an ArcGIS Pro project and file geodatabase for a humanitarian emergency area of operations
• Clean, geocode and validate assessment, population, facility and partner location datasets
• Apply coordinate reference systems, metadata and data-quality checks to operational GIS layers
• Conduct proximity, service-coverage and accessibility analyses to identify priority response areas
• Create protection-sensitive reference and thematic maps for situation reports and coordination briefings
• Publish hosted feature layers and web maps in ArcGIS Online with appropriate sharing controls
• Configure an ArcGIS Dashboard that tracks needs, service availability and response coverage
• Design a response-planning package containing a survey form, prioritisation map and decision brief

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Humanitarian GIS Officers — who prepare operational maps and spatial analyses for emergency teams
• Emergency Response Coordinators — who must prioritise locations, resources and partner action using evidence
• Needs Assessment Officers — who collect, validate and interpret geographically referenced assessment data
• Information Management Officers — who manage shared operational datasets, products and reporting workflows
• Humanitarian Programme Managers — who need to target interventions and justify geographic coverage decisions
• Logistics and Supply Chain Officers — who assess routes, facilities and access constraints for relief delivery

Requirements and prerequisites

This is a foundation-to-intermediate course. Participants should be comfortable using Windows or macOS, managing files and folders, working with spreadsheet tables, and interpreting basic maps such as points, lines, polygons, scale and north arrows. Familiarity with humanitarian assessment terms, administrative boundaries, population data or coordination structures is helpful but not essential. No previous ArcGIS, programming, SQL, remote sensing or advanced statistics experience is required. Complete beginners should expect a structured introduction to ArcGIS interfaces before progressing to analysis, web mapping and dashboard configuration. Participants should be able to discuss a real operational mapping need from their organisation.

Training methodology

The instructor teaches each workflow through a short operational briefing, live ArcGIS demonstration and supervised practical exercise. Participants work with a consistent emergency-displacement dataset rather than disconnected software examples, preparing data in ArcGIS Pro, publishing products through ArcGIS Online, collecting structured records in Survey123 and monitoring indicators in Dashboards. Small groups compare prioritisation choices and defend them in a coordination-style discussion. Daily outputs feed an end-of-course response-planning package, followed by individual application planning for participants' own country, programme or emergency context.

Course outline

Day 1: Humanitarian GIS foundations and operational data preparation

• Humanitarian information lifecycle and common crisis-mapping decisions
• ArcGIS Pro interface, projects, catalog pane and map navigation
• File geodatabases, feature classes and attribute-table structure
• Point, line and polygon data for settlements, roads, facilities and boundaries
• Coordinate reference systems and projection choices for emergency operations
• Importing CSV and Excel assessment tables into ArcGIS Pro
• Metadata, source provenance and basic operational data-quality checks

Workshop: Participants build an emergency-area geodatabase, import baseline datasets and produce a documented operational data inventory.

Day 2: Assessment mapping and humanitarian needs analysis

• Joining assessment records to administrative and settlement reference layers
• Geocoding locations and resolving duplicate or ambiguous place names
• Field calculations, domains and coded values for assessment indicators
• Selecting and querying households, sites and facilities by vulnerability criteria
• Thematic mapping of displacement, needs severity and service functionality
• Normalising and classifying indicators for comparable map interpretation
• Protection risks in representing population groups and sensitive sites

Workshop: Participants clean a multi-partner needs-assessment dataset and create a severity map with a documented classification method.

Day 3: Access, coverage and geographic prioritisation

• Buffer and proximity analysis for affected settlements and service points
• Road-network concepts and travel-time assumptions for access analysis
• Service-area analysis for health, water and distribution facilities
• Overlay analysis to identify underserved high-need locations
• Population estimates and administrative aggregation for response planning
• Weighted suitability models for transparent geographic prioritisation
• Validation of analysis assumptions with operational and field knowledge

Workshop: Participants produce a ranked priority-area map and a short rationale for allocating a mobile response team.

Day 4: Web maps, field data collection and operational dashboards

• Publishing hosted feature layers from ArcGIS Pro to ArcGIS Online
• Web map configuration, pop-ups, symbology and layer filtering
• Sharing groups, item ownership and access controls for partner products
• ArcGIS Survey123 form design for rapid facility and site assessments
• Survey constraints, repeat sections and location capture settings
• ArcGIS Dashboards indicators, lists, charts and map actions
• Refresh schedules and operational monitoring of incoming field data

Workshop: Participants publish a controlled web map, configure a facility-assessment Survey123 form and build a monitoring dashboard.

Day 5: Decision products, coordination communication and response application

• Map layout design for situation reports, coordination meetings and donor briefings
• Cartographic hierarchy, labelling and accessible colour choices
• Map marginalia, disclaimers, sources and analytical-method statements
• Communicating uncertainty, data gaps and outdated operational information
• Map review checklists and quality assurance before product release
• Response-planning workflows linking analysis to objectives and resource allocation
• ArcGIS project packaging, handover documentation and update procedures

Workshop: Participants finalise and present a complete crisis response-planning package, including a map layout, web map, dashboard and action recommendations.

Tools & standards covered

ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Dashboards, ArcGIS Survey123

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions