Key Recommendations

• At the national level, there is increasing advocacy for the establishment of National Spatial Data Institutes, an institutional framework to facilitate the production, standardization and sharing of geospatial data across sectors of society. This maximises use and reduces redundancy in the creation and use of geospatial information within the health cluster. 13

• An improved collaboration between humanitarian and health sector agencies with commercial organizations is necessary to focus more on quality and consistency of data collected.

• There is a need to integrate geospatial platforms with demographic data. This should be governed at country level to enhance continuity.

• It is important for local communities to take ownership of their own data (through generation, validation, updates and use cases). Engaging local populations is an efficient method to quickly gather critical information where geospatial data is lacking.

• There is a need to move to health boundary layers below the health district. Machine learning can be integrated into existing strategies to automate the identification of villages followed by field mapping and validation. This could also improve identification of missed villages and zero-dose populations.29

• Methodologies should be flexible to allow for data collection, validation, or updates in both stable and unstable contexts.

• Clear definition of data licensing