The technology advantage: how UNOSAT Humanitarian Rapid Mapping Service has become a UN standard in less than 10 years | United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR)
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the partnership between UNOSAT and the international humanitarian community had a tentative beginning. Ten years ago, UNOSAT experts housed at the CERN laboratory in Geneva suggested for the first time the idea of a full scale service dedicated to supporting humanitarian decision making and ground operations. To be useful, the service had to be operational 24 hours a day, each day of the year, rely on standards and operational procedures still unwritten at that time, and be free of charge for humanitarian operators who had no time and no dedicated budget to pay for a technology service.
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When UNOSAT maps started to be disseminated on the internet so that field staff could access them as soon as they were finalised in Geneva, it became obvious that the relationship with users was going to be of vital importance.