2026 SAG Award Winners

Swiss Humanitarian Aid (SHA), Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)

Project Goal

The project aims to strengthen geospatial support in humanitarian emergencies by enabling rapid, reliable, and adaptable GIS workflows during sudden-onset crises. With limited GIS capacity and highly dynamic operational needs, the goal is to equip Emergency Response Teams (ERT) with intuitive mobile tools for real-time collection of georeferenced field data.
By integrating Esri mobile applications into Swiss Humanitarian Aid (SHA) emergency deployments, field photos, locations, and observations flow directly into configurable web apps for immediate use in crisis coordination. The same content supports communication products such as static overview maps and StoryMaps, helping convey a clear picture of evolving situations.
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Business Problem Solved

Our work supports humanitarian response and emergency operations, where sudden onset crises demand agility from our team, systems, and partners. Swiss Humanitarian Aid’s operational arm, the SHA Unit, includes a pool of experts who can be rapidly deployed in Emergency Response Teams to coordinate, assess needs, and implement projects for affected populations. With limited GIS resources, supporting crisis cell meetings, deployment planning, field operations, and internal communication is challenging. Esri mobile apps help bridge this gap. Field teams use QuickCapture or Survey123 to collect locations, photos, and contextual information that can be used immediately in crisis cells or communications. As each emergency has different needs, the flexibility of Esri’s mobile apps and web applications lets us adapt quickly. This strengthens the role of GIS in emergency operations, increases awareness of SHA activities, and improves decision making during crises.

Technology Implemented

A wide range of Esri software products are in use and often integrated together with FME data pipelines.
- Platform: ArcGIS Enterprise, Portal for ArcGIS, ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Enterprise Database
- Web GIS components: Experience Builder, Dashboards, StoryMaps, Instant Apps
- Mobile GIS: QuickCapture and Survey123
- Desktop: ArcGIS Pro

Development Team Biography

A small GIS team supports humanitarian operations at Swiss Humanitarian Aid, with a focus on emergency response activities. The team is comprised of three multilingual GIS experts with a geography background, experience in the humanitarian domain and expertise in a range of topics. These include cartography, data processing/analysis/visualisation, geospatial analysis, mobile data collection, remote sensing, Esri web applications, GIS system administration and operations.

The team:
Mary Brown, GIS Team Lead, Technical Coordination, GIS & Cartography
Alejandra Arango, GIS and Cartography Specialist
Benjamin Schilling, GIS and Cartography Specialist

Key support for our team is provided by external partners INSER SA and Esri Schweiz.