Doctors Without Borders Launches MapSwipe App to Help Crisis Areas

The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today released a smartphone app to help map neglected areas of the world, allowing aid workers to better locate people in need during crises, such as epidemics and natural disasters.  MapSwipe, available free from the App Store and Google Play, enables users to view and swipe through satellite images of remote areas to identify features such as settlements, roads and rivers. The information gathered will help build maps for aid workers to use in largely unmapped but crisis-prone countries, such as South Sudan, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo.  The new app is part of the “Missing Maps” project, an open collaboration that aims to map vulnerable places in the developing world…

Stakeholder engagement crucial to respond to natural disasters

Engagement between stakeholders is crucial to ensuring that each community within each island is in a better position to prepare for and respond to natural disasters.  This was one of the views that was expressed by the Director General of the Barbados Red Cross, Edmond Bradshaw in an interview with The Barbados Advocate recently.  He stated that in the beginning stages, many of the agencies in the region would have concentrated on strengthening their own capacities first and foremost, but once this was achieved, they then placed their focus on how they can work with the other partner agencies and international federations to assist their communities with disaster management…

Natural catastrophes in Q2 2016 cost major insurer approximately $390 million

Chubb Limited released its estimates Tuesday in a press release, revealing that natural catastrophe losses in the second quarter of this year cost it $390 million before tax, or $315 million after tax…