ActivityInfo in Madagascar

Cyclone Haruna over Madagascar
Cyclone Haruna over Madagascar

ActivityInfo has been chosen as the basis of a common information system for emergency response in Madagascar. It will bring together the government national disaster management authority, Bureau National de Gestion des Risques et des Catastrophes, and the cluster system to improve information management and sharing to support needs assessment, coordination, and the monitoring & evaluation of emergency responses.

Madagascar is heavily affected by tropical cyclones which strike each year during the rainy season. Already in 2013, tropical cyclone Haruna has affected nearly 23 000 people, destroying thousands of homes and flooding more than 6 000 hectares of crops. The common information system built on ActivityInfo will allow all organizations to work within a common geographic frame of reference and to quickly share information with those who need it most in order to respond as effectively as possible to such disasters.

Over the next six weeks, bedatadriven is supporting the humanitarian community and the government of Madagascar to consolidate and refine the existing Excel and paper-based information management systems, configure ActivityInfo, and train cluster members and the government in its use.

Madagascar joins Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo as countries where ActivityInfo supports the cluster system as a whole, with a unified information system, which enables organizations to enter, view and analyse data in a standardized manner, which can be used as a stand-alone tool or support organization-specific systems.