Saturday, January 09, 2016

Mapping Attacks on Aid Workers


Despite their charitable purpose aid workers face increasing levels of threat when carrying out their work. IRIN and Humanitarian Outcomes have mapped global aid worker attacks from 2000 until the end of May 2015. In those 15 years, over 3,000 aid workers have been killed, injured or kidnapped. The Aid Worker Attacks map allows you to explore where and when aid workers have been attacked since 2000.

When the map first opens you are presented with an animated timeline of aid attacks over time. The map attempts to avoid the 'flashing dots' syndrome of a lot of animated timeline maps by zooming in on temporal hotspots of aid worker attacks. For example, when the timeline reaches 2007, the map zooms in on Somalia to explain how the rise of the Al Shabaab extremist group resulted in an increase in aid worker attacks.

As the timeline animation plays a bar chart at the bottom of the map also shows the number of aid worker attacks by quarter. Once the animation has finished you can explore the choropleth map of global aid worker attacks for the whole 15 years. If you click on a country the map will zoom in and the bar graph will update to show the number of attacks in the country by quarter for the entire 15 years.

No comments: