15 Minute Maps

Forget Silicon Valley. The most innovative "smart technology" for water management might have been invented 1,500 years ago in the Algerian desert.

Host Hugo Powell welcomes Momin Ashraf—Oxford graduate, Esri Young Scholar Award winner, and GIS consultant at Satellite Applications Catapult. Momin has done the impossible: using synthetic aperture radar to spot fuel trucks in the desert and tracking human trafficking via informal mines. But his dream map is something entirely different.

He wants to build a dynamic, interactive visualization of the Foggara system—an ancient, gravity-fed underground water network that communities have used...

What if the best map isn't a map at all—but the system that makes mapping effortless?

Eloise Neff spent seven years at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) building geographic information systems from the ground up. But when asked for her dream map, she has a surprising answer: she doesn't have one. Instead, she wants something better.

A dream information system.

In this episode, Eloise—an engineer turned GIS manager—explains why the "...information system" part of GIS is too often forgotten. She argues that most analysts spend more time fighting...

Why do biologists wake up at 4 AM to look for birds? And what does that have to do with California’s housing crisis?

In this episode, California based GIS analyst and conservation expert Willa Sumer takes us inside the world of wildlife surveys, mitigation banking, nature conservation and environmental regulation. She explains why early morning field work is non-negotiable (rattlesnakes, reclusive species, and nesting season), how GIS helps developers avoid wiping out endangered habitats, and the idea of “selling” restored land to offset construction impacts. All this under the fascinating idea of 'Mitigation Bankin...

What if you could see exactly where the world’s money goes—in real time? From Swiss bank accounts to mobile money in Sierra Leone, and from colonial resource extraction to modern "resource nationalism," this episode pulls back the curtain on the hidden flows that shape global inequality.

Host Hugo sits down with Matthew Roberts, Head of Geography at the International School of Geneva (and Hugo’s alma mater). Matthew shares a provocative dream map: a real-time, interactive visualization of global capital, resource wealth, and historical injustices. They discuss how AI is changing the classroom, the "geography of hop...

What if humanitarians had an offline-first mapping tool as reliable as a Garmin GPS? In this episode, Max Malynowsky — software engineer at the OCHA Centre for Humanitarian Data — dreams out loud about a future where field teams can sync trusted, up-to-date geodata anywhere, even with near-zero bandwidth.

From the chaos of contested admin boundaries to the quiet genius of ODK and XLS forms, Max and Hugo unpack why the hardest part isn't building the app — it's building the data infrastructure behind it. If you've ever tried to print 20,000 settlements or wished for a universal translator for geodata, this o...

What if all the data needed to respond to a humanitarian crisis already existed — but was scattered, siloed, and hard to use?

In this episode of 15-Minute Maps, I’m joined by Saïd Abou Kharroub, a GIS specialist turned information management expert, former CEO of Civ API, and current board member of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT).

Saïd’s dream map isn’t a single map at all, but a one-stop, layered view of the world’s crises — aggregating data on conflict, displacement, funding, infrastructure, population, an...

Urban crises are some of the hardest environments to map — and yet that’s where millions of the world’s most vulnerable people live.

In this episode of 15-Minute Maps, Hugo Powell is joined by Yann Rebois, Earth Observation Strategist at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and former Head of Geodata & Analytics at the ICRC. Drawing on decades of field experience and satellite analysis, Yann shares his vision for a map that can finally make urban vulnerability visible.

Yann’s dream map focuses on one of humanitarian response’s biggest bl...

What if our most trusted maps are quietly lying to us?

This week on 15 Minute Maps, GIS technical advisor Cornelia Schultz (Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre) joins Hugo to reveal a hidden truth about the world’s most vulnerable places: the places we think are empty may simply be unmapped.

Working at the intersection of climate change, conflict, and humanitarian response, Cornelia explains why entire communities — especially remote, nomadic, or conflict-affected populations — are missing from global mapping platforms. And when disaster hits, that invisibility can mean the difference between receiving aid an...

In this episode of 15 Minute Maps, I speak with David de Ridder, Senior Research Fellow at the University Hospital of Geneva (HUG), who specializes in spatial epidemiology and digital public health.

David shares his dream map: a next-generation routing system that doesn’t optimize for speed, but for health.
 Think: a navigation app that automatically guides you through routes with less air pollution, lower noise, fewer allergens, and greater safety — subtly improving your daily environment without adding friction to your life.

Together, we explore:
 • How spatial data helped track and respond to COVID...

Ever Wondered How You’d Navigate the Ocean With No Compass, No GPS, and No Land in Sight? Well this episode once again proves the importance of maintaining indigenous knowledge.

That question led Bonner Professor John Huth, Harvard physicist and renowned member of the team that discovered the Higgs boson, into an entirely different field of research — mapping the ocean waves that Indigenous Marshallese navigators use to navigate their many atolls.

In this episode we discuss: 

How Marshallese navigators sail between islands by feeling subtle changes in the direc...

We often talk about rebuilding after a disaster, but we leave so little thought for rthe materials needed. Have you ever thought about where all the rubble goes after a war or a flood?

That’s the question that led Guilherme Iablonovski, a geospatial data scientist at the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, to dedicate his career to mapping matter itself — from concrete and steel to the global flow of sand, food, and everything in between.

In this week’s episode of 15-Minute Maps, Guilherme joins me to talk about:
Why the world needs a “map...

She Lost Her Home to Wildfires… and Turned It Into a Powerful Mapping Idea That Could Not Only Save Lives but Local History as Well!

Professor Brianna Pagan Corremonte - remote sensing expert, technical leader, environmentalist, and ultra marathon runner. How can you marry all these elements together into one map? Well Brianna describes her life post wildfires in southern California and the many stories she came across while supporting her neighbours during this troubling time. She wants blend aural story telling with mapping, tying place with history. Not only does she want to put forth historic da...

In this very moving episode, Esperanza Ortega-Tapia describes her dream of being able to map the loss of farming land within BIPOC communities in the United States. A topic incredibly close to her heart, Esperanza not only takes us on a journey of loss of land but also, a loss of cultural heritage. Having grown up in New Mexico, picking chilies with her grandfather on their family land, she has experienced first hand how climate change and systematic oppression has driven many to abandon farming. Sadly this is a story all too common across the world, and one that...

In this episode, Guido Pizzini - Director, Business Development, Impact and Partnerships at Immap Inc. - takes us through his dream of mapping community response to climate change. This idea is driven by his reading of Landscapes of Retreat: 

'...a reading of how the climate emergency lands in real places across time by paying close attention to adaptation charged with intimate, local memory'

Landscapes of Retreat, ROSETTA S. ELKIN

Preparedness is at the core of humanitarian response, built up over 100 years of crises, learning and developing capacity and techniques to ensure each t...

Sven Schmitz-Leuffen, GIS and Technical Solutions Lead at the International Committee of the Red Cross has a problem, how to know where and to whom should the ICRC be delivering support to? Well here is where the Gap Map comes in, a comprehensive collection of needs assessments that allow the ICRC to identify the literal 'gaps' in support. We discuss the practicalities of such a map, the pros and cons of the UN cluster system (and the potential existence of a Data Cluster), and the joys of working within the legal parametres laid out in the ICRC's mandate. 

From time to time, one feels the need to break with tradition, and while this podcast has normally only dealt with planetary GIS and mapping, in this episode we go beyond our atmosphere and look up and out. Prof. Sung Huang, associate professor at the Department of Astronomy at Tsinghua University in Beijing, lets us into his universe and tells us bout his dream map - a four dimensional rendering of the universes almost infinite galactic bodies. Though the subject matter is out fo this world, Prof. Huang's perspective highlights the importance of understand the galaxy on the future...

In this episode I am joined by Maaz Sheikh, young GIS entrepeneur and start up king. Ageospatial, the platform he created, uses AI agents and large language models (LLMs) to assist the less GIS savvy in creating their maps. While a contentious issue, he says his platformed is designed to improve accessibility to geospatial data. He tells us about his passion for calisthenics and sports and why so little geospatial data is available for outdoor activity areas. His map would take down the boundaries of data accessibility held within private servers and location data that is simply not geocoded...

Rhiannan Price, program lead at Nasa Lifelines, blends art and science to create her dream map. An advocate of community mapping, Rhiannan believes that modern mapping does not go far enough to evoke the community implications of places so often reduced to points in GIS. We delve into the implications of a map for decision making, whose primary design is not for decision making. What might that map look like? Rhiannan also takes us into her world, and how Nasa Lifelines collaborates with local artists around the world to convey the importance and impact of satellite data.

...

Varsha Sivaram, senior economic geographer at FRAYM, takes us into her world where she blends academic research with practical data solutions. In a world where data is king, how do you harness that data correctly and ethically? How do you ensure that work is doubled up and organisations share information responsibly? These are some of the questions we discuss in this weeks episode. One thing is for certain, Varsha believes that geospatial data is not being used to its full potential. 

Links:

linkedin.com/in/varshasivaram

https://fraym.io

GIS IS DEAD! 

This weeks guest is Andrew Schroeder, Co-founder of WeRobotics, Co-director of CrisisReady, and Vice President of research and analysis at Direct Relief. 

It may come as a surprise to some given Andrew's background but he posits that the concept of GIS as a tool for humanitarian response is outdated. With the rise of automated mapping and AI supported GIS, Andrew firmly believes that GIS can move into a future where interacting with a GIS will become the realm of policy experts and decision makers. This may also come as a shock to ma...

Today I am joined by Richard Brittan, founder of the innovative GIS company ALCIS. Richard identifies the lack of mapping of poverty in most parts of the world. He focusses on Afghanistan and the problems that surveyors and GIS experts have in mapping poverty across the board. In this instance, most poverty data is derived from a census from 2004, making almost all extrapolated information not fit for purpose. 

Join us as we delve deep into Richard's vision for this poverty map and how he has drawn on his experience in the field to develope this type of m...

Mahalo to the global GIS Ohana from this weeks guest Joel Myhre, humanitarian technology innovator. With a CV as long as the Magna Carta, Joel has worked in every facet of humanitarian technology and has travelled the globe supporting a myriad of projects. From the ebola outbreak in the DRC with World Health Organisation, to disaster preparedness with the Pacific Disaster Centre in Hawaii. 

With such a background, Joel unsurprisingly has a philosophical, almost poetic take on how his dream map would look. Inclusive, open to ancient techniques, and connecting the world are just a few of t...

This week I am joined by Nathaniel 'Natty' Raymond - Executive Director of Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University. Co-founder of Sentinel Satelites (with one George Clooney, yes that  George Clooney), Nathaniel has worked a huge variety of roles including war crimes investigator and media consultant, but now refers to himself as an accidental geographer.

He takes us through his idea of 'The BLIMP'. The BLIMP is a standardised method of gathering, storing, and sharing data between organisations into one common operational picture (COP). He takes us through the current pitfalls of such a plan and why i...

Today I am joined by Olivier Cottray, Director of Humanitarian Solutions at ESRI, and with nearly 5000 followers on LinkedIn, he is the closest the humanitarian Geospatial community has to a celebrity. Starting his career working for the Antarctic survey, Ollivier has had a storied carreer in multiple NGOs.

Olivier tells us about his dream GIS, a system that allows users to define their needs and prorities. Drawing from his experience with GICHD, he bases his idea on the PRISMA project that used sliding scales to help reach a consensus of de-mining prioritisation. By allowing local...

For the first ever episode of 15 Minute Maps I am Joined by Jessie Pechmann, storied humanitarian and Geospatial expert. She is currently the Humanitarian GIS and Data protection lead with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOTOSM), and has previously worked at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), IMPACT initiatives, and for the state of Utah. But many of you may know her as the convener of the Information Management Working Group (IMWG) focussing on GIS.

We discuss how humanitarian response can be restricted due to physical and human boundaries that superimpose traditional political boundaries. Jessie suggests a different...