USAID Development Data Available on ArcGIS Online

Last month, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) launched the agency's first-ever crowdsourcing initiative to clean and map development data such as guarantees, loans disbursed, and available financing. Volunteers used a simple crowdsourcing tool created with Esri technology to find the required location information. This data can now be easily visualized on an Esri Story Map and in ArcGIS Online, providing better insight for the private sector to explore new areas for collaboration with host countries, researchers, development organizations, and the public.



USAID's GeoCenter worked in cooperation with the agency's Development Credit Authority (DCA) to identify a global dataset of approximately 117,000 records to map and make available to the public. The data cleaning and geocoding process was crowdsourced to volunteer technical communities including the Standby Task Force (SBTF) and GISCorps. All the work was completed in just 16 hours—44 hours earlier than expected.

Visualizing this data on a map can change the way USAID's field missions plan for guarantees as well as where they invest development dollars to maximize their impact. By seeing where the loans are concentrated, USAID missions can better analyze whether the guarantees are fully reaching targeted regions.

Internet: http://storymaps.esri.com/stories/usaidcredit/