MSF Search and Rescue map: How I built it
By: Jacopo Ottaviani
On World Migrants Day we’ve asked data journalist Jacopo Ottaviani to share his team’s recent mapping work for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). He provides an exhaustive picture of MSF’s search and rescue operations for migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea fleeing violence, war, persecution, and poverty.
Can you tell us about the Mediterranean migrant crisis and MSF’s work?
According to IOM, the Mediterranean is the most unsafe region to travel for migrants in the world with more than 15,200 recorded deaths from 2014 to 2017. Hundreds of thousands of migrants coming from Africa and the Middle East — from countries like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan — try to reach Europe from the Mediterranean Sea every year. Migrants mostly travel on overcrowded, shaky boats provided by illegal networks of smugglers who charge to make profit. Most boats make it to Italy or Greece, but a number of accidents occur each year. As boats capsize and migrants risk to drown in the sea, MSF and other actors, including the Italian Coast Guard, respond with at-sea rescues, provide first aid, and transport people to a safe harbor.
This is such important work. What was MSF hoping to achieve in mapping its S&R operations?
The main aim of this project was to bring transparency in the public debate around search and rescues operations in the MedSea. MSF decided to release and visualize their data to demonstrate that they do not intend to hide their activities in the Mediterranean Sea. They want journalists and CSOs to access the data, explore it, and tell stories.
MSF first connected with my team at Code for Africa. They knew me from previous migration data projects, such as Borderline and Migrants’ Files, where we largely used public databases to explain migration flows to Europe. We assembled a team to build the map, including designer Isacco Chiaf and developer Emma Lewis, plus Latte Creative, who worked on the microsite.
The map uses our tools to bring together a lot of complex data. How did you approach the map design?
MSF wanted to provide a complete picture of their activities over the last few years. After brainstorming a few ideas, we came up with an idea of an interactive map combined with a timeline and a dashboard.
One of the challenges was to visualize the exact itineraries of all the MSF vessels, from starting port, their routes through the sea, and back to destination port. We used Mapbox in our main map and the mini map. The time series was implemented with D3 brush functionality and is helpful for sorting through hundreds of MSF voyages. The date pickers are Pikaday, and they are coded to respond to/update the brush using a Publish/Subscribe pattern.
Specifics on each voyage are displayed in a separate part of the page, with space to share all of the details on the profile of people who were rescued, medical issues, and a mini map of the exact route of the voyage.
MSF undertook extensive data collection on these voyages. What was required to prepare the data for the map?
MSF have been collecting data about their search and rescue operations in internal spreadsheets. We teamed up with their data experts to polish the data, refine it, and finally mapped it on our interface. Every operation has a unique code number. MSF’s datasets included fields on geographic information, date and time of the rescue operations, number of people transferred, as well as wind speed, wave height, and number of dead bodies collected. This data was added by human operators, so there were some manual adjustments needed.
Some of the challenges came from the data format because those who collected the data didn’t always follow a standard. To visualize the vessels’ routes the team largely used data coming from MarineTraffic and VesselFinder.
We’re proud to support mission-driven designers like Jacopo and his team, as well as the courageous efforts of MSF. Tell us how you’re using our tools to support humanitarian efforts worldwide. Get in touch or send us a tweet @Mapbox.
