Environment monitoring in Mali conflict areas
North and Central Mali entail the country’s highest prevalence of vulnerable communes siting at the intersection of chronic vulnerability, food insecurity, and armed conflict. Humanitarian and development programs are faced with diverse challenges in the aim of tackling the root causes and impacts of these vulnerabilities on local populations. Douentza, Koro, Gourma-Rharous, and Ansongo in the Mopti, Tombouctou, and Gao regions are characterized by being hard-to-reach, insecure and challenging to operate in for humanitarian/development projects/programs and demands a strong understanding of the potential impact of conflict.
The goal of this use case is to provide data-driven insights and critical information that can improve situational awareness for organizations operating in the area. This can help enhance the understanding of conflict dynamics and expand knowledge and monitoring of on-going conflict situations about the presence of threat actors, paramilitary troops, areas of influence and people gatherings as well as support violent incidence reporting for better verification and assessment. In this execution of the algorithm the focus was on the monitoring of the IDP movement in Gao, Bamako and other regions in Mali and their effect on the environment.