Our mission

Why this matters

Decades of satellite records of rainfall, vegetation, flooding and population are now openly licensed and free to download. Turning them into an answer to a local question still usually takes specialist software, a fast connection, a capable computer and someone trained to use them. Many district offices, community groups and small non-governmental organisations have none of these, and the places where the answers matter most are often the places least able to produce them.

The site began as a library of tutorials for people learning to do this work themselves, and that remains a large part of it. The community tools add a second route: the analysis is done on our server, and the result is a short answer in plain English.

Who the community tools are for

Local and national non-governmental organisations, community-based organisations, district and county government staff, extension workers, journalists, researchers and students: anyone who needs a clear, sourced answer about one district and does not have GIS support to hand. The tools need only a web browser and are designed to work on a phone and on a slow connection.

What the tools do, and what they do not

There are two tools in this first release. Season condition says whether a district's rainfall and vegetation over the last one, three or six months were below, near or above normal. Flood impact maps newly flooded land from Sentinel-1 radar and estimates how many people live in it. Both cover 52,236 districts and provinces in 200 countries and territories, chosen from a list rather than drawn on a map.

Each answer gives the figures behind it, a chart or map, a statement of how reliable it is and the limitations that apply, the data sources and their licences, and the date it was produced. Answers can be shared by link, printed on one A4 page and downloaded as CSV.

The tools give indicative results from satellite data. They are not a substitute for field assessment, official drought or food-security classifications, or damage and needs assessments, and they make no claim to accuracy beyond what is documented with each answer.

How the data is licensed

A dataset is used only if its provider's own licence permits commercial use and redistribution of derived outputs. The licence, its source page, the required attribution and the date it was checked are recorded for every source, and shown with every answer. One country's district boundaries were left out because their licence did not meet this test. Answers can be reused, including in reports and funding bids, provided the attribution line "Generated at TechnicalGIS.com" and the data credits are kept.

Responsible-use principles

• No household-level or personal data is used or shown. Results are given for whole districts or for flooded areas mapped at 20 m or coarser.
• Every answer states how reliable it is and lists its limitations in plain language.
• Population figures describe how many people live in an area, not how many were harmed, displaced or in need.
• Text is written for a reading age of about twelve. Only English is offered until translations have been reviewed by fluent speakers.
• We do not claim impact we have not measured, and we do not name partners we do not have.

How the work is funded

The tools are free to use. The site is supported by advertising and by paid bespoke work for organisations that need larger areas, regular updates or analysis that goes beyond the tools. There is no advertising on the community tool pages, their answers or this page.

Getting in touch

If your organisation needs a question answered that the tools do not cover, a larger area, a series of dates or help using the results, please use the contact form and choose "Community or NGO project". We will say plainly if we cannot help.

Start with the community tools, read the launch article with two worked examples, or try the climate time-series tools for charts and satellite time-lapses of any place.