Global Refugee Atlas

The Global Refugee Atlas visualizes and narrates core experiences of the millions of refugees under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) mandate using remote sensing data, crowdsourced social media data as well as a host of datasets from UNHCR and other international humanitarian agencies.

Exploiting the availability of these datasets, the Atlas is built on an open geo-narrative platform to illuminate the contexts and conditions underlying refugee journeys and camps.

Chapters

Context

Factors that influence international
crises and cause forced migrations

Journeys

Global and local scales
of refugee movements

Camps

Extension and growth of refugee
camps through satellite imagery

Aid

Participation to international
agreements and UNHCR budget

Perception

Perception on refugee issues
of social media users

Sources

Data and software sources.

About

The Atlas is divided in five chapters that explore different aspects of the refugee experience, from the causes that generate international crises to the perception of social media users throghout the world.

The Context and Aid sections provide a visual foundation to understand the global scale of refugee movements as well as the context (e.g., refugee flows, human and environmental conditions of hosting countries, spread of wars and civil conflicts) and geographic conditions that underpin refugee journeys. At the same time, they illustrate the response to the refugee crisis highlighting international participation (e.g., countries that are signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1968 Protocol, contributions to UNHCR, etc.).

Refugee experiences are highlighted through the use of geo-narratives using as case studies two stories: refugees escaping the brutality of the Burundian civil war and Somali refugees trying to reach the Mediterranean shores (Journeys section). Refugee camps are shown in some detail through two case studies (Kutupalong and Zaatari), while the growth of major refugee camps is visualized using remote sensing satellite imagery (Camps section). Finally the perception and the attitude toward refugees is explored running text analyses on crowdsourced data from social media users (Perception section).

If you have questions, please contact Bo Zhao at zhaobo@uw.edu.

Contributors

Bo Zhao  PI,
Assistant Professor in GIScience

Jamon Van Den Hoek  Co-PI,
Assistant Professor in Remote Sensing

Jennifer Alix-Garcia  Co-PI,
Professor in Applied Economics

Giovanni Svevo
Lead Cartographer, Designer

Gareth Baldrica Franklin
Cartographer, Designer

Ginny Katz
Contributor

This work has been made possible by a grant from the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration.

Special thanks to Julia Jones and Erik Steiner for their valuable inputs.