Geo-Enabled Insights: Leveraging Geospatial Data for Smarter Surveys and Policy Impact

Overall objectives

The activity will strengthen the quality, representativeness, and accessibility of survey data on forcibly displaced populations by integrating geospatial data throughout the survey lifecycle, from design and data collection to analysis and dissemination. It will develop practical tools, guidance, and methods that can be integrated into UNHCR, and wider humanitarian, development and government survey operations. 

By improving and enabling survey sampling, enriching survey data analysis with relevant spatial information, and enabling the responsible dissemination of geolocated household survey data from displacement contexts, the activity will strengthen the evidence available to inform humanitarian and development decision-making in forced displacement contexts. 

Activity description

The activity will focus on three complementary areas:

1. It will develop and test geospatial tools and methods to improve survey sampling, particularly for hard-to-reach and dispersed forcibly displaced populations. This will include strengthening the representativeness of sampling frames using alternative data sources and exploring new approaches to identifying and surveying populations whose locations are not well known.

2. The activity will enhance survey data analysis through the integration of novel relevant geospatial data and analysis layers, which can include population, infrastructure, climate, hazards, agricultural productivity, conflict, and logistics, such as travel time. These layers enrich the survey data with replicable measures of the surrounding landscape, without any additional field data collection. This is especially valuable in forced displacement contexts, where displaced people often live in remote, hard-to-reach areas that are poorly covered by traditional data collection.

3. The activity will develop methods for safely sharing geospatial information alongside survey data through the UNHCR microdata library, including improved anonymization approaches and guidance for survey data dissemination.

The activity will produce open-source tools, guidance notes, and pilot applications. All tools and code produced will be released as open-source digital public goods.

Engagement with partners

The activity will be implemented jointly by the World Bank’s Geospatial Operations Support Team and the Survey Unit of the World Bank Development Economics Data Group, in close collaboration with UNHCR’s Global Survey Team and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Unit.  

The national statistical offices of Burundi and Yemen will be engaged as key user groups and will provide feedback to inform tool development. The activity will also coordinate with bilateral partners and multilateral development banks on standards for open location data. It will build on previous JDC-supported work on spatial sampling and survey implementation. 

Background and Context

Forcibly displaced populations are among the most difficult to reach through conventional survey methods. Sampling frames derived from registration databases or household listings are often incomplete, costly, or unable to produce representative statistics, particularly for dispersed or unregistered populations in urban settings.  

At the same time, the sensitive nature of location data for forcibly displaced persons limits the extent to which geospatial information can be shared publicly.  

Advances in geospatial data and tools provide an opportunity to address both challenges, by improving the precision and efficiency of survey design and enabling more contextually rich analysis of displacement dynamics. As funding for humanitarian and development responses declines, more efficient approaches to collecting, analyzing, and disseminating reliable survey data are becoming increasingly important. 

This activity builds on World Bank expertise and previous work supported by the JDC to integrate these capabilities more systematically into the survey operations of UNHCR and its partners to enable sustainable responses to forced displacement.