See this week's arrivals before the registration figures catch up.

Displacement Monitoring counts tents and shelters on your site or region from a weekly image and shows what was added since the last pass, so response sizing starts from the settlement as it stood at the last pass.

Start a projectHow a weekly pass works
GSD
≤0.5 m (VHR)
Cadence
Weekly
Platform
VHR satellite / aerial
Spectral
RGB
Reported by
Site or region
Fig. 1. Schematic only: hexagon grid with a growing cluster of marks. It is not a real site.
  • previous week
  • this week
Fig. 1. Schematic only: hexagon grid with a growing cluster of marks. It is not a real site.

What the response sizing meeting runs on

The planning officer walks into the sizing meeting with the latest registration figures and the notes from the last site visit. Registration follows arrival by some distance, and a spontaneous settlement on the edge of town may not be in the caseload at all. The site management team's visit gave a sound count of one place on one day, and that day is already behind you. Yet the shelter quantities, the NFI request, the plot layout and the water points all get planned from that figure.

The room suspects it is low. Nobody can say by how much, because the only way to find out is another walk through the site, and the field team is stretched already. So the request goes in on the old number, and the kits arrive short for a settlement that kept growing while the paperwork moved.

What this changes is the time between an arrival and the number. A weekly pass counts the structures on the ground and compares them with the week before, so the sizing meeting sees where sites are growing, where they are settling and where a new one has appeared.

What comes back each week

One delivery per weekly pass over the site or region you name.

  1. 2.1

    Count per pass

    Structure count

    New tents and shelters counted on each weekly pass, by site or by area you define. It is a structure count. You read it against your own persons-per-structure figure to get a planning proxy for people.

  2. 2.2

    Against last week

    Change layer

    Growth or contraction of each site footprint since the previous pass, with the new structures marked. A cluster of new marks at the edge of a known site, or on open ground, is the first thing to look at.

  3. 2.3

    Map layer or CSV

    Site footprints and counts by area, in whichever suits your desk: a layer for QGIS or ArcGIS, or a CSV that pastes into the sitrep or the NFI planning sheet.

  4. 2.4

    Cloud

    Skipped-week note

    When a week is under cloud, the delivery says so and carries no count for that week, and the next clear pass takes over as the update.

Fig. 2. A cloudy week leaves a gap in the series. We leave it as a gap.W1W2W3W4cloudW5W6W7W8
Fig. 2. A cloudy week leaves a gap in the series. We leave it as a gap.

How a project runs

  1. Tell us where

    Send the site boundary or the region you need covered. If sites are not yet mapped, mark the area and we agree the outlines with you.

  2. Weekly image

    Each week we take the clearest VHR satellite or aerial pass over the area, in daylight.

  3. Detect and compare

    Tents and shelters are detected on the new image and compared with the previous week's, so new structures and changes in footprint are marked.

  4. Counts and layer

    The structure count, the change layer and the map layer or CSV come back for that pass. The series builds week by week.

Where it fits in your workflow

In the response sizing meeting

Bring the count next to the registration figures. The registration data says who has come forward and what they need. The count says how much has been built. Where the two diverge, that is the site to send the site management team to first, and the site to plan plots, NFI quantities and services for with some margin.

It suits the person who plans sites and kits and needs a current view of every site in the area at once. It does not replace the registration exercise, the household assessment or the site visit. Those tell you who is there and what they need.

Open, scrubby ground under a pink and violet evening sky, with two utility poles on the horizon

Limits

  1. Limit 1

    A structure count is a proxy

    The count is tents and shelters seen from above. It is not a headcount and not a registration figure, and it should not go into a report as either. How many people sleep in a structure is your figure, from your own household data.

  2. Limit 2

    Resolution floor

    At 0.5 m a single tent is a few pixels across, enough to count and to see a site grow. It is not enough to tell one type of shelter from another, or to see inside a structure. Closely packed or joined shelters, and roofs that blend into the ground, are harder to separate and the count there is looser.

  3. Limit 3

    Daylight and clear sky

    The imagery is optical, so night gives nothing and a cloudy week gives no pass. A cloudy week is skipped and the next clear pass is the update. We do not estimate a week we could not see.

  4. Limit 4

    Weekly, not live

    One pass a week is a target, and cloud can push it. Arrivals that come and go between two passes are not seen.

  5. Limit 5

    No individuals

    Imagery at this resolution shows structures and footprints. It shows nothing about people.

  6. Limit 6

    Structures, not need

    Counts do not say who is in a shelter, whether it is occupied, or what its occupants need. Assessments on the ground cover that.

Who it's for

For

  • Camp planning and site planning officers sizing a response and its shelter and NFI quantities
  • CCCM and site management teams who need to know which sites are filling
  • Information management officers who want a weekly structure series next to registration and site assessment data

Not for

  • A certified population figure or a registration headcount
  • Identifying, tracking or counting individuals
  • Night, thermal or live monitoring
  • Telling shelter types apart, or assessing damage inside a site

Questions before a project

Is this an exact population count?

No. It is a count of tents and shelters, a proxy for population that sits beside your registration figures. You apply your own persons-per-structure figure to it.

Does it work at night?

No. It is optical imagery and needs daylight and reasonably clear skies.

What if a week is cloudy?

The week is skipped, the next clear pass becomes the update, and the series shows the gap.

Can it tell tent types apart?

It counts structures. Telling types apart reliably needs a closer look than this offer gives.

Does it identify individuals?

No. Imagery at this resolution shows structures and site footprints, not people.

How do we check it against our own data?

Pick a site your team has counted recently and keep that count to yourselves. When the first delivery arrives, compare the structure count with your walk-through and decide whether it is good enough to plan with.

Will it load into our GIS and sitrep?

The map layer opens in GIS software such as QGIS or ArcGIS, and the CSV pastes into a spreadsheet. We do not write into your systems directly.

Who owns the results and the imagery?

Ownership and licence terms for the deliverables and the imagery are set out in the project agreement. Ask for them early if your legal team needs to review.

How is a project priced?

The quote depends on the area to be covered and the imagery source, and is scoped for your area. Start a project and we will come back with it.

Size this week's displacement before you plan next week's response.

Tell us the site or region and how often your sizing meeting runs. We will tell you plainly whether a weekly pass can meet it.

Start a project