Uncharted territory: mapping the world’s forgotten cities

A ‘human genome project for cities’ is digitally mapping the developing world’s vulnerable urban areas to help NGOs and governments better respond to crisis, writes Chris Michael

Port-au-Prince, in Haiti, after the January 12, 2010 earthquake. Photo: AFP

In 2010, an earthquake struck Haiti. Hundreds of thousands were killed. Then things got really bad. Cholera broke out, and Ivan Gayton, of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), received a call from a nun in a remote village in the middle of the Haitian forest.

“Please help,” she said. “We’ve been hit with a horrible disease we’ve never seen before.”

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