Geospatial Data Cleaning and Standardization Support for OCHA Afghanistan

Organizational Context

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) mobilizes and coordinates humanitarian action globally. OCHA Afghanistan is currently processing updated administrative boundary and village-level geospatial datasets. These datasets require technical review, cleaning, standardization, and alignment with OCHA's geographic standards to ensure their operational usability for critical humanitarian assessments and planning processes.

Job Purpose

This role supports OCHA Afghanistan's Information Management Unit by processing and preparing geospatial shapefiles. The primary objective is to clean, standardize, and align these datasets with existing OCHA geographic standards, ensuring their compatibility with humanitarian mapping products, dashboards, and operational datasets. The updated data is crucial for the 2027 population estimation exercise and upcoming Whole of Afghanistan assessments, which directly inform the Humanitarian Programme Cycle (HPC) process.

Responsibilities

Under the supervision of the OCHA Afghanistan Information Management Unit, the Online Volunteer will review and clean district and village-level shapefiles. Key duties include standardizing geographic attributes and naming conventions, aligning datasets with OCHA's international boundaries, and integrating OCHA P-codes. The volunteer will validate spatial and attribute consistency and prepare finalized GIS datasets for operational use. Deliverables include cleaned and standardized shapefiles, updated attribute tables with P-codes, and GIS datasets aligned with OCHA standards. The data involves countrywide administrative boundaries and village-level geographic information requiring meticulous review and standardization.

Work Experience

Experience working with GIS and geospatial datasets is required. Proficiency in GIS software like ArcGIS or QGIS is necessary. Experience handling shapefiles, administrative boundary datasets, and knowledge of spatial data cleaning and attribute standardization are essential.

Skills

Strong attention to detail, ability to work independently within a short timeframe, proficiency in GIS software (ArcGIS, QGIS), experience with geospatial data cleaning and standardization, and familiarity with administrative boundary datasets are required. Fluency in English is also essential.

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