Forget Silicon Valley. The most innovative "smart technology" for water management might have been invented 1,500 years ago in the Algerian desert. Host Hugo Powell welcomes Momin Ashraf—Oxford graduate, Esri Young Scholar Award winner, and GIS consultant at Satellite Applications Catapult. Momin has done the impossible: using synthetic aperture radar to spot fuel trucks in the desert and tracking human trafficking via informal mines. But his dream map is something entirely different. He want...
Jun 9
22 min
What if the best map isn't a map at all—but the system that makes mapping effortless? Eloise Neff spent seven years at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) building geographic information systems from the ground up. But when asked for her dream map, she has a surprising answer: she doesn't have one. Instead, she wants something better. A dream information system. In this episode, Eloise—an engineer turned GIS manager—explains why the "...information system" part of GIS is too often forgotten. She a...
May 31
21 min
Why do biologists wake up at 4 AM to look for birds? And what does that have to do with California’s housing crisis? In this episode, California based GIS analyst and conservation expert Willa Sumer takes us inside the world of wildlife surveys, mitigation banking, nature conservation and environmental regulation. She explains why early morning field work is non-negotiable (rattlesnakes, reclusive species, and nesting season), how GIS helps developers avoid wiping out endangered habitats, and...
May 25
20 min
What if you could see exactly where the world’s money goes—in real time? From Swiss bank accounts to mobile money in Sierra Leone, and from colonial resource extraction to modern "resource nationalism," this episode pulls back the curtain on the hidden flows that shape global inequality. Host Hugo sits down with Matthew Roberts, Head of Geography at the International School of Geneva (and Hugo’s alma mater). Matthew shares a provocative dream map: a real-time, interactive visualization of glo...
May 18
20 min
What if humanitarians had an offline-first mapping tool as reliable as a Garmin GPS? In this episode, Max Malynowsky — software engineer at the OCHA Centre for Humanitarian Data — dreams out loud about a future where field teams can sync trusted, up-to-date geodata anywhere, even with near-zero bandwidth. From the chaos of contested admin boundaries to the quiet genius of ODK and XLS forms, Max and Hugo unpack why the hardest part isn't building the app — it's building the data infrastructure...
May 5
20 min
What if all the data needed to respond to a humanitarian crisis already existed — but was scattered, siloed, and hard to use? In this episode of 15-Minute Maps, I’m joined by Saïd Abou Kharroub, a GIS specialist turned information management expert, former CEO of Civ API, and current board member of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT). Saïd’s dream map isn’t a single map at all, but a one-stop, layered view of the world’s crises — aggregating data on conflict, displacement, funding, inf...
Dec 22, 2025
18 min
Urban crises are some of the hardest environments to map — and yet that’s where millions of the world’s most vulnerable people live. In this episode of 15-Minute Maps, Hugo Powell is joined by Yann Rebois, Earth Observation Strategist at Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and former Head of Geodata & Analytics at the ICRC. Drawing on decades of field experience and satellite analysis, Yann shares his vision for a map that can finally make urban vulnerability visible. Yann’s dream map focuses ...
Dec 15, 2025
20 min
What if our most trusted maps are quietly lying to us? This week on 15 Minute Maps, GIS technical advisor Cornelia Schultz (Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre) joins Hugo to reveal a hidden truth about the world’s most vulnerable places: the places we think are empty may simply be unmapped. Working at the intersection of climate change, conflict, and humanitarian response, Cornelia explains why entire communities — especially remote, nomadic, or conflict-affected populations — are missing ...
Dec 9, 2025
19 min
In this episode of 15 Minute Maps, I speak with David de Ridder, Senior Research Fellow at the University Hospital of Geneva (HUG), who specializes in spatial epidemiology and digital public health. David shares his dream map: a next-generation routing system that doesn’t optimize for speed, but for health. Think: a navigation app that automatically guides you through routes with less air pollution, lower noise, fewer allergens, and greater safety — subtly improving your daily environme...
Nov 24, 2025
19 min
Ever Wondered How You’d Navigate the Ocean With No Compass, No GPS, and No Land in Sight? Well this episode once again proves the importance of maintaining indigenous knowledge. That question led Bonner Professor John Huth, Harvard physicist and renowned member of the team that discovered the Higgs boson, into an entirely different field of research — mapping the ocean waves that Indigenous Marshallese navigators use to navigate their many atolls. In this episode we discuss: How Marsha...
Nov 17, 2025
21 min
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