Linking communities to mine action: Innovating in active conflict

The Mine Action Application (MApps) is a digital portal designed by Danish Demining Group (DDG) to increase access to mine action (MA) information for people living in areas contaminated with mines and other explosive remnants of war (ERWs). The MApps portal provides an online platform for civilians to report and view approximate areas contaminated by ERWs and learn more about mine risk from MA operators. Through this process, MA operators can also improve their knowledge of ERW locations and the mine risk information needs of civilians.

This project is unusual, even for humanitarian innovation, both for DDG’s attempt to build longterm sustainability through partnership with national institutions from the outset and because it included the development of an innovation during a conflict. DDG’s experiences in this innovation process offer important lessons on the role context plays in successful piloting, on working with governments as part of a diffusion strategy and on trying to improve two-way communication with affected people in conflict.

This is one of 15 case studies undertaken by ALNAP in partnership with Elrha’s Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF), exploring the dynamics of successful innovation processes in humanitarian action. The case studies examine what good practice in humanitarian innovation looks like, what approaches and tools organisations have used to innovate in the humanitarian system, what the barriers to innovation are for individual organisations, and how they can be overcome. The case studies are synthesised in the summary report, ‘More than just luck: Innovations in humanitarian action’.