More than 50 Ukrainian municipalities have completed the creation of geoinformation systems

photo: Sajad Nori

The digitisation of infrastructure documentation is a problem that Ukrainian communities have faced with since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, as missile attacks and bombardment may cause the loss of important documentation stored by local authorities and utilities. The loss of documentation significantly complicates the processes of community recovery and development, so in September 2022, EECU launched the project "Preventing the Loss of Key Infrastructure Documentation in Ukrainian Municipalities", main goals of which are:

• scanning of documents;
• digitalisation of documentation of municipal networks and systems;
• creation of digital maps and development of geoinformation systems.

At the same time, regular communication was established between the project team and the working group of the Ministry of Infrastructure to create a national depository of GIS documentation. As the Ministry is developing a national-level cadastre of urban planning documentation, it is open to integrating the developed GIS maps into the national system.

Over the year of the project, more than 80 municipalities in Ukraine's border regions have joined the digitisation process: scanning urban network maps and developing GIS based on them. More than 60 communities have started producing GIS maps, and 49 have already completed this work.

The project is being implemented with the financial support of Switzerland. The idea for the project was suggested by experts from Swiss Humanitarian Aid, based on the experience of the war in Iraq, where many documents were lost. This significantly slowed down and, in some cases, made it impossible to restore important infrastructure for electricity, heat, water, gas, sanitation, and communications. The project realization period is 16 months.