My 8 weeks (full time basis) internship was carried out at Spatial Services GmbH, Salzburg Austria from the 6th of July to 28th of August 2020. Spatial Services is well equipped with good working environment and well-seasoned staffs. During my time at the office, I was exposed to the office activities and I got along with the tasks assigned to me while putting my best to achieve timely and expected result.

My responsibilities during the internship period were as follows:

• Dwelling extraction in refugee camps

• Map making

• Land use / land cover classification

• Data search

Spatial Services GmbH handled many projects for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and other humanitarian organizations. Some of these projects involved extraction of dwellings in Refugee & Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps and updating of some of the previous projects due to abrupt changes in the size of the refugee or IDP camps. I was fully involved in some of these projects.

Creation of the dwelling maps required very high resolution satellite imagery (Airbus, Pleaides, SPOT etc.) and at times, satellite mission tasking was necessary depending on the purpose of the map. The mission tasking requires the satellite to capture an imagery of a location at a stipulated time.

Manual digitization in ArcMap and ArcGIS Pro were often used to extract the dwellings from the imagery and in some cases, semi-automatic dwelling extraction using an algorithm built on eCognition developer were adopted although fine tuning and manual editing were pertinent in ArcMap or ArcGIS Pro to fully achieve the result.

The refugee and IDP camps that I worked on are the following:

• Nigeria - Ngala, Rann

• Burkina Faso - Titao

• Cameroon – Fotokol

• Syria - Atimah, DayrHashshan, DayrSimeon, Karama, KhirbEtSajabli, Salwah

• Turkey – Atimah, Mashadruhin

After dwelling extraction, I created dwelling extraction maps which shows the geographical location of all the dwellings, type of dwellings and the total number of dwellings in the camps. Since each camp varies in sizes and are of different location, the type and number of dwellings also differs.

Furthermore, I created dwelling density and dwelling change maps. The dwelling density map show the ratio between the size of the dwelling and the number of persons living in it while the dwelling change maps gives a clear view and understanding on the changes that had occur in the camps overtime. These changes can either be increase or decrease in the size of the camps or its dwellings.

Also, I participated in some other projects with tasks on land use / land cover classification and data search.

As an aspiring humanitarian, interning in Spatial Services GmbH whose one of its main services is making maps for humanitarian purposes created a pathway for my career and I was able to see beyond my imagination. The aim of the internship for me was achieved although the eight (8) weeks did not avail much opportunity to learn everything that I aspired but it was quite enough to broaden my humanitarian scope and lay a good learning foundation where more humanitarian knowledge can be built upon.