Aid workers are some of the most geographically savvy people around, but despite their engagement with places strung out far across the globe, maps are not yet a core part of humanitarian work - so said a joint AlertNet and MapAction event on the future of mapping in the aid world yesterday.

With examples from the areas of emergency response, disaster preparedness, fundraising, advocacy and communications, the event showcased just a few of the ways maps can be of real advantage to aid organisations.

So what are the reasons these technologies are underutilised right now?

Certainly cost and capacity, but could the root of the problem be a culture clash between aid work and mapping?

For mappers thoroughness and consistency of data collection are the watchwords, while for aid workers the need to respond rapidly is paramount. Often that doesn't gel naturally with meticulous mapping efforts.

Other challenges, such as high staff turnover, can also be detrimental to mapping efforts as much institutional - and on the ground - knowledge about an area moves on with the individuals.

Disaster response

You can't respond to a disaster, without first answering a lot of questions about "where", according to MapAction's Nick McWilliam.

Questions like "Where has the quake or cyclone hit? Where are the most affected populations? Where are the access routes? Where is safe? Where do we evacuate people to?" are at the heart of emergency response.

So why aren't organisations using them more? Well, it seems staff in the field don't know how to use them to their full potential, while the evidence of how exactly they can help seems so far lacking when making the case for more emergency mapping.

The aid world needs to do more to collect the lessons learnt and invest the time before a disaster to train staff in the best and most targeted use of maps, people at the event agreed.

A worthy investment

In the area of preparedness before a disaster, maps can prove invaluable, as Herbert Hansen of mapping company KEYOBS showed by an example from Myanmar.

And UNHCR gave an example of how satellite maps helped them actually save money by moving a refugee camp in Dadaab in Kenya, home to nearly 300,000 Somalis, to less water-logged ground.

"For years we used to have these flooded areas - until such time as we got satellite imagery," Peter Joshi told the audience, explaining how this imagery had helped them relocate the camp. "Since then we didn't have flooding and we didn't have to go and spend a lot of money on rehabilitation constantly".

But without a substantial bank of evidence and a lack of consensus about this in the aid world, donors still need to be convinced that the expense of investing in satellite maps is worth it.

Grabbing your audience

Whether with donors or the general public, it was also agreed that maps offer the potential to make a big impression.

"We find you get much more engagement from staff in water supply ministries and policy-makers when we use maps rather than tables or big reports," Vincent Casey of Water Aid told the audience.

Water Aid have also found ways to use maps to share their work with a new audience through plotting case studies and examples of their work on Google Earth.

And at the most basic level - anyone can relate to a well put-together map which sometimes says more than several paragraphs of words.

Not full steam ahead yet

But among all the opportunities - a note of caution also emerged. Who's going to pay for this costly process? While some data is freely available, as Tim Waters of OpenStreetMap showcased, not everything an aid agency will need to use will be.

What investment does it take to start producing dynamic maps showing how far an organisation's work has changed over time? Does effective mapping cost more than it's worth in terms of benefits reaped?

And perhaps most importantly of all - does the culture of aid work, and emergency response in particular, fatally clash with the best possible use of mapping?

Why not watch the lively discussion as it unfolded and let us know your thoughts.

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